I recently participated in a Shop Swap through Oh, Hello Friend. I was so happy to be paired up with Rachael at Imagine Gnats. I sent her water bottles and some gift labels for her girls, and she sent me a super cute spinny skirt and custom doll for my daughter, plus as an added surprise she included a few note cards and a beautiful washi infinity scarf.
This was such a great trade, and I especially loved that she included a Sarah Jane fabric in the skirt. Thank you, Rachael!
Congratulations to the following single-prize winners:
And congratulations to the GRAND PRIZE WINNER:
Please contact me by 3/30/11 to let me know the personalization details for your prize and your shipping address.
THE PRIZES:
Three randomly selected winners will each get to choose one of the following:
And one randomly selected GRAND PRIZE WINNER will win all three items!
HOW TO ENTER:
We’re on the hunt for great blogs to advertise on! Leave a comment below letting us know what your favorite blog is. Be sure to include your first and last name or a link to your blog (if you have one).
To earn up to three additional entries, you may do any of the following and leave a separate comment for each one letting us know what you did (each comment equals one entry):
This giveaway will close at 12pm CST on Friday, March 16th. Three single-prize winners and one grand prize winner will be chosen randomly from all of the comments and announced here. Winners must contact me with the details for the item(s) they have won and their mailing address. All prizes must be claimed by 3/30/12.
For the next week we’re offering a FREE 8×10 or 11×14 art print (retail value $20 – $30) with any purchase over $30.
Simply provide the details for the print in the “Comments” field during checkout. This offer is good through Thursday, 3/15/12.
When I last shared photos of my home office in 2009, it looked like this:
Jen was working at my house three days a week, and all sarah + abraham paper goods (note cards, notepads, stickers, art prints, etc.) were being printed and shipped from my house. I had lots of Ikea furniture (including the VARDE kitchen island in the photo on the left), curtains from Target, basic office chairs, and lots of wall shelves, which were all perfectly functional items, but not very pretty.
Over the last couple of years I’ve made some big changes, and today I’m so happy with how my new cozy home office has come together:
If you’re wondering where all the supplies went, they’re mostly all in Jen’s own home office now where she does most of the order fulfillment for sarah + abraham.
As for the furniture, I had my eye on the Pottery Barn Bedford office furniture collection for a long time. When I was finally ready to buy it, I had a Pottery Barn design consultant come over to help me plan the space, and she suggested the Keira rug, Peyton drapes, and rattan desk chairs. I don’t think I would have picked out those items myself, but I love how it all came together.
The tree art print is by Ryan Kapp. I purchased it at the Chicago Renegade Craft Fair last year, and I’m really happy that it works so nicely in my office.
I replaced the Ikea kitchen island with the Kavari media-storage console from Crate & Barrel. It only holds about half as much stuff, but I love the warmth of the color.
I’m especially proud of my little gallery of frames. I’ve always admired the frame galleries that John & Sherry of Young House Love have created in their houses. Mine is on a much smaller scale, but I’m so happy with how it turned out. It includes art by Heather Ross, Rifle Paper Co., June Craft, Decoylab, and White Nest.
And then on this wall I framed a few of my favorite photos from our family portrait session with Julie Chen.
The following information is for international customers (outside of the US/Canada). This change won’t affect Canadian customers…
Ever since I launched sarah + abraham in 2008 I’ve struggled with international shipping (as most small retail businesses probably do). The US Postal Service offers reasonable rates, and most packages arrive within 1-2 weeks. But the few packages that don’t arrive in that time frame cause a great deal of stress for me as well as the customers who are waiting for their packages to arrive.
UPS provides more reliable tracking information, and they offer reasonable rates to Canada. But I’ve found UPS to be cost prohibitive for a company of my size when shipping packages outside of North America (the cost for me to ship a 1 – 3 pound package outside of North America is $80 – $150).
At the end of each year I debate whether or not to continue offering international shipping. During the 2010 holiday season I experienced some significant delays on shipments to Australia which almost caused me to discontinue international shipping. Instead, I added a longer explanation about the risks associated with international shipping to my Policies page and on the shopping cart page.
That helped somewhat, but on November 12th a customer from Australia placed an order for 10 plates. The package was shipped on November 18th, and as of today (about 10 weeks later) it has yet to arrive. It was shipped via UPS Mail Innovations, which means that UPS delivered the package to the USPS in California, and then the USPS shipped it overseas. Unfortunately, the customs declaration number that UPS Mail Innovations provided me with has proved to be useless in locating the package, and UPS Mail Innovations has not been able to provide any additional information.
If it had been a large stationery order it would have been easy for me to reprint and re-ship the order. However, there are much higher costs associated with reprinting and re-shipping non-paper items. As a result of this experience, I’ve decided to no longer ship the following items outside of the US/Canada:
I’ll continue to offer $12.75 flat rate shipping for all paper goods outside of the US/Canada. This includes the following:
I know that this decision will disappoint many international customers – please accept my sincere apologies.
3/7/12 UPDATE: The package that was shipped on November 18th was finally returned – almost 4 months later. It turns out I accidentally left off the apartment number.
Liz from Cool Mom Picks was on TODAY last Tuesday morning sharing some personalized gift ideas including sarah + abraham personalized placemats!
It was super exciting for us, but also completely overwhelming. Within 24 hours we received more than a month’s worth of orders (including over 900 placemats, which we print and laminate ourselves). Getting everything completed in time for delivery before Christmas was more than Jen and I could possibly accomplish on our own. Luckily we had lots of friends and family members who were happy (or if not happy, then at least willing!) to jump in and help us out.
I’m so grateful to everyone who helped us get these orders completed in less than a week… my husband, Mike; my sister, Kim; my friend, Jill; Jen’s mom, Joanne; and even my daughter, Emma, who loved sticking Priority Mail stickers on packages. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without their help!
And of course we’re so very thankful to Liz for sharing our placemats with TODAY viewers!
This weekend I added a holiday gift guide to my website featuring all of my best-selling personalized gift items for babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers, big kids, moms, and teachers.
For the under-six crowd, personalized plates and bowls have been a best-seller ever since I introduced them last summer, and placemats have also quickly become a popular gift item for toddlers and pre-schoolers.
For teachers, most people choose personalized notepads, but you’ll notice there are a few other cute items in the teacher category as well (perhaps for teachers who you’ve already given notepads to in the past?)
And for anyone on your list who’s hard to shop for, you can’t go wrong with a custom return address stamp from PSA Essentials, especially when the sale price of $29.95 has been extended through the end of the year.
It’s so much fun offering so many non-stationery gift items! I hadn’t really noticed just how many I’d begun offering this year until I started putting this guide together.
A customer recently shared the above photo with me, explaining that this is how they announced to their Facebook friends that they’d be having a baby. He asked if it would be possible to create a custom birth announcement design based on the photo. I referred him to Meg, and this is what she came up with…
Don’t you love it?! Every time I get an email from Meg with a custom file to print, I can’t wait to open it and see what she’s come up with!
I often get asked why I charge $7.50 for a proof. Sometimes it’s a kindly worded inquiry, which I’m always happy to answer. Other times it’s an angry inquiry or an email telling me how outrageous it is that I charge for proofs. So for anyone who’s curious, here’s the explanation…
First, let’s take a look at what’s involved in sending a proof. I create the file like I normally would, but then instead of printing and shipping the order and being done with it, I create a jpg and upload it to my web-based proofing system. I copy and paste the customer’s order number, name, and email address into the appropriate fields, and an email is sent to the customer with a link to view and approve the proof or request changes.
Some customers receive the proof with no problem. But several customers, unfortunately, don’t receive their proofs because the emails are considered spam by their spam filters. So I also send an email directly from my email account to let the customer know that they should have received a proof, and if they didn’t, they may want to check their spam folder.
Most customers, once they’ve viewed the proof, approve it with no changes. In those cases, it’s not a very time consuming process. But some customers request one or more changes, which can become extremely time consuming, especially when they require sending additional proofs. Not knowing ahead of time how time consuming the proofing process will be for an individual customer, I charge one flat proofing fee to cover the average of how long the process takes.
For invitations and birth announcements, I always send a proof and wait for approval before printing the order. Therefore, the cost of proofing is built into the product pricing. But for all other products, which customers don’t normally require a proof for, I’ve made that cost optional rather than building it into the price. Also, if there’s ever an error in an order, I send a replacement immediately that correctly reflects the order.
Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you still have any questions or if there’s anything else that you’re curious about. Thanks!
