by Cassandra of Pixie Chicago
When I first heard of Etsy I was immediately hooked and one of the first shops I found was Grace Hester Designs. She had such simple ideas but portrayed them beautifully and I am always a sucker for great typographical work! I interviewed Grace about her design business for my first OMHG article.contribution to OMHG.
Your announcement posters are so unique how did you come up with them?
When I had my second daughter, a colleague at work gave me a personalized plate depicting a baby’s nursery – the clock in the nursery showed the hour of her birth, her name and birth details were all displayed on the plate. I remember being so taken with the gift and the thought of personalized gifts for new moms stuck in my mind and I filed it away as an idea to pursue at a later time. When my mom came to visit for 5 months during my maternity leave, we opened up an Etsy shop and this was one of the print ideas that came to fruition after months of being stored away mentally. The other date-based versions like weddings, baptism, adoption, even graduation, all developed as a result of customers requesting for different variations of a date-based keepsake print.
It has to be so great working with people at such an exciting time in their lives, how has your experience creating them been?
I am so blessed to be able to be a part of the stories behind the posters. With the birth date or adoption date ones specifically, I’ve had customers share their touching adoption stories, stories of having lost babies or children in the past and how this moment just holds so much extra meaning for them or the gift recipients, friends sending me an email with the birth stats less than an hour after the birth of baby, and excited family members just looking to spoil the new parents with the gift of a keepsake poster. Extend that to weddings, baptisms, graduations, and so on and you can imagine how many personal and joyous moments I get to be a part of.
How did Grace Hester Designs became what it is today?
When I first started, it was really organic and I winged it as things came up. When I look back on that time and all that has happened since, I have to really highlight the blogging and Etsy teams community members for their support. Through the blog features,Etsy teams cross-promotion, and the sharing of advice from seasoned Etsy sellers, I have been able to build a customer base and continue to benefit from the interactions with this network of giving people.
What are your future goals with the company?
I still run my business during evening, lunchtime, and weekend hours since I have a day job, but I am often tempted to do more with the store, to test the waters of taking it full-time. But with a young family, my hours would be limited either way, and I would be setting myself and my family up for a stressful and unmanageable situation. Right now, I like that I manage a business that does not take me away from my family very much at all, and which I enjoy developing slowly. However, I am keeping my mind open for when the time is right to make running my business my only occupation.
As Grace mentioned earlier she doesn’t only do birth announcement posters anymore, but has branched out to do all those exciting and memorable days in one’s life, such as weddings, baptism and graduations, check out her Etsy shop to see all her wonderful designs. And stay tuned for tomorrow’s post from another new OMHG contributor……GRACE HESTER!
