"I am a minimalist at heart and love the idea of owning just what we need and love."This month's featured EtsyMom shop is Sweetbeets. Owner, Lisa, designs a line of cards that feature her own illustrations of babies and kids. Sweetbeets pieces are letterpress printed on eco-friendly paper (made of either 100% post consumer recycled fibers or 100% recycled cotton fibers). New releases to the shop include an alphabet print and a counting print that can be framed for a baby's nursery. Also new to the shop is a small collection of print-at-home PDFs designed for baby shower invitations and children's birthday parties; this collection is to be expanded in the coming months.
After the birth of her first child, Lisa decided to leave her position in the field of medical research to stay home and care for her son. Craving an outlet for her creativity, she began designing cards using rubber stamps and craft punches. Self-taught in Adobe Illustrator, Lisa began working on her own illustrations. Sweetbeets was launched in the summer of 2007 with the intention of focusing on selling wholesale. Lisa first learned of Etsy through various design blogs and in October of 2007 she joined the fun and had her shop up and running within a month. Early 2009, she finished a complete overhaul of her primary website, http://sweetbeets.com, and added a retail shop.
"Sweetbeets is my day job, though I almost always work at night, too!" Lisa's primary job is being a mom. With her oldest son in grade 1 and away full days and her youngest son in Kindergarten just three mornings a week, she has those mornings alone to focus on Sweetbeets (although they go by so fast!). Admittedly, she has yet to nail down a system that "works", although she is constantly trying new ways to stay organized. At one point, she had assigned different types of tasks (e.g. marketing, blog, packing cards) to different days of the week so each week she had everything covered; she has since mostly abandoned that system and now relies on her new MomME Weekly Planner by Lobotome to keep her organized.
Lisa lives near Toronto with her husband of 12 years and their two sons, ages 7 and 4 years old. The family is TV-free at home (not having TV shows to themp her has freed up time to focus on Sweetbeets) though she enjoys watching movies with her husband on their laptop. Lisa also maintains a blog at www.modecokids.com.