{ Sara + Abraham }

Don't you love it when you stumble across something or someone on Etsy, fall in love/obsession and then wonder how on earth you didn't know it existed before? That happened to me earlier this week when I was searching for a beautiful handmade card for my niece Ava's upcoming birthday. What I found was Sara Tams' shop sara + abraham...further digging showed that Sara actually had an amazing website with loads of personalised products from birthday invitations and personalised mummy calling cards to melamine personalised bowls and art prints. 

  

I love, love, love all of sara + abraham's olliegraphics products - how cool is it to choose all of the features of your favourite little person to make a truly personalised gift? Now, all of my nieces have fairly similar features: brown hair, blue eyes, light skin (like their Aunty Em!) but I have friends with children that have distinctive red hair, blonde curls or glasses. What a great present to get a little red head boy or little girl with glasses to highlight their beautiful individuality?

  

Sara was lovely enough to answer a few questions for me...

What is your background? How did you start creating, designing and selling? I majored in business management and bounced around from job to job, never really finding anything I loved doing before becoming a stay-at-home a mom in 2003. I really enjoyed being home with my children, but after a few years I needed to find a creative outlet. I taught myself to use Adobe Illustrator and started selling religious-themed artwork on Etsy. I began receiving requests for invitations, thank you notes, and stickers, so I continually updated my product lines based on feedback from customers (I still do!) You are a mum yourself - how do you juggle family and work? I've found that it's all about prioritizing. There are some days that I have a lot of work to get done, and sarah + abraham needs to be my main focus on those days (luckily my husband also works from home and is able to help out with the kids). On days when I don't have a lot of work to do, spending time with my kids and husband becomes my top priority. I also like to try to get at least some exercise every day, but lately that's usually a walk or bike ride with my family. We always go to mass on Sunday mornings, and I try to work as little as possible on the weekends. Household chores are not a priority, and we almost never watch TV anymore. What is sarah + abraham's best selling product? Definitely notepads! "A Note from Mom" and Teacher Notepads are my top sellers. Do you use or own any sarah + abraham products yourself in your family? I love using mom notepads for sending notes to my kids' teachers, and I really love my PSA Essentials return address stamp. I've found that Mommy Calling Cards come in really handy when I'm dropping my kids off at a play date or a birthday party and I want to leave my cell phone number. What is it about your business you love the most? Definitely the freedom and flexibility of being my own boss – being at home with my kids and deciding for myself when I want to put in long hours and when I want to do the bare minimum and spend the rest of the day having fun with my family. What have you found to be the best promotional tool or advertising? Etsy! I was hoping that once I had my own website up and running for a while I wouldn't need to sell on Etsy anymore, but I still get a lot of traffic from Etsy.

Thanks Sara! To check out more of Sara's work:

{ website }

{ etsy shop }

{ blog }

{ facebook }

{ twitter }