What's in a name?

It all started innocently enough.  I saw the beautiful antique grain sack pillows out in Blogland and swooned.  I bought one.  It was even more wonderful in person.  Being given to excess as I am, one simply wasn't enough.  I searched out my own grainsacks.  I found a couple with my very own initials.  How could I resist?  While I was at it, I found even more truly wonderful sacks.  You know you save on shipping if you buy more than one thing, right?  Yeah...so now it seems I am, at least for a time, in the antique grain sack pillow business.  I have been keeping my sewing machine running since August as time has permitted and now have all of these divine pillows with a few more yet to be made.  How to sell them...hmmmmm....BFF bought two before they were even finished.  She is my greatest supporter. Thanks Heather!  I sell antiques and mosaics on a website, Our Cottage Garden.  Somehow, the pillows didn't seem to fit the look over there.  I said to myself, "Self, you could open an Etsy shop.  Lots of bloggers have Etsy shops, why not you?"  OK, I am not a newbie to online selling, I can do this.  What do I call it?  When you have 5 million shops, you need a name that is catchy, not hard to remember, and somehow gives an idea of the feeling of the items you sell.  My blog name is French Laundry, that would be a logical choice.  But the grain sacks are German.  And the feeling I get when I look at them is more rustic and simple than the feeling I get when I think French Laundry.    You can't change your user name once you select it on Etsy, so you want to choose wisely.  You can make your shop name anything you want, but the guides tell you that it is confusing if you have a different user name than your shop name.  Certainly don't want to start out behind the curve.  "Farmhouse" comes to mind,  but with a refined touch. Thinking ahead, I'd like to offer antique white ironstone, cool metal pieces, and, of course, THE PILLOWS.  After more pondering and head scratching and agonizing (come on, you know you would do the same thing....you wouldn't be reading decorating blogs and artistic blogs if you didn't have a "thing" for details), I decided on.......TA DA!



This is the banner I designed. I won't even start on how much I had to agonize over that...I mean, do you know how many fonts there are?  Does anyone else feel like the font choice is a critical piece to anything you do?  OK, maybe that's just my OCD thing.  Then the pictures...well, suffice it to say that it took a while.   The banner may change down the road, but for now, I'm pleased.  I hope you will stop by and check out the shop.  I will be adding more pillows soon as well as some other things, hopefully over the weekend.  Thanks for all of the positive comments on my new look.  I really appreciate it.  You guys are such great encouragers.

Until next time,