Hi friends! Hope you’ve been having a great start to your week. I wanted to share the latest update in the shop with you. We get requests for our handmade button mixes and I’m always glad when we do because I love making them. Last week’s shop update included a bunch of mixed button sets, we had more in the shop than we’d ever had all at one time before. They are so fun! I hope you’ll love them as much as we do. We’ve never been able to keep them in stock for long, so I wanted plenty for people to choose from. (The mixed sets are one of a kind, so we won’t be able to replicate them. Just wanted to let people know since we often get requests to make items that have sold. That being said, if you fall in love with a set, you might want to get it before it’s gone.) 

I also wanted to let you know about some shipping changes in the shop. When we first started selling online years ago, we mailed everything out in small priority mail flat rate boxes. It was a really affordable option at the time, the weight didn’t matter so customers could pay the same shipping rate for larger orders, and it was the same cost anywhere in the US. It was great. But slowly, over time, the rates kept going up and up…

I still had priority flat rate shipping as the default shipping method in the shop, but gave people the option to contact me before ordering to switch to first class mail. However, mailing things out in padded mailers wasn’t ideal, even with sandwiching everything in between two cardboard pieces inside the packages. Though it saved our customers money on shipping, it just didn’t protect everything as well as we wanted.

During the holiday season, our friend at the post office told us the shipping rates were going up again, and we knew we needed to figure something else out. With places like Amazon prime these days, people really like free shipping and if they do have to pay for shipping they don’t want to pay much for it. I get it. I don’t want to pay a lot for shipping either. But Jeff and I are a two person business, making a humble living with our hands, we’re not a huge company… so we’ve wondered how to find a better solution to our shipping challenges.

As of this month, we’ve finally invested in buying shipping boxes. (We have to purchase these in large amounts, thus why we hadn’t done it sooner. Plus, we weren’t sure if the cost associated would make it a feasible option or not, but finally decided to take the plunge.) I’m really excited about this! We are now able to offer first class shipping as our default setting for shipping, with an upgrade to priority mail if you so choose. If you have wanted to purchase something in our shop before, but were turned away by the shipping cost, I hope you’ll be pleased with this more affordable option and reconsider. Oh, and before I forget. We are also offering free shipping in the US on all orders over $75! It’s our thanks for your support of our handmade endeavors. We really love what we do, and truly appreciate the support, thank you!