Featured Seller: daisycakessoap

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Tell us about yourself.

My name is Jean-Marie and I founded Daisycakes Soap in 1999 in New Orleans & Baton Rouge, LA. My family (husband, 3 kids, 3 greyhounds) now live in the awesome town of in Athens, GA!
I’m a social worker by training, and have an undergrad in photography. I’m an Etsy “elder”, too, as I was lucky to find/join the site just 2 short months after it launched in 2005.

Apart from creating, what do you do?

I spend a lot of time with my family. I’m still learning about running a business continually improving it. I like to read, cook, and I get taken for many runs by our dogs.

How do you get your inspiration?

I love when people take a really good idea and turn it into practical reality. I am so inspired by Kiva. Their vision to bring together a micro-lending system where a small business like mine can help support small businesses in places half way around the world was amazing. Not only that, but they brought so many other agencies into the process to make micro-lending viable and thriving.

Not that has much to do with soap making, but I am inspired by people who make visions (like Etsy, too) reality.

What does handmade mean to you?

Handmade means quality to me. Someone put time, energy and thoughtful *intention* into making something that others could enjoy.

Who or what has been most influential in your business development?

Selling on Etsy, when it first started, was a fundamental departure from the kind of selling I had been doing.

It influenced my business model tremendously. prior to 2005, my income had come almost exclusively from farmers and artist markets. When Etsy took off, suddenly half my gross income was coming from online sales! I had to rethink everything–product lines, market and daily scheduling, workshop configuration.

Etsy really pushed me in a way I hadn’t been pushed before;)

How would you describe your creative process?

I experience my creative process as a groove. I’ll spend a week or two in a production groove: reading, experimenting, reading some more and making batch after batch of soap…then I will go back to focusing on the daily tasks that have to get done. I look forward to my grooves.

This past year was fun because I learned more about Photoshop Elements, so I was able to incorporate my own images in my labeling, which was new and fun.

Who is your favorite artist, designer or craftsman?

I am going to cheat here and say my teammates on the The Etsy Full Time Crafter Teame

Do you have and love a handmade thing other than your own creations?

I have a weakness for tie dye and colorful glass

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

10 years older, with Cory and the dogs, with kids out of college, still in my workshop with a wisk in my hand;)

Hopefully by then I will have figured out a way to have Daisycakes support Kiva in a bigger, more meaningful way.

How is your life changed since you started creating?

I’m sorry. I don’t understand this question. I don’t experience it as a before and after–it is just life.

What piece of advise you have for other people?

do what you love–try to make it fly if you can even if that means eating just noodles and eggs for a while.
keep learning. perfect your craft.
spend money on materials/marketing/opportunities when you need to–the money will find it’s way back to you.
keep pessimists at bay. believe in yourself.
risk.

05/06/2011