Practical Products with Stylish Flair

**Please see my special shop note under my Public Profile here: https://www.etsy.com/people/owlsay?ref=owner_profile_leftnav

My day usually starts with 2 little boys jumping on my bed to wake me up. They don't realize I've listened to them planning their surprise attack. We love this game and it makes our day start off happy. At some point through the day, we eat, play, I homeschool my 1st grader, we make messes and then we clean them up...mostly. Some where in there, I answer emails, set up listings, make orders and package them. My little 1st grader likes to put on the shipping labels.

I started Owl Say Designs in 2009 as a way to help supplement our income so I could continue to be a stay-at-home-mom. I guess now I'm a work-at-home-homeschooling-mom. The idea initially came to me when my husband had to start traveling internationally for work. He was always dropping his passport (usually in puddles) or spilling something on it. He asked me to find him a passport cover. I discovered I couldn't find one for less than $20 until I finally happened upon the vinyl I use for my passport covers now. For my first passport cover, I cut a piece a comic book page to fit and called it done.
My husband got lots of compliments on his cover and people were asking where he got it. I realized I could change the inserts and have dozens and dozens of patterns. To date, I have over 200 passport cover patterns! It was my desire to offer a completely functional product without having to sacrifice fashion. And it was equally important for it to be inexpensive so that it could be easily affordable for a wide range of people. So while my shop started with Passport Covers, it was only a natural extension to add matching Luggage Tags, Checkbook Covers and Card Cases.

When my husband, son and I flew to visit family and fumbled so much through Airport Security that I lost our boarding passes, I was hit with the inspiration of my Travel Clutch. At the time, the only ones I could find were made of leather by high-end manufacturers and priced at $200. I spent weeks drawing a pattern and making prototypes before I came up with the final result. While I am sometimes too shy to toot my own horn, I'm proud to say my Travel Clutch has been featured in magazines from Canada to Hong Kong.

After I developed my Travel Clutch, a Travel Agency contacted me to modify it for their travel documents to give to their clients and that is how the Portfolio Clutch was born. I still make these for the same Travel Agency with beautiful fabric they send to me from Japan!

After developing the Portfolio Clutch, a customer asked me if I could make it large enough to fit an A4 size (letter size) paper pad so she could carry something fashionable at work. Since then, I've made dozens of stylish larger Portfolios for both men and women to carry in their daily business life.

My main customer base has always been people looking for inexpensive travel gear, so that is where my focus remained for several years. I am forever grateful for the exposure my Etsy shop has gotten, but, as is common with Etsy shops, it has led to some copycatting of my ideas and business model. Unfortunately with me, this lead to a significant decline in income. So I am in the process of slowing reinventing Owl Say Designs and one of the ways I am doing this is by offering custom embroidered bags.

My favorite bags are the upcycled Military Bags. They so perfectly follow my 'functional but fashionable' motto! I love making a drab Military Bag look amazing by simply adding an embroidery design. I purchased new embroidery software this year. I am slowly teaching myself how to use it and hope to be able to offer more and more of my own designs. I have also had lots of customers request different sized bags to carry laptops or iPads which lead to me adding the Messenger Bags and Canvas Field Bags.

Everything about my shop ultimately comes back to my family. Everything I do, I do for them. It helps that I have always wanted to own my own business. I started pretending I was a business owner when I was 10 - I pretended I owned my own grocery store! Again I will say that I am forever grateful for Etsy and the changes they have made in recent years. They have given me the platform to own my own business and made changes to make managing it easier than opening my own website.

But mainly I am here by Providential guidance. I have been amazed at the success of Owl Say Designs. From blog and magazine features to wholesale and travel agency orders to everyday customer purchases. I am thankful God provided this avenue to bless our little family with income when He knew we would need it. I am thankful for all the weird situations I have been in that lead to inspiration for a product. I am thankful that my problem is I have too many ideas of what to do next to narrow it down and focus on one!

"The Lord had done this, and it is MARVELOUS in our eyes." Psalm 118.23