Hi! My name is Becky. I like to solve problems. Here is my story.
The year was 2012. I had 4 kids at home, ages 5 - 13. I was a former French teacher, and I was a stay at home mom. My youngest was just starting kindergarten. The 3 older kids were in all kinds of activities, and it was a juggle to keep everything straight. One day I had an important appointment, and I missed it. I thought, I've got to get a calendar. I started looking at what was out there, and I didn't like anything I saw. Cheap looking wall calendars, or paper calendars that were small. I decided to try and make my own.
I ordered a piece of metal from a local metal shop, and designed a weekly calendar. After I liked the layout (plenty of room to write activities for 4 kids), I printed out my design on a piece of paper and taped it to the metal.
Eventually I had some vinyl cut out, and I would write and erase on the metal. But after a while, the vinyl started to come off and look bad. Little did I know that I would eventually make business boards that would replace thousands of boards that had vinyl or tape that looked horrible.
2013: I also made my kids paper chore charts, and I would print them out and put them in a page protector and taped them to a door, so they could check off their chores with a dry erase marker. The plastic worked pretty well - it just looked cheap and ugly.
But it got me thinking. What if I made a calendar with a clear plastic surface to write on? I got out a picture frame, and I wrote on the glass. It looked fantastic. And better yet, it erased completely, unlike most dry erase surfaces.
I went to a local frame shop, and asked them to make me a rectangular frame. I designed a simple weekly calendar, and had it printed out at my local copy shop on heavyweight paper. I put the poster print behind the glass, hung it on the wall, and I instantly loved it. It was so easy to write on, and looked much better than my previous attempts.
I really wanted to put number magnets on there. I started researching how to make them. I bought glass cabochons, magnets and glue. I designed colorful number templates and experimented with different fonts. I would print out the number templates, and I bought a large hole punch. It took me hours to make a set of 31 numbers.
I decided to open up my first Etsy shop. I took a photo of my calendar and number magnets, and listed it on Etsy. I had one product in my shop. Just one. After about 4 or 5 weeks, someone bought the calendar. I was so surprised when that sale came through.
I had to drive to my frame shop and have them make a custom box and mail it. I thought everything was great until the customer messaged and said . . . the glass had broken in shipping. I went back to my frame shop, and they suggested I use acrylic (plexiglass) which was more expensive than glass, but it was much more durable.
Over time I made more and more sales, and customers were starting to ask for larger sizes and different frame choices. I was reading business books like crazy - I had no idea what I was doing. My basement started filling up with frames and boxes, and my garage had a dedicated table for gluing number magnets. I knew I had to figure out a better way to make the number magnets - each set took me 2 hours to make, and they really didn't look that good. Here I am in my garage, gluing number magnets.
More coming soon. . .
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