Blog

2022–It’s a wrap!

With 2021 being a year of maddening stress while making decisions that would effect the future of Faire Treasures for the foreseeable future with the merge with Scarlett’s Corset, 2022 has been a year of finding a new normal, new schedules, and opening up my workshop to appointments with local customers. I had the first year of juggling selling at two events running at the same time–twice during the course of the year! This past year has included our final season at Sherwood Forest Faire as Iris Adornments & Apothecary and our first season at Texas Renaissance Festival as Iris Adornments & Corsetry. I’ve started transitioning our corset designs to have hip ties to allow for more comfortable corset wear, and have gotten incredibly positive feedback on the new designs. And my husband and I reworked the layout at the TRF shoppe while it was incredibly hot, and I’m not sure I’ve ever sweat that much in my life!

It’s not easy being a small business owner with a ridiculous list of chronic health issues. Add the lingering effects of Covid that I caught at the end of the Autumn season, and my body is cooperating less than I’d like for it to considering my grandiose plans to update the website with new hourglass corsets, outfit listings, and new chemise and skirt colors! Those updates are still in the works, they’re just taking me longer than I would like for them to. I’m not sure I’ll have all of them done before we start into the Spring festival season, but if that happens, then the plan is they’ll happen in the summer months.

Now, there’s the awful reality of the inflation of material costs and travel expenses of 2022. I take pride in keeping my prices from my jewelry to my corsets as reasonable as possible. I’ve seen the trickle effect of slow increases over the years, and made the decision to keep my prices relatively the same because I know what it’s like to live on an incredibly tight budget and have to save for any and all little luxuries. But costs went up drastically, and I now have to do price increases to keep this little business moving forward. Of course, I’ll still keep everything as reasonably priced as I can, and I’ll be adding more clearance and lower cost items. (shhh… it’s a secret, but I’ll be working to bring back the Pre-Loved item section!)

So what does 2023 have in store here at Faire Treasures / Scarlett’s Corset / Iris Adornments & Corsetry? Currently planned, we’ll be at our usual festivals including Sherwood Forest Faire, Scarborough Renaissance Festival, Texas Renaissance Festival, and Steampunk November! My workshop in Arlington, Texas is open for appointments for shopping and corset fittings until I pack up for the Spring festival season. And I’ll be looking into some local weekend events outside of faire seasons to set up a small selection of my wares. I have a few ideas to work on this summer to improve existing designs, as well as dabbling in some prototypes to see if they’ll be something to add to my offerings.

I hope you all had a wonderful end of 2022 holiday season, and that your 2023 is off to an optimistic start!

Summer 2022: OMG it’s hot edition

It’s a write-a-blog-post kinda day for me today. From photo editing, to filling out forms, to deciding on the next colors of fabric to order for the fall, I’m doing everything I can to work from home and not have to leave my house. You see, here in DFW, Texas, the average high temp is about 105F. Last week, while taking orders from my workshop to the post office, I ended up with a touch of heat exhaustion that wore me out for the next day and a half. Yes, that was with my car’s AC going as cool as its poor little heart could churn out. Even after the sun sets, it’s in the 90s well into the night.

My typical June/July routine is to set up my dressform in my backyard, bring new product from the workshop to my home to photograph in front of the hedges, and spent at least a few weeks photographing as much as I can to list online before the Halloween rush hits. Unfortunately, it’s extremely dangerous to do that this year. In previous years, I’d attempted to make indoor photo studio sets that inconveniently blockaded the front door to our house, and then I hated how the pictures turned out anyway. And now, with our household having become a cat colony, I don’t feel comfortable bringing product into a cat-hair-heavy location. So indoor shoots at my home are out.

Which now leaves me with shooting at my workshop if I’m to stay indoors. There are very few good spots in my workshop to take pictures. When I say few, I mean one. I only take corset pictures in that spot. The lighting elsewhere in the place is bad, there’s not enough space to bring in my studio lights, and I’m still working toward having the front area of the workshop as a by-appointment-only shopping space. So I’d prefer not bringing anything extra into there, when I’m desperately trying to remove things that don’t need to be there any longer so I can organize better.

As such, my plans for having beautiful outdoor pictures of coordinated outfits to list here and on Etsy, or to post onto social media, have mostly come to a standstill. Additionally, I’m only making once or twice a week trips to the post office to ship orders out. (And taking an electrolyte drink mostly filled with ice along with me each time!) So while I would normally do up to four post office trips per week to ship your items out as quickly as I can, I now have to contend with my health in the heat. Orders are still being shipped in their 1-3 business day window, but I’m taking fewer trips overall.

So, for now, I’m making plans. Doing the things I can do from home. Redoing my former sewing room into a dedicated home office for me to have separation from my husband’s office space. Hoping the power grid doesn’t go down. So I leave you with a picture of one of our kittens, Little Miss Callie, napping in my computer chair.