Pretty Cards by REDSTARink

We try to keep things charming, here at This Charming Candy. One of the ways we strive to do this is by including a brief handwritten note on a handmade card when we mail candy to our monthly subscribers.

Not being all that talented in the handmade cards arena, however, we enjoy supporting other crafters who do possess such talents. Browsing Etsy, we recently discovered REDSTARink, a shop in San Diego that makes paper goods in striking, modern designs. Just look at these gorgeous cards:

Cards this lovely might even inspire me to write more interesting notes next time around!

Inspiration

SFEtsy had a meet-up last Thursday at the Tech Shop in San Jose. It was awesome because:

1. I like meeting fellow small-business owners, and SFEtsy is a great way to do that!
2. Tech Shop has SO MANY COOL TOYS.

Here are all the awesome and wonderful people I met. We traded Etsy war stories, treasury tips, info on how to analyze our traffic data, and work-life balance.

photo by Jen Johnson

This is an insanely huge quilting machine. You can get an entire bed-sized quilt in there! No more hassle with your own little machine.

photo by Jen Johnson

But this was the thing that had me oohing and aahing the most - a 3D printer. I've read about the awesome things that companies and people are doing with them, but I've never seen one in person before. They look so small and innocuous. But they're very powerful.

photo by Jen Johnson

In short, it was incredibly inspiring! I wanted to make all my own stuff by the end of the day and get to work on our Etsy shop. I can't wait for the next one.

Seattle Residents: Free Local Pickup

Last summer, we began offering a free service for Seattle customers. If you make a purchase in our Etsy store, you can have your shipping charges refunded if you elect to pick your order in person. All you need to do is send us an email or Etsy Convo to let us know you will pick up your order in person.

Pickups are at The Wandering Café in Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood every Monday from 4-7 pm. We also have a few of our lollipop collections available for walk-in sales, if you’re feeling spontaneous!

photo from Maple Leaf Life

The address is 7533 Lake City Way NE – it’s at the corner of 11th Ave NE & Lake City Way NE.

The Wandering Cafe, 7533 Lake City Way NE

We hope to see you on a Monday afternoon in the near future! Maybe even today.

Brain Candy: Savor Seattle

borrowed from Yay Today

I read about Savor Seattle's food-themed scavenger hunt (going on for all of February, a different prize each day), and I am totally intrigued. You get a clue from their Facebook and/or twitter account, and if you solve it, you win! I kind of want to try. In alllllll my spare time.

A Few Words About Ginger

Longtime readers of our blog (hi mom!) may remember that Ginger flavors totally bombed at our first tasting party in the summer of 2009. In the spring of 2010, we made some small Ginger gem-shaped candies and embedded them in Coconut and Peach lollipops as a one-time batch for a client.

Ginger is one of the most common flavors that we get requests for. So when we started working on the Fruit Basket quartet last spring, we decided to give ginger another try. We tried Ginger-Peach and Ginger-Pear blends and included them among the 8-10 flavors we gave to our testers.

The feedback was a little more encouraging than it was in 2009. Instead of flat-out bombing, the ginger flavors were merely polarizing – they bombed with some people but were liked by others. That's progress, especially because we already traffic in polarizing flavors such as Vanilla-Cardamom and Salted Anise. Fans of those flavors love it and are excited that we make it. People who don't like them know to stay away.

Unfortunately for the ginger blends, though, there were five other flavors in the running that were more well-liked and more widely liked. So no ginger blends made it into the Fruit Basket. But the improved performance of ginger with our tasters gives us hope that we’re getting closer to having a ginger flavor we feel good about selling. Someday.

Cherries Jubilee

photo by Kevin Keeker

Sometime over our holiday break, I stumbled on the Cherries Jubilee wikipedia entry. I knew it was a traditional, posh dessert from my parents and grandparents' generation, but I never knew this:

The recipe is generally credited to Auguste Escoffier, who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria's Jubilee celebrations, though it is unclear whether it was for the Golden Jubilee of 1887 or the Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

Escoffier! Queen Victoria! Who knew Cherries Jubilee had such a hallowed history? Certainly not me.