We spend a lot of time on Twitter. We joined in January 2009, because it was the latest cool social media thing to do (or so the Etsy forums said). And, hey – we felt immediately comfortable there. It suits us. It’s a great place for introverts to hang out – you can be right in the middle of all the action, but there’s no obligation to participate. You can say something mildly ridiculous and discover someone a thousand miles away who a) relates to your weirdness and b) is willing to publicly giggle at you for it. You can casually get to know some of your favourite neighbours/authors/customers/fellow makers, until you find yourself *gasp* inviting them over to visit or exchanging care packages of wine and chocolate across the country (and even across the world).
We tweet about our home life (parenting teens, cooking, renovating and redecorating a 100 year old house, chasing kittens). I tweet about gardening and get in trouble when I write inappropriately disgusting things about slugs. We tweet about the business (the pros and cons of working from home, supplier woes, current projects). And we interact with our customers.
The best part, though, is when our customers interact with each other. They make recommendations, share ideas, suggest colour/fabric options for each others’ orders, and generally cheer each other on. Sometimes we interject our own opinions or offer updates on current colour availability. And sometimes we stay right out of it, keep our heads down, and focus on production. We’ve never felt comfortable marketing ourselves, so we feel very blessed (and relieved!) when our customers do the marketing for us.
A few weeks ago, some of our favourite gals on Twitter started tossing around colour ideas for a Layer Cake Lite dress. Someone posted an inspiration palette from Design Seeds, and I couldn’t resist pulling out the colouring page file and playing with it…
After much discussion and many more colouring pages, three dresses were ordered:
And because we were having so much fun, these happened along the way as well:
We follow lots of local folks – both individuals and businesses – on Twitter, and they are fiercely proud of this lovely little island we call home. Most evenings, our feed is flooded with sunset photos from all across PEI. In the midst of our colouring spree, one in particular caught my eye:
Which soon resulted in my favourite dress of all:
xoxo Amanda