Ella got a Kindle for kids for Christmas and now that she's been using it (daily) for the last six weeks, I'm excited to share with you what we've thought!
Display your kids artwork with this DIY easy change art frame using affordable IKEA picture frames. Easy to swap out or slide in new artwork.
Flowers made from recycled paper pulp egg cartons are nothing new - As a matter of fact, I remember them from grade school! (certainly not going to give away my age here, but let's just say that was w
A lovely and minimal stand for storing and displaying the feathers and other small items your children collect during walks.
Giving your students the opportunity to read, write and analyse timelines in your classroom is a key requirement of the Australian HASS curriculum. By incorporating this Technology and Inventions Timeline and its accompanying activities into your classroom you will not only be meeting these history requirements but you will also have a great display in your classroom that can lead to further language-rich activities and investigations.
1. An Artist's Utopian Vision from the Early 1900s Wenzel Hablik (1881) was a painter, graphic artist, architect, designer, and craftsman from Bohemia of the early twentieth century, associated with German Expressionism. At the age of six, he found a specimen o
With summer drawing to a close (and my having to take time our of my busy redecorating schedule to do some work for the school district...hmmmph!), I was reminded of my own first day of school. When I started first grade 58 years ago, outfitting a child for school was much simpler than it is today. My mother made me a few cotton dresses and bought me a pair of saddle oxfords and socks, and my wardrobe was complete. Mary Janes, saddle oxfords and cotton dresses hastingshistoricalsociety.blogspot.com Typical 1954 school dress etsy.com - maybel57 Another popular plaid etsy.com - antiqueelegance Saddle oxfords vintagedancer.com School kids didn't carry backpacks back then. We had book satchels. Mine was a similarly cheery red in...you guessed it...plaid. Book satchel etsy.com - FlossyBobbsey And into that satchel my mom would pack my lunch and my school supplies...meager by today's standards, but I was still proud to have them. Most important was the Big Chief tablet, without which you couldn't call yourself a proper first grader. Big Chief table mylot.com Mom also packed plenty of No. 2 pencils and threw in some extra erasers. Because she knew what a perfectionist I was, she anticipated that I would run out of eraser long before I ran out of pencil. No. 2 pencils survivalsolutions.com Eraser caps melaniemoyer.info My prized possession was the 16-count box of Crayola crayons. (I still remember how excited I was to get my first 48-pack, but rarely in my life has anything matched the ecstasy I felt when the 64-pack came out in 1958. Now there are 96 crayons in the largest box? Incredible!) 8-, 16- and 24-pack Crayolas etsy.com - TheBackOfTheBasement Then there was mucilage. No Elmer's Glue or glue sticks. Just nasty, drippy mucilage that would dry crusty on the rubber applicator cap. Half the time it had already started to leak out the slit in the applicator before you even got it home from the store. LePage's Mucilage creativepro.com pinterest.com - zette71 As long ago as it all sounds (and was), in some ways it seems like only yesterday that I posed, satchel in hand, in our driveway for a first-day-of-school snapshot. I know I saw that photo somewhere not too long ago. I'll have to look through the picture box today.
Image 14 of 16 from gallery of SPAR Flagshipstore / LAB5 Architects. Photograph by Zsolt Batár
Small Parts Carousel While visiting an antique shop, I discovered a way to store all that indispensible small stuff that used to clutter my workshop. On display was a rotating bolt cabinet from an old-fashioned hardware store. When I got home, I design-ed this carousel that rotates on inverted...
Shannon here and I'm baaaaaack for another installment of Boutique Basics where I help boutique owners learn the business of owning a boutique! This week we are going to be discussing something we get asked about a lot and we all HATE figuring it out: pricing products properly. So let's put our big girl pants on as well as our thinking caps and get down to business. I suggest you don't just skim over this article either; get out some paper and a pencil and really work on this. You will be thankful when it's all over and you have a plan in place for properly figuring out the pricing of your products. First, things first, you need to download this excel spreadsheet that will help you easily calculate your prices. I will go through it step-by-step with you discussing and explaining every number you input into this form. I can't take full credit for the spreadsheet, in fact, I found it online myself. I did, however, modify it a little here and there to work for us boutique owners. Wish I could remember the site that I got this from, but I can't. Sorry! If you happen to know, please let me know as I would love to give them proper credit! Before we begin, here is the spreadsheet simplified. Looks easy enough to understand right? Calculating Materials: So once you have this spreadsheet downloaded, saved to your computer, and opened, you can begin by choosing an outfit you've recently made (or plan on making) and we will determine the pricing for it. I will be using the Marilyn's Slim Fit Peasant Dress since that is a free tute that everyone can follow along with me on. The first thing we will be determining in the spreadsheet is the materials. For this example, we will be using the cover dress in size 4T. There are two fabrics being used; one for the dress and one for the ruffle and sleeves. The dress body's fabric uses 5/8 yards of fabric that costs $8/yard. 5/8= .625 yards .625 x $8= $5 $5 is what you will mark in Materials 1 purple box. The second material uses 1/4 yard for the ruffle and 1/4 yard for the sleeves. This equals 1/2 yard or .50 yards. We will use the same $8 price for the fabric. .50 x $8=$4 $4 is what you will mark in the Materials 2 purple box. Next we will be determining how much elastic we are using and how much it costs. For the neck we need 17" and for each sleeve we need 7.5"and our elastic costs $.28/yard. 7.5 x 2=15" 15+17=32" 32/36=.888889 yards .888889 x .28= $.24888889 (we'll round up to $.25) So next to the Materials 3 in the purple box we will write $.25 for how much elastic we use. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. You don't need to change the materials' names but feel free to do as I did! If you have sizing labels, care labels, or logo tags, consider adding prices for those as well in the materials section. Calculating Packaging: The next thing we will be working on is the packaging cost, ie how much it costs to package up each item for shipping. My preferred shipping method is using polymailers. The 9x12 size is perfect for 1 to 3 dresses. I usually buy them from Ebay or Amazon, wherever I find the best deal. I didn't search too hard for this example, but we will use this listing for our purposes. So for 100 polymailers it is $9.35. That equals to $.09 per mailer. So in the purple box next to envelope/box be sure to put $.09. Now we can determine the price of special extras like tissue paper, bubble wrap, twine...whatever! I never used any of that myself so my spot would be kept at $0.00. Now we can determine the price of including a business card. You MUST include a business card in my opinion, 2 or 3 if you can spare it. You never know who they will share your card with. I liked to purchase my cards from Vistaprint. They used to be free (except for shipping) however, now they charge. Let's just say you buy the 1000 business cards for $20 and shipping is (totally guessing here) $5. That makes your business cards $25. 25/1000= $.025 (we'll round up to $.03) each Next to the business cards in the purple box write $.03. If you include multiple business cards add the prices together for all of them and put that there. We can now calculate for the shipping labels. If you don't print them off through PayPal--which I suggest you do because you save money on shipping--you can ignore this row. I prefer to use these labels myself. Again, I purchase them from Ebay or Amazon. I didn't search too hard to find a good deal, but I will be using this example where the labels are $9.21 for 200 labels. 9.21/200=$.046 (we'll round up to $.05) each Input $.05 in the purple box next to shipping labels. We can now move onto ink. Even if you do not use your computer to print labels, you use SOMETHING to write the addresses with. I do use my computer and my ink cost $9.99. I have absolutely NO idea how much ink it takes to print a label, but since the labels were for 200, I will guesstimate that the ink will last for about the same amount. 9.99/200=$.049 (we'll round up to $.05) each Input $.05 in the purple box next to the ink. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. If you have anything extra you add in your packaging consider adding prices for those as well in the packaging section. Calculating Labor: This is where things get a little tricky. You may be looking at the wholesale and retail prices thinking, "this all seems pretty accurate as it is." But you haven't included labor yet and you deserve to be paid for your work too! What you decide to charge for yourself is all up to you. That being said, don't sell yourself short--especially if you are experienced at what you do. How would you feel about having to get a job and make just minimum wage at $7 (or whatever it is in your state)? The least I would consider charging for myself is $12/hour, and honestly, I may be selling myself short at that rate considering I am quite experienced, but that's what I'm comfortable charging so that's what I'm going to go with. Since this dress is easy for me, I can get it done in at most an hour. So in the purple box next to hourly wage, I will be writing $12. If it takes you a little longer, say 1.5 hours than multiply 12 by 1.5 and insert that amount in the purple box. Next we move on the the final box: packaging wage. It probably takes me 10-15 mins to package up an order and print out shipping labels. I also am able to put all outgoing orders in my mailbox so I don't have to pay for gas (thank goodness!). 15 min/60 min=.25 12 x .25=$3 In my packaging box I put $3 down. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. Calculating Totals: This part is the easiest because now everything is done for you and you have the final prices there. Here are what my final prices were for the simple Marilyn's Peasant Dress: "Hold on a minute," you may be thinking, "this is WAY too much to be charging my customers." But my question to you is: "Is it?" Think of all the overhead costs that are not being considered in our formula including Etsy and/or website fees, PayPal fees, the wear and tear you are putting on your sewing machine, the time it took to take pictures, edit pictures, and make listings. This also isn't including the time it takes to advertise the new products or the price of advertising them anywhere like Etsy or Facebook. It also doesn't include things like electricity or the paper and ink you used to print off the pattern pieces for the pattern. All these little things are called "overhead" and there is A LOT we aren't accounting for in our spreadsheet. It's amazing how quickly all of these little fees add up. With the addition of these fees, we are probably looking at the final at-cost price being nearly equal to the wholesale price. Something else that needs to be considered is who you want your customer base to be. As most of us are probably mom's that began sewing because we couldn't afford boutique clothing, you shouldn't be thinking of yourself as your target customer. Lord knows I could have NEVER afforded the stuff I was sewing for my daughter if I had to buy it from someone else. I'm what you call a "starving artist" lol. There are plenty of people out there willing to pay these prices but the majority of us continue to underprice our items because we, ourselves, could not afford them. The main problem right now is the boutique world as a whole is generally undervaluing handmade products and the costs associated with these items. We all just want to sell our items and make that fast cash that we continue to underprice ourselves to "compete" with the new boutique on the block whose quality is than ours. New customers continue to search for the lowest prices forgoing the quality of the boutique items for the quantity of boutique items they're able to afford. A lot of these people don't realize there is a difference in quality or just don't care. They are new to boutique clothing and are under the impression that if Wal-Mart can make a tank top for less than a dollar (and then charge $10 markup of over 1000%) then why can't we? Btw, our spreadsheet has a markup of only about 250%, if I were able to pull a Wal-Mart mark-up than this simple dress would be listed at $250. The fact of the matter is, pricing is a difficult task and there is no clear cut answer. For me, I would be charging somewhere in between the wholesale price and the retail price for the Marilyn's Slim Fit Peasant Dress in my store because it is SO simple and fast. If we all priced our products based on what they were worth then the whole boutique community would benefit tremendously. When you price items lower than similar shops you are hurting yourself because you will be losing big customers who spend lots of money on boutique clothes because they may think your products aren't as well made. Additionally, if a big shop comes around and asks for your wholesale price on items because they would like to carry your items (it happens a lot!) and you're already charging the wholesale price then you are taking away from your profits and actually hurting yourself! If you're not comfortable selling at the retail prices we suggested in the spreadsheet find a number you are comfortable with between the wholesale price and the retail price. If you get so many orders that you are having a hard time keeping up, you then know it's time to raise your prices. If you are looking for some more info on how to calculate prices, I suggest reading this article from Etsy. It includes a much more in depth worksheet with a recording to walk you through it all. There is also a video to watch that I included here :) Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com I hope this was somewhat enlightening and helped you learn a little better how to price your items properly. Again, this is not a hard fast formula that needs to be followed, but rather a method that worked well for me as a boutique owner and will help you release what the least you should be charging is. Happy Calculating! Shannon
A tequila brand with a Chanel-inspired bottle, the prettiest watering can we've seen in awhile, and new furniture by Martin Brudnizki and Nicholas Jeanes.
Kylie from how we montessori is back today with part two of the “Make Like a Montessori Mama” series. Her first post was a big hit and I have no doubt you’ll love today’s ideas just as much… Here’s Kylie: Five great Montessori inspired activities about PLANTS! Five Montessori inspired activities that allow …
Foods, drugs, supplements, medical devices and other products get recalled more often than you might realize.
One of the most luxurious and intelligent designs we have seen for public spaces. The Downtown Riyadh Metro Station is a sustainable solution,
A dual-purpose wood and acrylic coffee table that transforms to a modern dollhouse for your kids that you'll never be embarrassed to have on display.
One of the most magical things about Disneyland is the nighttime fireworks display.
A Costco membership could set you back $60 a year, but it turns out you don't always need to pay the fee to save money shopping at this discount wholesale club.
More about the Art & Wall Decor as seen in Seattle and their creators on Wescover. Cumulus A site-specific installation by Liz Tran for JW Architects, Seattle Photograph by Lara Swimmer… Explore unique Art & Wall Decor by rising artists around Seattle. Find original art such as wall tapestries, wood art, ceramic sculptures, macrame and fabric wall hangings on Wescover.
With the addition of 24 new hand-painted and 25 hand-dyed solid/semi-solid colourways this Fall, our Koigu KPPPM (Painter’s Palette Premium Merino) wall has grown to well over 90 gorgeous sha…
A collaborative blog by Pre K and Kindergarten specialists. Child growth and development, information, free printables.
My first visit to the Le Labo concept store in London’s Marylebone almost turned me into a frangrance fanatic.
PS makes wellness more accessible through real-life stories, first-person perspectives, and expert-backed information. Our staff of journalists and subject-matter experts research, report, and produce articles, videos, and social content that help people feel good about their well-being choices, no matter what they are. Via our core verticals — Health, Fitness, Beauty, Balance, Identity, and Shopping — we help our audience proceed with confidence.
This is an exciting study of the Salad Spinner and Newton’s Law of Motion. We will explore and experiment with different materials and objects that could be whirled and painted. Newton’s first law of motion, an object in motion will continue in motion in a straight line unless acted upon force. How does Newton’s first law apply with this art project? While the children spin the salad spinner, the spinner pushes the paint away from the center moving it in a straight line. The outer edge of the bowl is also pushing the paint back in, forcing the movement to stop. This form of art is very simple, you squirt paint and spin. Spinning on White Tag Board Squirt Paint Add Some Hair Gel Squirt More Paint If Needed Spin The Salad Spinner Check Artwork PLEASE ALOW THE CHILDREN TO SQUIRT MORE PAINT,WHEN THEY FEEL THE NEED. All Done Explosion of Color Some Finished Art Up-Close. Invasion of the Salad Spinner Art! This is how I displayed the children's art in the classroom. I grouped all the brightly colored square artwork together. In this display, I grouped some of the round artwork. On this side of the room, I grouped all the pink, purple, and blue artwork.
Et vous, vous l’imaginiez comment votre librairie idéale quand vous étiez petits ? Multicolore ? Bien sûr. Avec des cachettes un peu partout [...]
If you're visiting New York, check out our ultimate guide to the best NYC Pop Ups and Events. Click to see details. Tickets sell out fast!
Shannon here and I'm baaaaaack for another installment of Boutique Basics where I help boutique owners learn the business of owning a boutique! This week we are going to be discussing something we get asked about a lot and we all HATE figuring it out: pricing products properly. So let's put our big girl pants on as well as our thinking caps and get down to business. I suggest you don't just skim over this article either; get out some paper and a pencil and really work on this. You will be thankful when it's all over and you have a plan in place for properly figuring out the pricing of your products. First, things first, you need to download this excel spreadsheet that will help you easily calculate your prices. I will go through it step-by-step with you discussing and explaining every number you input into this form. I can't take full credit for the spreadsheet, in fact, I found it online myself. I did, however, modify it a little here and there to work for us boutique owners. Wish I could remember the site that I got this from, but I can't. Sorry! If you happen to know, please let me know as I would love to give them proper credit! Before we begin, here is the spreadsheet simplified. Looks easy enough to understand right? Calculating Materials: So once you have this spreadsheet downloaded, saved to your computer, and opened, you can begin by choosing an outfit you've recently made (or plan on making) and we will determine the pricing for it. I will be using the Marilyn's Slim Fit Peasant Dress since that is a free tute that everyone can follow along with me on. The first thing we will be determining in the spreadsheet is the materials. For this example, we will be using the cover dress in size 4T. There are two fabrics being used; one for the dress and one for the ruffle and sleeves. The dress body's fabric uses 5/8 yards of fabric that costs $8/yard. 5/8= .625 yards .625 x $8= $5 $5 is what you will mark in Materials 1 purple box. The second material uses 1/4 yard for the ruffle and 1/4 yard for the sleeves. This equals 1/2 yard or .50 yards. We will use the same $8 price for the fabric. .50 x $8=$4 $4 is what you will mark in the Materials 2 purple box. Next we will be determining how much elastic we are using and how much it costs. For the neck we need 17" and for each sleeve we need 7.5"and our elastic costs $.28/yard. 7.5 x 2=15" 15+17=32" 32/36=.888889 yards .888889 x .28= $.24888889 (we'll round up to $.25) So next to the Materials 3 in the purple box we will write $.25 for how much elastic we use. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. You don't need to change the materials' names but feel free to do as I did! If you have sizing labels, care labels, or logo tags, consider adding prices for those as well in the materials section. Calculating Packaging: The next thing we will be working on is the packaging cost, ie how much it costs to package up each item for shipping. My preferred shipping method is using polymailers. The 9x12 size is perfect for 1 to 3 dresses. I usually buy them from Ebay or Amazon, wherever I find the best deal. I didn't search too hard for this example, but we will use this listing for our purposes. So for 100 polymailers it is $9.35. That equals to $.09 per mailer. So in the purple box next to envelope/box be sure to put $.09. Now we can determine the price of special extras like tissue paper, bubble wrap, twine...whatever! I never used any of that myself so my spot would be kept at $0.00. Now we can determine the price of including a business card. You MUST include a business card in my opinion, 2 or 3 if you can spare it. You never know who they will share your card with. I liked to purchase my cards from Vistaprint. They used to be free (except for shipping) however, now they charge. Let's just say you buy the 1000 business cards for $20 and shipping is (totally guessing here) $5. That makes your business cards $25. 25/1000= $.025 (we'll round up to $.03) each Next to the business cards in the purple box write $.03. If you include multiple business cards add the prices together for all of them and put that there. We can now calculate for the shipping labels. If you don't print them off through PayPal--which I suggest you do because you save money on shipping--you can ignore this row. I prefer to use these labels myself. Again, I purchase them from Ebay or Amazon. I didn't search too hard to find a good deal, but I will be using this example where the labels are $9.21 for 200 labels. 9.21/200=$.046 (we'll round up to $.05) each Input $.05 in the purple box next to shipping labels. We can now move onto ink. Even if you do not use your computer to print labels, you use SOMETHING to write the addresses with. I do use my computer and my ink cost $9.99. I have absolutely NO idea how much ink it takes to print a label, but since the labels were for 200, I will guesstimate that the ink will last for about the same amount. 9.99/200=$.049 (we'll round up to $.05) each Input $.05 in the purple box next to the ink. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. If you have anything extra you add in your packaging consider adding prices for those as well in the packaging section. Calculating Labor: This is where things get a little tricky. You may be looking at the wholesale and retail prices thinking, "this all seems pretty accurate as it is." But you haven't included labor yet and you deserve to be paid for your work too! What you decide to charge for yourself is all up to you. That being said, don't sell yourself short--especially if you are experienced at what you do. How would you feel about having to get a job and make just minimum wage at $7 (or whatever it is in your state)? The least I would consider charging for myself is $12/hour, and honestly, I may be selling myself short at that rate considering I am quite experienced, but that's what I'm comfortable charging so that's what I'm going to go with. Since this dress is easy for me, I can get it done in at most an hour. So in the purple box next to hourly wage, I will be writing $12. If it takes you a little longer, say 1.5 hours than multiply 12 by 1.5 and insert that amount in the purple box. Next we move on the the final box: packaging wage. It probably takes me 10-15 mins to package up an order and print out shipping labels. I also am able to put all outgoing orders in my mailbox so I don't have to pay for gas (thank goodness!). 15 min/60 min=.25 12 x .25=$3 In my packaging box I put $3 down. At this point, your spreadsheet should look like my image below. Calculating Totals: This part is the easiest because now everything is done for you and you have the final prices there. Here are what my final prices were for the simple Marilyn's Peasant Dress: "Hold on a minute," you may be thinking, "this is WAY too much to be charging my customers." But my question to you is: "Is it?" Think of all the overhead costs that are not being considered in our formula including Etsy and/or website fees, PayPal fees, the wear and tear you are putting on your sewing machine, the time it took to take pictures, edit pictures, and make listings. This also isn't including the time it takes to advertise the new products or the price of advertising them anywhere like Etsy or Facebook. It also doesn't include things like electricity or the paper and ink you used to print off the pattern pieces for the pattern. All these little things are called "overhead" and there is A LOT we aren't accounting for in our spreadsheet. It's amazing how quickly all of these little fees add up. With the addition of these fees, we are probably looking at the final at-cost price being nearly equal to the wholesale price. Something else that needs to be considered is who you want your customer base to be. As most of us are probably mom's that began sewing because we couldn't afford boutique clothing, you shouldn't be thinking of yourself as your target customer. Lord knows I could have NEVER afforded the stuff I was sewing for my daughter if I had to buy it from someone else. I'm what you call a "starving artist" lol. There are plenty of people out there willing to pay these prices but the majority of us continue to underprice our items because we, ourselves, could not afford them. The main problem right now is the boutique world as a whole is generally undervaluing handmade products and the costs associated with these items. We all just want to sell our items and make that fast cash that we continue to underprice ourselves to "compete" with the new boutique on the block whose quality is than ours. New customers continue to search for the lowest prices forgoing the quality of the boutique items for the quantity of boutique items they're able to afford. A lot of these people don't realize there is a difference in quality or just don't care. They are new to boutique clothing and are under the impression that if Wal-Mart can make a tank top for less than a dollar (and then charge $10 markup of over 1000%) then why can't we? Btw, our spreadsheet has a markup of only about 250%, if I were able to pull a Wal-Mart mark-up than this simple dress would be listed at $250. The fact of the matter is, pricing is a difficult task and there is no clear cut answer. For me, I would be charging somewhere in between the wholesale price and the retail price for the Marilyn's Slim Fit Peasant Dress in my store because it is SO simple and fast. If we all priced our products based on what they were worth then the whole boutique community would benefit tremendously. When you price items lower than similar shops you are hurting yourself because you will be losing big customers who spend lots of money on boutique clothes because they may think your products aren't as well made. Additionally, if a big shop comes around and asks for your wholesale price on items because they would like to carry your items (it happens a lot!) and you're already charging the wholesale price then you are taking away from your profits and actually hurting yourself! If you're not comfortable selling at the retail prices we suggested in the spreadsheet find a number you are comfortable with between the wholesale price and the retail price. If you get so many orders that you are having a hard time keeping up, you then know it's time to raise your prices. If you are looking for some more info on how to calculate prices, I suggest reading this article from Etsy. It includes a much more in depth worksheet with a recording to walk you through it all. There is also a video to watch that I included here :) Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com I hope this was somewhat enlightening and helped you learn a little better how to price your items properly. Again, this is not a hard fast formula that needs to be followed, but rather a method that worked well for me as a boutique owner and will help you release what the least you should be charging is. Happy Calculating! Shannon
