Nicole's blog

My 8 year old son, Kyler, is a soccer fanatic. Soccer is his life. He devotes as much time as he can to play soccer outside on nice days, and inside on the Wii on not so nice days, all while wearing one of his favorite soccer jerseys and giving me a play by play. So, the other day I saw a video of less fortunate kids who can't afford soccer balls - they actually make them out of plastic bags and string, and get just as much joy out of them as my son does from a real soccer ball. I found the video on YouTube to show my son so that he could see how fortunate he is:

Kyler asked, first of all, if he could try making one like that. Then he paused and asked, "Mom, I have 5 soccer balls. Can I give some to the kids who have to make them out of plastic bags?" We looked into it, and sure enough a donation of only $16 through World Vision will provide 2 children with a soccer ball! He was so excited to learn that there was a way that we could provide these kids with real soccer balls. Then he asked, "Mom, can we donate money from each soccer bib you sell?" I was so proud to hear him think of this, so regardless of how many we sell, we're going through with Kyler's promotion! Leave it to an 8 year old to come up with a great idea!

Here's the deal:

-Buy a regular soccer bib, we will donate $8 to World Vision to donate 1 soccer ball to less fortunate kids

-Buy a custom soccer bib through our custom bib studio, and we will donate $16 to World Vision to donate 2 soccer balls to less fortunate kids!

Have you ever thought how cool it would be to have your baby be a model in a catalogue, website or even in the pages of magazines? Well, this may be your chance! We are currently running our annual model search and we are looking for a variety of babies ages 6-30 months for a photo shoot to be held at Bopomo Photo Studio in South Surrey. If this is of interest to you and you have a child in this age group, and if you are available to meet at the location towards the end of June, then by all means, enter our model search!

I love this time of year! There's something about the blooming flowers, the longer days of sunlight and the birds chirping that gives me the urge to clean and organize to the extreme. For the past few weeks my family and I have spent countless hours cleaning and organizing our home during the evenings and weekends, which feels amazing! We have been doing the same at our business studio location in Abbotsford as well. I was going through our cupboard and looking at bins upon bins of leather applique designs that we no longer use and I thought what a crafters dream they would be!

At Mally Designs, we believe in recycle, re-use and reduce to the extreme. We are constantly trying to minimize our carbon footprint as much as possible, whether it's the small or big things we do. In fact, it's one of the reasons why we have been developing some fun new products, which can be found on our Etsy page right now! Our new small products (which are in the testing phase right now) are all items that we are working on to utilize our scrap leather. We would hate to have any of it go to waste...

We had a great sample sale last week where we sold off a huge load of slightly imperfect Mally Bibs. The great thing about a product that is hand made is that each item is unique. Sometimes this ads just enough character to please almost anyone, but sometimes it's a little too imperfect to sell at regular price. When we have finished product that has a not so perfect smile, a crooked little face or an imperfection in the leather that is caught afterwards, we sell it for half price at our sample sale!

When we heard the news that the Canadian Government would match any contributions donated to the Humanitarian Coalition on January 18th for Haiti, we decided to donate $10 from every online order. We also felt that one day was just not enough, so we have decided now to extend it through January 19th as well, to hopefully add a fair bit to our contribution. So for January 18th and 19th we will donate $10 from each online order placed.

The official Chinese New Year is not until February 14th, but we are all for celebrating early! 2010 is the year of the Tiger and we thought it would be fun to have a little Tiger promotion to go along with the year! According to the Chinese Zodiac, people born in the Year of the Tiger can be described as this:

We'll make this one short and sweet. As our holiday gift to you, we are offering a FREE SHIPPING coupon code for a limited time only. Simply enter HAPPYHOLIDAYS in the coupon code field upon checkout between now and December 18th at midnight to receive FREE AIR SHIPPING on any order! Orders with Expedited, Expresspost or International shipping will have $6.95 deducted off their shipping cost when the coupon code is entered upon checkout. Since orders over $98 would receive free shipping anyways, an additional $6.95 will be deducted from your total by entering the coupon code!

*offer valid on any order placed between December 11th and 18th through December 31, 2009!

*coupon code must be entered to receive free shipping

SHOP NOW>

Today is the last day before we leave for the first leg of our appropriately named 'tour de bibs'. We have scheduled 6 retail shows over the next 6 weeks, which requires us (me, Nicole, and my husband / business partner, Ron) to travel and work long hours, giving it our all, just like a marathon, for the sake of our business. Tis the season! I'm always excited going into it, and exhausted by the end of it. We are either traveling, setting up our booth, or working in our booth (for up to 12 hours a day) for all but 3 days over the next 6 weeks, so I apologize in advance if we are not looking as energetic or together as we should. If you are in any of the areas where we are selling, we hope to see you at our booth, even just to say hi and offer any feedback. We LOVE LOVE LOVE when people do this, and sometimes the encouraging words our lovely customers offer help us get through the days this time of year! For our complete retail schedule show, please visit our events page >

Also, if you wish to win free tickets to any of these fabulous events, be sure to join our Facebook Fan Page for your chance to win tickets!

Have you ever wondered what we do with our slightly imperfect bibs? Over the years some have been donated, some have been sold through our sales reps sample sales, but we have never held our own sample sale! We decided now is the time we do this, so if you're not picky about minor flaws such as a tiny hole or imperfection in the leather, or a stitching error (I personally think this adds character), or interesting color combinations (such as red hockey bibs made with fuchsia backs instead of beige by accident), then this event is for you!