Here for the Good News?!
The good news is that after I closed my ETSY shop in January I directed all of my energy, after being a mom, wife and nursing student, to my wholesale site.
(You can sell wholesale over on Faire too! Nobody is ripping off my designs over there because sellers can’t see what others are selling unless they are also a registered business and sign up as a buyer.)
I started using my CO2 laser to create products that I wanted small shops to offer in their local brick and mortar stores.
I had spent years creating items and shopping my very own local Main Street shops in DeLand, FL. I wanted nothing more than to create items little shops all around the U.S. could put on their shelves.
I started putting my Glowforge Pro to work. I was running it around the clock some days.
Cutting and engraving a full sheet (12×20 inches)of acrylic or leather took 3-4 hours depending on the amount of engraving involved.
The Glowforge I bought in 2020 as a tax write off was now paying for itself over again.
I started to get some of that passion back, and it felt so good.
Until…
A fire started while cutting acrylic for an order in late March of this year.
My $6,000 desktop laser was useless. Yes, I cried. Now my little wholesale business was at a standstill and I didn’t have another $6,000 sitting around. Thanks to nursing school all extra money reserves had been depleted.
I had to remind myself there is always sun after the rain, and that I was no stranger to hard work. If I got my husband on board, we could buy another machine.
Here is where I praise my husband endlessly for all the extra shifts he was able to work to pay for the bigger portion of the machine. I married a good one guys! He worked overnights multiple times a week to seal the deal.
Now being familiar with laser machines, we did more research this time. We opted for a much larger, stronger and faster laser to replace our Glowforge.
This monster is not a desktop machine, it’s a beast. It cuts almost 4x faster meaning I can push out orders in less time.
Lots of hard work, lots of extra shifts, so much help from people that helped cut orders when I couldn’t, and our new laser machine is ready to be picked up on Monday!
What does that mean for you? Well more new cut files of course! This machine has reignited my passion for sharing cut files and tutorials.
If you are a laser machine user then we are about to be besties.
No laser? if you are a cutting machine user (Cricut, Silhouette, etc) you will still be able to use these designs for a lot of your projects too. AND I’m going to start selling acrylic blanks in the near future so you can decorate your blanks with vinyl or UV DTFs.
To hear about the cut files, make sure you are signed up for my newsletter to get the new, free cut files delivered to your inbox weekly. Let’s bring back Freebie Friday.
If you happened across this post and aren’t sure what the Bad News is, I shared it with my newsletter subscribers. You can become one and I’ll send it to your inbox right now.