A sleepy sigh of relief and some cautious optimism!

So last week we were working really hard on our Steampunk Lolita Tutus for the upcoming dance performance! I had my friends Rae and Baskerville work on those while I focused my attention to the slightly more complex Siren's Tears Panniers . The Steampunk Lolita style we had made many times, so it didn't concern me much. These tutus were modified for dance simply by replacing the ribbon waistband with an elastic one. The only other difference was that we sewed on size tags because we were making many tutus that looked the same but were different sizes.


The Siren's Tears Pannier, however, I had only made once and it was for a bridal underskirt- something very different than a jazz dance costume! We had a lot of things to figure out before we could make this design functional for what it was being used for, and we had 8 of them to make, all in different sizes! Fortunately, I recently found a very talented seamstress who was able to help me troubleshoot. She and I met up to discuss the tutus, and she began to work on the first half of them while I prepared for the second half. Luckily, the pattern I had created for the top part (sorry, no pictures of the new one yet, but you can refer to the above link to see what I'm talking about) was correct and was constructed quite well! My sister (the lovely model Jennifer Wallace) tried on the first one which happened to be her exact measurements, and moved around in it to make sure it was durable. With the material we chose and the serging and zig-zag stitch and our durable no-roll elastic, this tutu should be able to withstand a lot of movement which is very important in jazz dance!

The only concern now is the tulle. The tulle is delicate and has no stretch or forgiveness. There isn't much you can do to tulle to change that. Now the problem is: if we sew this non-stretchy fabric to the stretchy fabric, it makes part of the stretchy fabric not stretchy! This is for a jazz dance performance, so we want these girls to be able to move! But since anything is possible within the principles of thermodynamics, we will find a way!

So we've got a little over a week remaining before we need to ship these, so hopefully things run smoothly. My seamstress has taken much of the sewing work, which frees me up a bit to try to troubleshoot and do the finishing touches on the Steampunk Lolita tutus. I have also begun to think about the next project I'm taking on- entrepreneurs, artists, designers, we are always one step ahead of ourselves!

Once I'm done with this project I'm shifting focus to upgrading the shop. (In case you haven't been linked to it a bazillion times yet, it's www.etsy.com/shop/lokisromance). About a year ago, all our shop had was little hair accessories and those pouches, the first actual garment introduced (and sold) was the basic lolita tutu, which was a lightweight sewn tutu with French seams and an elastic waistband. I still carry it but its popularity has been overshadowed by much more dramatic Steampunk Lolita style after our shops first makeover. After I designed and created my series of corsets and the new, voluminous knotted tutus, and a couple new accessories, I got a group of photographers, a very talented makeup artist, and my ladies to model. Since then, I've filled the shop with whatever I thought looked nice enough to sell. Now I really want to bring up the level of sophistication and introduce new products the store. Here's what's on the agenda!

-Spring 2012 Collection: A collection of beautiful samples, more corsets but also more ready-to-wear stuff, we've also got some dresses and skirts so we can bring our aesthetic to items that are a little bit less of a costume look (not that there's anything wrong with that). Now that we have a new seamstress it'll be much easier to handle the new custom orders of these upcoming samples.

-Stock Collection: We are hoping to make a few more copies of the items we already have in different sizes and colors in order to have stock ready in our "Pret-a-Porter" section and also to start selling in booths at events possibly by the end of this year!

-New Artwork: I am creating new artwork that is more appealing to the Loki's Romance customer. The artwork that is there now will most likely no longer be available except for special requests.

-Fragrance and Body Collection: We will be introducing four new products along with our new Spring Clothing and Artwork: Fragrance Oil, Eau de Parfum, Lotion, and Soap. We currently have our first four test fragrances aging (an important process in having fragrances reach maturity)!

I am hoping to have all these items ready around the same time to do a full-on shop "makeover". Our last wave of introduced new products really brought some more traffic to the store, and I'm hoping this will do the same. The tentative date for the beginning of the "makeover" is March 21st (intentionally the first day of Spring!) but it is very possibly that it may take longer, as this is only two months after our tutus have shipped and we still got a photoshoot to squeeze in with all the processing that takes. So while we are shooting for March, it could easily be April or May. Once the new launch has begun, production will focus on building stock on the items we already have for the booths that will be hopefully happening towards the end of the year. If all goes well, we are hoping to become a fully fledged growned-up business with our own domain name in 2014- but we shall see!