Shop Spotlight Shop Witty

Today I am continuing my Independent Artists series by shining the light on Lynet and Gary of Shop Witty. A creative husband and wife team who are working together at home making lovely handmade paper goods.

Through Lynet’s resourcefulness they have created a great organizational system for their products and supplies. Lynet said, ” we have acquired shelving which helps my ever- growing art stash go up. But yet we seem to have to dodge each other while we both work some evenings in our dining room….hmmm. We really would love a studio space or a third bedroom, but for now we live under the motto of “work with what you have.”

I enjoyed interviewing them for today’s shop spotlight, please think of them for your paper goods. They would make terrific holiday gifts.

Lynet and Gary what made you decide to open an online shop? We needed somewhere to sell our hand crafted products..we knew that etsy was our most logical choice. I love the crafty aspect of it, my husband loves what he is able to produce with recycled paper, and we both love that you don’t find this product in any kind of retail stores. Our product is environmentally friendly and that eases our mind. We re-use & re-purpose a lot of things to make our product as we know it is very important to a number of people.

How long have you been creating together? I have been creating since I was born. But I have been producing our humble notebooks for about 7 months, always trying to provide a different spin for our products. My husband has been experimenting with paper making for almost 2 years trying to perfect it and learn more along each experimentation. We are finally feeling satisfied with the quality of our products to sell them and are very proud of them. I am a traditional artist and when my husband first began making it, I used it as my canvas. I love collecting and filling sketchbooks & notebooks too, so it naturally made sense to try to make a notebook out of his beautiful paper.

Did you go to school to learn your craft or are you self taught? We are self-taught. We are always relying on any kind of relevant information and then testing it for ourselves and then improving it to fit our needs. Everything we think of for our products evolves in some way or another and I think it’s crucial to always mold its changes to benefit our creativity and of course, our little shop.

Your shop name is a reflection of your name , right? Yes,our family name is Witty. My husband pretty much lives up to that name, while I, unfortunately just inherited it. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to be witty, as you can see from my pregnancy cards in the shop. I really do try! Coming up with a shop name is the hardest part of the initial process {at least it was for us}. So we finally decided to go with Shop Witty–twofold, simple and to the point.

Being busy parents it must make it hard to find time to create, when do you find time to make the lovely things for your shop? It’s hard to follow through with your creative juices when two little ones require your attention all afternoon. Which is why I mainly try to work during the day while it’s calm and I can get the most done. When my husband comes home from work, he makes as much paper as he can before dinner & bedtime come around. 🙂 We’re a business, but family & hunger come first!Never in a million years did I think I would open a shop with handmade paper on etsy. My husband never knew he loved making paper until he experimented with it. Ever since then, it’s been a soothing event for him to be making a mess with paper pulp. So, try something new you haven’t done before. Learn it. Research the heck of it! If you don’t love it, try something else and keep it going!

Being a shop owner has its challenges, what aspect of being a shop owner do you find most challenging? Our latest challenge has been craft and festival shows. We only recently did our first and we were both excited and anxious about what it would be like. It was definitely an experience, one that we would like it to be successful enough that etsy wouldn’t be our main source of business. The second most challenging aspect of it, I would say is PR. I have no idea what I’m doing and learning about it makes the process seem more stressful than I believe it could be–but I am working on it! My husband only makes the paper…

I am happy to shine a light on your shop today. You keep your shop fresh with new designs and products and that is a great way to develop business.  A must for any shop owner is not to let your shop go stagnant or go into “sleep mode”. Always produce something new, change your design up, make up a special blog post about it, learn how to improve it, etc. Always involve yourself with people or events that will benefit from your product. It won’t always be easy or the right thing, but you live and you learn. I think that helps you grow as a businessman quite a bit, heck, as a person even!

What do you enjoy doing when you are not creating for your shop? I love photography and blogging.  Family is the most important thing to me so those things go hand in hand. The other thing I enjoy is catching up on all of the shows with my husband late at night or going out with our kids and letting them loose! I am also an Instagram junkie, and I admit that without shame.

Before I Iet you go, where else can we connect with you ? Our twitter name is @ShopWitty and I tweet about new products listed and coupon codes. Right now, save 10%  with code NEW10 on all of our products in the shop until the 10th of this month. I also post a lot of production / behind the scenes photos on my personal Instagram account @sanlynet. And once in a while I will do a blog post with updates or announcements for our shop at  The New Wittys. Make sure to search for handmade paper or ShopWitty for those posts to come up. 🙂

It has been a pleasure shining the light on another Independent artist shop this week.

Are you enjoying this shop spotlight series? See you at the Thursday Favorite Things blog hop ♥