Thank you!

A short post from me today, but oh so important!

I want to thank you all for your lovely comments and support on my new Vlog style videos.

It’s taken me many years to be comfortable facing the camera, rather than hiding behind it and your lovely comments have made the time I spend filming the vlogs so enjoyable. Please let me know in the comments below anything that you would like to see going forward and I’m going to try and get at least one Vlog style video up a week.

Add More Zest Shop Rearrange

I love rearranging spaces just as much as I love a space that works and functions at its best. The Add More Zest shop is no exception and with the constant evolvement of the business a rearrange can happen more than in other spaces. Often small things happen, like changing where stock is stored, but sometimes it goes to a bigger level, like this past week.

As you may know from my previous posts, we will soon be stocking more colours of our diamond dust drills than ever before.

This was our previous storage for drills. 70 individual drawers holding our drills (& putty), and while it worked, and held a lot of stock, it wasn’t ideal. Packing orders for drill packs involved opening a lot of drawers to retrieve each packet of drills.

With the intention to double our colour options offered we needed to find something that worked better. Megan and I sat down with a pen, paper and the IKEA website open, drawing out our options until we settled on something that worked, and if needed in the future can be expanded.

Welcome to our delightful SKADIS peg boards! We relocated the some of our smaller units that the drills were sitting on and introduced some more thin BESTA units to attach our peg boards to and got to work making them beautiful. (Items being movable and not attached to the wall is always one of our goals.)

As you can see our round drills are looking just delightful and rest assured all gaps in the square drills are in the process of being filled up from our stock. We also have space to add another 65 colours of Diamond Dust Drills to our collection. I can definitely say that this was a worthy change, packing orders for drill packs is even easier and every time I walk in the colours make me smile, especially when its sunny and they catch the light.

Are you someone that rearranges areas often to ensure they work their best?

Cover Paper Process

While our shop launch tonight includes offering ALL cover paper options we’ve had in the past, I thought I’d show you the process it goes through before it makes into your order.

We now receive our cover paper in rolls that are 21cm x 100m. Initially they were 1m x 100m, so you will never know how happy we were to be able to work with our supplier to get them provided this way.

Trying to cut a roll that was 1m x 100m into manageable strips was more than just a task. It involved a full clear dining table, masking tape to mark cut lines & scissors. Once it was more manageable, it then needed cutting on all 4 sides to get crisp lines for the printer.

This new way is not as much of a daunting task and results in a lot less wastage.

To get these rolls ‘printer’ ready, we need to cut them into lengths of 31.5cm. This is more of a work out on the arms than realised and I really need to try and make some contraption to hold the roll and let it flow, rather than using my arm. Each full roll is cut approximately 320 times, and this week I’ve cut 5 of them. (yes 500m of cover paper).

Now I have lots of cover paper ‘printer ready’ the pretty part of the process begins. Our design is printed onto the page and the edges are trimmed off to have a finished design of 20cm x 30cm. If you choose the 2 piece option, this is then packaged and sent to you.

Our most popular option of 16 pieces: 10cm x 7.5cm needs a bit more work though, with a final few trims to its desired size. I counted that I make 16 cuts to get one pack ready from start to finish. Luckily our trimmer is a beast of a machine and was made to be a work horse.

My right arm has muscles that not all do, and this weekend you’ll find me printing and trimming to 20cm x 30cm all cover paper ordered. The final size designs will be cut as I process your orders to ensure you get the sizes requested. It’s a good job I enjoy the process and with the weekends projected sunshine, music flowing and snacks a plenty I’ll be having fun.

What do your weekend plans look like?