I think of Daria as the queen of glitter. She sells tastefully glittered cards and clothing in her online shop Glamscience and more limited edition handmade goods in her Etsy store. She keeps track of what she is making for her shop and family at Glittergoods. Daria is currently organizing the Queen Anne Artists Trunk Show happening here in Seattle on November 10th.

You have your own online shop as well as selling Glamscience goods at Etsy. Do you have a way to decide which place to sell at? Do you find you have a different audience at Etsy?

The idea behind my Etsy shop is that it’s where I offer things that I’m excited about making but might not want to add to my “official” product line, or things that I’d like to offer in limited quantities. I’m not sure I’d say that I have a wider audience there, exactly, but I do think that it’s a self-selected audience, sort of like online craft show attendees.

You have goods in a number of boutiques locally as well as across the country. One place which carries your products here in Seattle is Venue, which is dedicated to selling handmade good from local artisans. Do you find your things sell better at Venue than at other boutiques? How has the experience been different from other shops?

Venue has been very, very good to me. Most of the shops I work with specialize in handmade goods, but I think the thing that sets Venue apart is that the physical proximity of artists’ studios to the sales floor does a great job of making “handmade” real to the customers — and even those of us who don’t have studios in-store (like me) definitely benefit from it. So people walk in, can see that artists are working right there in the shop, can look around and see that each artist’s products are grouped together in one display, can really get a sense of the range of each person’s work. It doesn’t hurt that the location is fantastic, but I think the very specific studio/boutique concept is a large part of the store’s success.

You’ve taken your business to various craft fairs across the country. Has the cost and effort of traveling been worth the exposure?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. My very first big travel experience (Renegade Chicago) was so great that for a while I got pretty excited about taking things on the road. I’ve had both good and bad experiences since then, and in general these days I’m finding that if I’m going to really pack up and travel, there needs to be an extra incentive (like doing Bazaar Bizarre at Maker Faire, which has excellent geek payoff for my long-suffering roadie of a husband). When I started doing shows, I had to travel to find a major craft fair, but the West Coast scene has really grown in the past few years and so it’s easier to find big shows close to home. At the same time, I think that the explosion in the craft show scene nationwide means that there’s more competition for the handmade audience, so unless you’re talking about one of the really well-established, high-profile shows, it can be fairly risky to assume the trip will be financially worthwhile. Now that we’re seeing things like Etsy and the Sampler and all the blogs that focus on finding great handmade products, I think that there are lots of other ways to get wonderful exposure besides craft fairs — that said, though, I do really love the contact with other artists and excited customers that working a show brings.

You design and produce your goods at home, and are raising two children. I know you dedicate school hours to work and set aside a good amount of time to keep track of your sales and paperwork. Are there any traps someone setting out working from home should avoid? Any habits you find work well for you? I cannot get myself to work until I’ve gotten out of my pajamas.

The pajama thing actually doesn’t slow me down too much — my work is messy, plus I try to not walk around trailing glitter behind me in the outside world, so in my studio I’m usually in something like old pajama pants or ink-stained overalls anyway. I write a lot of to-do lists, and try to stick to them (I make sure to put something fun on the lists every so often to reward myself). I never do housework during school time, since I can do that when my kids are around. Finding the right work-at-home balance is actually harder than ever right now, since my kids are getting older and they’re starting to have their own activities, but they can’t drive themselves around yet. Usually, I stay up too late at night, though one huge trap that I currently live in but would like to warn against is staying up so late (on that 1 a.m. creative buzz) that it totally blows your next day’s productivity.

You and I have talked about this before – when you’re a small business it can be difficult to find a source for the right material, and here in Seattle we don’t exactly have a fabric district. I find the process of tracking down just what I need to be rather frustrating. How do you go about sourcing new materials? Do you look primarily online?

Yes, I’d say that almost all of my materials research starts online, either because I’m kicking around an idea for a new product and just start googling away, or because I saw a mention of something interesting in a magazine or on a blog and I want to learn more. I’d love to find local sources for the things I need, but it’s just not always possible. I also tend to turn to the internet when I want to find wholesale pricing on a supply, though it can be kind of scary, committing to a case of this or a gross of that.

Are there any crafty business resource sites you find helpful or a good resource?

I always recommend the Switchboards to people. I think the Etsy forums are sometimes really helpful as well. Craft blogs are also a great source of inspiration, maybe not so much for business-specific stuff (though there are definitely people out there who share wonderful craft business-oriented info — the “how to sell to stores” posts on Posie Gets Cozy a while back come to mind), but just to see other people out there making and photographing beautiful things.

You make things for your home and family as well as for your business. Do you occasionally make something for your home that you decide to sell as well? How much of what you design comes about from every day inspirations?

Well, my entire line of kid tees exists because when I had my daughter, I was determined to find a way to put glitter on her, and so I ended up adding a whole new dimension to what had been an exclusively paper-products business. I’d say that design-wise, I’m pretty well driven by a cross between trying to answer the question “can I put glitter on THAT?” and being open to the little inspiring moments that happen every day.

Selling things that started out as purely personal designs is something that I’m doing more lately. The felt crowns I’m making, for example, started out as party favors for my daughter’s birthday this year, and I got such a great response that I’m now putting them in stores. The patchwork pillows I’m working on right now come directly from my experience learning to quilt this past year or so, and while they started out more as a design exercise than an intended product, I’m so happy with them that I’ve decided to take them to shows with me this season.

What is next for Glamscience? Is there anything you’d like to take on in the future?

Glamscience is sort of holding its breath waiting for both kids to be in school for more than four hours at a time. Right now, I specifically can’t wait to have longer periods to focus on working with resin (not the most interruptable of mediums), but in general, I’m just looking forward to having a more equitable split when it comes to the work/family divide, and to being able to take advantage of more opportunities for business growth. Creatively, I’d like to start focusing more on what I think of as a “studio” line, things that won’t make it into my “production” line (of course, we’re still talking about very small quantities here) but which reflect my enthusiasms of the moment.

What equipment do you use? What sort of sewing machine and which model of Gocco? What equipment would you get if you plenty of space for everything?

I’ve been using a Gocco PG-5 for about four years, and then this past spring I got a PG-11 as well. The PG-5 is the one I turn to most often, but the PG-11 makes multi-color printing much, much easier. I also have two sewing machines — a Janome Harmony 4052 (I use it for all of my felt sewing) and a Brother CS6000-i (used for everything else). Neither machine is high-end, but they both get the job done (and I would definitely recommend the Brother as a mid-range machine with some nice quilting capabilities). I think the next thing on my list is a serger.