My Shop is Being Targeted – Studio Vlog

It's currently Tuesday, March 31st, a day earlier than I usually start vlogging, but we're going to be gone on the weekend, including Monday. Saturday through Monday to be precise. So, I'm losing one of my big filming days on Monday. Although, I don't know how exciting today is going to be. So far, I've been editing the vlog, the previous vlog. It's exporting right now. I should have done the thumbnail as well, but I'm just I've been wanting to get away from the computer. I've spent way too much time there. Like with all the product design I've done over the last couple weeks, I'm like, "Please get me away from the computer. " So today, I just want to do a little bit of sketchbook doodling. But I'm also trying to see if there's something I can do in the room. Organizational kind of task just to burn some energy before I sit back down cuz I just I'm not ready to sit quite yet. I mean, I could technically sketch while standing, but I don't know about that. You're so cute. Eat it. Task number one. Pet the baby. Okay, I've cleared off the tables behind me and I gave them a good wipe down cuz I think what I'm going to do is build some bundles. I have a bunch of the stationary brown desk mats left. Meanwhile, I'm almost sold out of the colorful ones. I also have a lot of the notebooks because the colorful ones are sold out. These ones are not even close to being sold out. And then there are a decent number of planner pads and notepads. I'm not overly concerned about those, but I want to build a bundle like a little office bundle or something where it's desk mat, mouse pad, notebook, planner pad, notepad, and then have a steep discount on it. Like I'm talking 50% possibly just to move some of that stuff. Oh, I guess the colorful ones are not as sold out as I thought they were. I thought the few I had on my packing station was all I had left, but I technically have that bin of colorful, but still I have about twice that for the brown. And then all the mouse pads here. Like this is stacked back behind as well. So, I need to move some of these. So, the idea is preassemble the smaller items into a big glassine sleeve and then the desk mat can stay separate and just get added separately and just figure out how many of those bundles I'm making and reduce my shop inventory accordingly. And I wasn't going to bother with this quite yet. I was going to do it closer to the shop update, but I'm just going to be so busy with all the other shop prep. It makes sense to do it now. Plus, it's just been on my mind constantly lately. So, let's just do it. And I love building bundles, so I'm going to enjoy this. Now I cleaned off the tables, but I got to clean myself off. I could hear Kiki trilling and I was like, "Oh, is it that woodpecker? Is he back? " Cuz he was pecking on the house this morning. And then I was looking out here. I don't see a bird. Oh, actually, yes, now I do. Yes, there is one. You get out of here. That's a smaller one. Anyway, I noticed this. It looks like a hole. We need to get Midna out there on VO patrol. She killed a VO once before. She'll do it again. Oh my god, I can see two holes. Okay, those are small holes. The flickers do peck at the grass, so it could just be that. Yeah, they're not as big as I thought they were. I think that's the birds. Those flickers are pecking our house. They're pecking our grass. I mean, they're kind of just airrating our lawn for us. Although, those big holes are a little gnarlier.

I realize I can just have all the product up on this table and just kind of grab one bundle's worth at a time, sleeve it up, and then the completed ones can be set over here. And you know what? I might even end up releasing these before the Froggy Shop update just to like get a few extra orders in between now and then since that's my big goal for the year, more consistent orders throughout the year between the big drops. And I could also release the B-grade coloring books. Okay, I grabbed my numbers for my inventory. So, the thing we have the least of is the planner pad. We have 80 left and I'm willing to put all of those into bundles if needed except for maybe 10. Although I don't know if I could sell 80 bundles. Also, while I was looking this up, I noticed something about my store. Um, like I've been getting hit with fraudulent orders recently and the fraudster placed yet another order and so I canled that. But I had to look into a solution to stop this from happening. So, I noticed one day that I got a chargeback and I was like, "What's this about? " And I looked into the order and the person had ordered just the Luna Moth notepad digital download, which is a $2 item. They had ordered that and then filed a chargeback. And I thought that was kind of weird. And I was looking into it and I actually noticed that this same person placed that exact same order multiple times. and is that same Luna moth notepad digital download, but every time they ordered they used a different email address and a different credit card number. And I was looking into it and I think what they're doing is they're testing stolen credit cards with small transactions to see that the credit cards work. And they're using my store to test this. They're probably using multiple people's stores, but I'm at least one of the ones being affected. So, after I got that first charge back, I canceled all the other orders. So hopefully no chargebacks come through for those. Like I've refunded the money to the card. But if the fraudster really is just testing cards, like me canceling these orders isn't going to stop them from doing it because they're getting what they want out of this. They successfully tested the card. And so I was looking into a workaround and there's this Shopify flow app where you can set automations and like build out conditional trees where it's like if this is true then do this action. And so I'm testing out a new thing where my payment method is switched to manual instead of automatic. And Shopify Flow is going to check to see if an order is has a high fraud alert and it will cancel that order before it even takes the payment. So, it authorizes the purchase at first, but will not actually capture the payment until it checks that it's not a high fraud alert. Although, to be fair, the prior orders I got from this person, they were a medium fraud risk. So, this would not capture it, but their latest order was high fraud risk. So, I think that just kind of built up because this person keeps doing it. Um, so the latest one would get captured. Those initial ones wouldn't. But what I'm hoping is that if this person places any more orders, it gets caught by the system and doesn't charge the card at all. And that would deter them from using my website to see if the card works because it's not going to work. Just a new type of fraud I didn't even realize existed. So, what I like to do when I'm building out bundles is count out the exact number of products I need for one product type. Usually, the planner pad or whatever I'm grabbing first as the base. Um, so if I count out like I don't know how many to do. Is 70 too much? Maybe I start with 50. Let's make 50 bundles and kind of see how they sell. I can make more if needed. Uh, so I'll count out 50 planner pads. And then when I run out of planner pads, then I know I have enough bundles. That's 27. Okay, I now have 50 of these. And I've reduced the inventory quantity on everything by 50. I'm not convinced I can sell 50 of these bundles, but maybe at half off they will sell. Also, I wasted time on that fraud thing. So, I don't know if I'm going to get through all the bundles today or not cuz I do want to do some doodling. But

let's just get started. So, if these could fit side by side, that'd be nice. They do. And then the mouse pad can sit on top. And then desk mat added separately into the order. I might want to put the planner pad in first, just cuz it's a tight fit. Are these even going to sit side by side in here, though? Cuz the bag's not gusseted. Alternatively, I bag them this way, but then it requires a double fold over. Okay, that worked a little better. I just switched it so the spine of the book was not at the edge of the paper. It's in the middle where there's more give. And that worked better. It's still snug. Another way I could do this that's a little less flat would be put this down first, but I don't want other stuff digging into the surface of this. So, I could flip it upside down. Um, then we could put this on top. And then this could go like this. It's just a little taller is all, but maybe that would make my job a little easier. The flat one's kind of cuter, but I do feel the notepad bubbling up. So, there's a bump in the middle here. I guess either way could work because there are so many mouse pads. notepads and notebooks. It might be worth it to do a mini bundle that has just those three and that would help move more of them. I've been giving these a once over because these were quality checked by Christian and he did not do a good job. I'm sorry, Christian, but he did a terrible job and so I've been keeping an eye out for B-grades as I pack orders. Um, but just right now I'm looking through them before I pack them into the bundle and I'm coming across so many. Like this is all the B-grades I have so far and I'm I just keep finding tons like almost a 50% B rate for some of these stacks I'm grabbing. So I'm going to go through the remaining stack of these and quality check them. I won't get to that today, but as I continue making bundles, I'll go through them all. Uh and then I'll list a bunch of these B-grades as well. Oh, wait. That one's good. Why am I putting it over there? That's a good one. I'll list a bunch of these B-grades cuz right now the inventory is at zero for the bees, but a bunch more about to be added. I'm kind of annoyed cuz I would have complained to the manufacturer if I had too many B-grades, you know. Also, look at the heavy color difference between these two. That I did notice when I first got them in. Some are warmer toned, some are cooler toned. You know what? I think I'm going to have to put B-grades in the bundle cuz I'm at a point where nearly every single one is a B-grade. I'm not gonna have 50 A grades to put into the bundles. So, I think it's just going to be B-grades. The common flaw is that up here there's this yellow dot. Sometimes it's white and then down at this heart there are these dark dots on it. And it's the same in every single one. I feel like it was an offset printing issue cuz in offset printing they use these big rollers to stamp the image onto the paper. So, if there's some kind of flaw, it'll imprint that on every single one. And I think that's what was happening here. Plus, I'm finding a lot of bent corners. I just feel like maybe these cardboard covers weren't the best choice. And I think having rounded corners, at least on the outer edge, would prevent some corner bending. So, if I ever do soft coil notebooks again, I would go with some other kind of cover. I'm also afraid that some of these more minor B-grades would have slipped past me in the existing bundles. So, let's just say that all the notebooks in the bundles are B-grade. I went back through my Agrade stack. None of them were actually Agrade. I could find those same flaws just to a smaller degree on them. So, I feel like all I have are B-grades left. Again, some very minorly B-grade, but maybe I'll just list all of them as

B-grades on my website. I'm not even going to go through the remaining stack. I'm just going to assume they're all B-grade. Okay, I did get through all 50 bundles. And I do want to do mini bundles, but I'll do that another day. And just a reminder that this is included in the big bundles. So, it's five items total. And the mini bundle is three items. No desk mat, no planner pad, just these three for the mini. And by the time you're watching this vlog, these bundles will be up on the website and available. Grabbed some pita chips. I had a big breakfast and no lunch, which is kind of the opposite of what I normally do. So, need some pas to tide me over to supper time. Hi. She eats crackers sometimes. I don't know why. Maybe she likes the salt. This is a sea salt flavored pow. Let me break that into two pieces for you. There you go. You know what they say, you are what you eat. Kiki's a pa, a pain in the ass. So, I've never been a big user of Instagram. I've had an account for a long time, more than one account, but I just don't open Instagram very often and I don't post to Instagram very often. It's never been one of my main social media platforms, which is a shame because, you know, probably could have had a lot more growth if I had stuck with that. Uh, but recently I moved the icons around on my phone and I put the Instagram icon where the Tik Tok icon used to be. So I have muscle memory of opening a specific app in a specific location. I just moved to the Instagram one there and now I'm opening Instagram all the time. And what's nice about it is I see more actual art there compared to Tik Tok. Like I try to train my Tik Tok algorithm to show me more art, but it always just reverts back to kind of generic funny stuff and cat videos. The cat videos stuck around, which is great because I do want to see those, but I also want to see more art. I just feel like it's hard cuz sometimes I might scroll past some art because maybe I'm not a fan of the style. I just don't want to see that one. But then Tik Tok's like, "Oh, she doesn't want to see art. " And I'm like, "No, I just didn't want to see that art. " And I prefer traditional art speed paints over digital ones. So, I tend to scroll past the digital ones, stuff like that. But yeah, that might be affecting things. Instagram, however, shows me art stuff. And I was watching videos of rendering with ballpoint pen, specifically layering a bunch of colors, and I want to give that a go. I do have these that I got somewhat recently. I've had them for a little while now. There's so many different colors in here. So, I just want to draw some small objects, just random small little things, and just try layering different colors and play around with that. And if you're curious about the pens, they're the Langu brand. We're going with an apple. Something simple. Well, that one didn't turn out how I imagined, but it's still cute. The dark color got a little goopy there. Also, I was imagining a softer texture. I'm pretty sure I've burnished the paper and so it was getting real slick. I wanted kind of a lighter hand, I guess. Not as cute up close. I need a lighter touch like this. But it's hard once you start to layer. Plus, this is going to kill my forearm. It gets much harder as soon as I go to a darker color. This teal color is going diagonal. It's very hard to control. Now going in with a lighter green in the opposite direction. Cute. Well, it's an improvement. Okay, maybe dark color is not more difficult. It's just that layering is difficult. Cuz this is a dark blue. I'm using a very gentle hand and it's going down nicely. My most recent attempt is the best yet. Although that could be because of the colors I'm using, but still exciting. I did a little flower, but the goopies got me. It's fun though. I'm kind of over it now. It's very slow process. Just kidding. I'm going in for more. Putting some green behind it. The little swatches are fine, but as soon as I work on something bigger, I lose my patience and I don't get a nice

smooth blend, but still fun. Okay, it's now Wednesday. Trying a new hairo today. I hate my bangs being pulled off my face cuz I don't like the way my face looks. But I didn't wash my hair today and so I wanted the hair off my face and I don't like wearing my hair up very much. I sometimes do a claw clip, but I usually end up taking it out halfway through the day. I just don't like the feeling of anything on my head. But it's kind of cute from the side. Just don't look at my head straight on. My forehead feels wide. Anyway, plan for today. I want to wrap up more of the bundle stuff. So, get photos for the listings and edit those photos and pack up the mini bundles. But first, my manufacturer for the pens or like my potential manufacturer. They haven't been communicating with me much. They're asking me to send over art files, which is good. We're making progress, but they don't have a template or anything for me, which is kind of annoying. So, what I'm planning on doing is taking a pen template from Vista Print and just use a bigger version of the dimensions they use to have my bases covered and design the pen that way and then do a mockup being like, "Okay, I want this design to be on this color barrel and this design on this color and send that off and see what they say. " I can send over an editable version of the pen design so they could rearrange elements if needed. I just don't know how I feel about relinquishing that kind of control. I would rather have the template and do it myself, but I'm working with what I got. This manufacturer is willing to do the lower order quantity, so I want to do my best to try to move forward with them. So, that'll be step number one. I want to do three pen designs. So, we're going to do a froggy one with the digital froggies. And then I'm undecided about the other two. I'm thinking maybe stationary colorful since that's originally what I wanted on a pen back when I did the stationary collection. And then I'm torn. I feel like Halloween cats would be very popular or Luna moth. But I don't know. Halloween cats would just be kind of like dark. Luna could be cute though on a purple pen cuz the froggy pen would have a green pen base if they'll let me do that. And then stationary would be a pink base. So having a purple base would be cute. Luna pink and Luna green would look great on the purple since that's their existing background color on products. Although I do feel like a digital design would look more crisp. I mean there's digital versions of them of their back designs anyway. I have like a flat digital version of pink and green Luna moth. I don't think I want to take like textured pencil artwork to put on the pen. I want something a little more crisp and bold. But I don't know if I have versions of that inside view. I'd have to make it Halloween campus digital. It would actually look so cute with all the flowers. Like think fall florals but as a pen. Okay. So I'm on Vista Print. I'm going to steal the dimensions for this pen or that one. They're kind of the same. This I think the art area is too tall because the pens I'm looking at have a bigger like a taller grip on them. By the way, I do not recommend this particular pen. I have it and it snaps in half right here. On this screen, it's showing me it's 2. 77 in by 1. 4 in. I'm going to at least double these dimensions just so I have a large file that can be adjusted cuz I don't know if their pen is actually this size. If it needs to be scaled up a little bit, I don't want it to be blurry. So, I'm not going to make it this exact size, but I'm going to maintain that ratio. And now I can just add in my elements. Halloween cats is not in a library. I really should put it in one, but how many new Halloween Cats items am I going to make? I just have a PNG where all the elements are laid out and I can like select and copy and paste. But no convenient library like this. Before I get too far into the design, I'm trying to figure out froggy scale. They're too small. I need to make them bigger. Praise be the Vista Print mockup. I'm trying to avoid stacking same frog pose with same frog pose, but I also need to offset their colors. So, I feel like that's unavoidable with the purple and green frogs. I do have one more yellow frog, but it's this exact frog, just yellow. I moved pink down cuz all my biggest frogs were at the top, which felt topheavy. Um, this does have two similar right next to each other, although one is closed eye. If I swap the two yellows, then we're still going to end up with these two stacked vertically. So, I think there's no way to avoid the sharing of poses. But this kind of feels better. And it makes sense only having the one green frog if the pen is going to be green just in terms of color balance perhaps. Okay, attempt number two. It's a little cropped off in spots like the edges and the middle, but

that's just, you know, this is not the exact dimensions of what I'm doing here, but ah trying to rotate it. Spin it. This is what the design looks like. And I'll send it with the layers so they can nudge things around as needed. Now for stationery, I already have a Photoshop file cuz I wanted to make this pen in the past. What I might do though is scale everything up so we have less negative space. And interestingly, this design is not the same as what's on this pen. It's a bit different. Here's the revised stationary design. And here's Halloween cats. H. Now, the question is, do I do different ink colors in each different pen? I am tempted to do that for this first one. I feel like black is a safe bet. Black in every pen, but it'd be fun if the ink color matched the barrel color for these initial three. So, this one would be black, but then froggy would be green and stationary would be pink. Maybe. This one's kind of cute on the Vista Print pen cuz it matches the black details. Okay, here's the mockup. I'm hoping this is doable with the different colored pens and the grip colors. We'll see what they say. And I am going to move forward with colorful ink for these two. Again, if possible, I'll send this stuff their way. See what they say. I just had lunch and now it's photo time for the desk mat. Got one here. Is it clean enough for the photo? I know I spilled something on it. Yeah, that maybe I can use this half cuz I can't roll out the whole thing in the photography tent anyway. And I need to grab one more planner pad. So cute. I love the stationary collection. I don't know how to arrange this stuff cuz the desk mat and planner pad are so big, but I also don't want everything else covering the desk mat. The permanently set up photography station makes things so much better cuz I hated setting all this stuff up every time. So, I did 50 of the first bundle. I'm going to do 50 of this bundle as well. Okay, that's 50. And then I got a bunch of notebooks over here. And then the mouse pads are down here. This table's really filling up. I think what I'm going to do is pull out cart number two, the one I pull out for shop updates, and put all the bundles on it. Exactly 50. Holy. Okay.

It feels so good seeing it all in the cart there because if I can get rid of that much product, like look at the amount of space that is taking up. If I could get rid of that much product, that'd be so great. I just don't know if I can sell 100 bundles. But at half off, maybe. Okay, I've cleaned up the pictures, made the listings, they are active. So, we have office bundle and mini office bundle and then I priced it out. Um, so it's $64 regular price assuming that this is the notebook is the B-grade pricing and then half off of that. So, $32 Canadian for that bundle and $12. 50 for this bundle. There's a discounted section in my shop where I put all like my B-grades and anything marked down just reduced in price is located here. But you can also find the bundles under the all tab. I realized under all this was pretty low down, so I moved that coloring book up on the list. Although on new, it was at the very top, which it still is. Um, you won't find the bundles in new, but you'll find them under all or discounted or if you go to like stationery in general, it some of these are sorted by newest at the top. And so it'll automatically show at the top or you might have to scroll down. It'll show up in any of the categories where those products are featured. Like I think it's even under books because there's a notebook. Yep. Yep. And then in addition to the main photo, there are just the existing product photos that I already took and edited at a previous date. Oo. Ah, very nice. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So precious. — You know what? what I should have photographed when I had the tent turned on earlier, these. But luckily, it takes 2 seconds to turn all the lights on. So, I'm going to take pictures of these cuz they've just been sitting on the shelf and they're out of stock on the website. I just want to take new photos because they're in new packaging. I really just need one photo that's got the front and the back in the same photo. I mean, this is my main photo. I could have probably added the stock and just deleted the tube photo, but uh yeah, I'll quickly take one new picture and remove the tube. We'll go with a pink background. Okay, new pictures are here. They're back in stock. So, there's this picture. Wow. And then there's a bit more of a closeup. I really do not have much for pins up, but we'll have three new designs coming. And I'm restocking Halloween cats and Luna. Plus, there'll be a Luna moth pink. And Bunkins coming back, so this should flush out a little bit. I need to photograph my B-grade coloring books. I think I'm going to be lazy and just take a picture of them right here. Right now. Just turn them towards the light a little bit. Now, I'm in a bit of an organizational mood. I guess carried over from yesterday when I was starting on the bundles. That itch was part of the organizational itch. I still have the itch. It's not fully scratched. So, I'm going to put away the Radbacks, but I'm also going to restock the packing station cuz a lot of things are pretty sparse. A lot of washi bins, a lot of stuff down here, very sparse. So, I'm going to fill it all up. I guess some of it is sparse because it's sold out. Dainty flowers gone for notepad. And then I do have a few sitting on my shelf here for mailcat, but it's technically sold out. Some of those are probably for held orders, so I got to hang on to them. But dainty flower slot can go. That was part of my original notepad order cuz I'd ordered six designs, a thousand of each. That was the first one to go. And then mail cat shortly after. And I'm not sure what's lowest stock of what's left. Maybe. Why, baby? Am I looking at my inventory shelf? It sure seems that way, but I'm not looking at actual numbers right now. So, I'll take stuff off of those shelves, put it over here, and then do just a little cleanup of the big shelves. You can see how empty some of this washies is getting. And then the dire situation down here. I have two test tube Brad backs left. One is purchased by somebody who has a an order hold and then the other one is just mine to have

smaller bags. Probably the perfect amount for this. Stick a few of the cards at the front so I can reach them easier. I was putting the Radbacks away and I spotted these. And I remember earlier today when I was looking at my inventory, these were sold out, but clearly they're not. So, I'm going to add this inventory to the website. Now for sticky notes, I just need to reach back there and grab another stack and pull it forward. Well, that sunset stack is way back there. Don't worry, I flipped those few around so they're all facing the same way. Even though it doesn't quite look like it, they are. Stationary brown. I think that's the last of what I've got. No spares behind it. Mhm. I have a lot of sticky notes hiding behind the notepads over here. Just so much forest cuddles and shady shamrocks. And I also restocked these two designs last time I ordered. So, I'm stocked up on those four designs with at least two new ones coming that I haven't designed yet, but I know of at least two that I want to do. And now that I'm sitting down here, I'm realizing how low some of these stacks are. Could probably add a few more of each notepad. That's better. I can top up the mouse pads for stationery. Everything else for mouse pads, that's all I've got is what's there. Could stick a few more brown books here. Oh, I'm going to need a new barcode cuz this is for agrade. And I need to top up the sketchbooks. The sketchbook shelf is pretty empty actually. I could open up more of these boxes and get them unloaded up here. Although Halloween Cats is not on this shelf at the moment. It is over here and up there. That's all I have left for cream paper. And then these are all dot grid, both A and B grade. But there are more in some of these boxes. Wherever it says cat 3, that's dot grid. But I wouldn't mind unloading more up here and just quality checking more because not all the Luna moths have been quality checked. Get them checked. Get their stickers on cuz each one gets its own individual sticker. Just so I don't mix up white paper and dot grid. Although right now we're sold out of the white paper for this one. But Strawberry, for example, we do still have the white paper in stock. So I need to be able to tell them apart. Mouse pads and sketchbooks are filled up. Now for the washi. Keep forgetting if there's more Y. That might be it. We'll see. This is the last of my Why Baby Y. Although I'm not opposed to ordering it again in the future. But we'll give it a little break and it'll return someday. Kind of messed up the order. I don't know if I'm putting these back in the right spots. I'm just realizing instead of refilling this bin, I probably should have graduated it to a skinny bin cuz I'm going to need space for the new washi when it comes. I'll do that when the new washi comes, I guess. cuz there will also be new pins and that's where the pins are. I guess the pins could graduate to skinny bins, too. Assuming I have enough. Looks like I only have the one. So, not much. I do have these, but they don't go as deep. Okay, for stickers, I did top them up recently, so there's not much I could

add, but I could stick a few in there. There's no more of this. Um, this bookmark, that's the last of it. These bags were recently restocked, so they're looking not too bad. I can refill my pencil pouches. All right, it's as stocked as it's going to get. Ooh, that's the last of the B-grade pencil pouches, by the way. Ooh, I can pull these back forward, I guess. Sticker bins always look a little empty. That's just all I have left for all my stickers. And then this, y'all, I did not end up topping off these. They're good enough. So, that's how it's looking. Now, I want to do a bit of shelf tidying. It's a little chaotic. Just messy. Mhm. Holy notepads gone right here. Whoa. I'm not used to having all this notepad real estate. Um, yeah. Just, you know, clean things up, merge piles together. tie up these bags, shove them back under there. Maybe move some of this so that I can unbox more sketchbooks. I don't think I'll have time to get to unboxing any today, but you know, clear this off. Actually, I have one more thing to do with the packing station. I'm going to take this existing stationary pin bin, transfer these pins into this bin, cuz that seems the easier way to do it instead of trying to move a bunch of them into this bin. And I can transfer this over here. I'm just trying to clear out a bit of space over here, which is where those pins were sitting, so I can move the spare sticker sheets over here. Okay, I could fit six designs here. I crammed Halloween cats into the packing station, and then winter buns. There was just enough room for that. And that cleared up all this space. And the rest of the stuff is gone. I moved the glassing box up there and these big glassine sleeves. And the rads are right here. I forgot I still had some of this tulip tape. I should have used that up. Might have to revert back to this for a little bit before going back to the stationery tape. I'll put it by the packing station. All right, I think I'm done with this area. I tucked in the bags and then I moved some notepads over cuz a lot of these Forest Cuddles ones were up here, but there are no longer any up there. And that's all I have left for the notebooks up there, which is exciting. Lots of cleared out space. I'm going to leave the brown notepads where they are for now cuz once I get in new notepad stock, I can decide what's going there. I might want those to stay there, but I could consolidate the notepads into two piles instead of three. Little ducky planner pad almost gone. finally cuz I way overordered on those. I had ordered a thousand and after ducky collection I stopped ordering a thousand of certain products especially planner pads. I cannot sell 1,000 planner pads. Now tackling this section. This section could use a little work as well. And then over here, these are just laying here because they used to be up on one of these organizers, but I emptied out that organizer and gave it to Christian for DTF transfers. So, I don't know what I'm doing with this stuff. I know. Throw it up here for now. I actually put it on this side where the tea set was. I felt like that made sense, but it's missing its other stuff cuz on top of here, I've got these because they're strawberries. These are meant to go with my raspberry jam. And all these DTF transfers. I think I'm going to throw them out. I don't know if they're any good anymore. Like, do they have a set shelf life? The back does feel different. I don't trust it. I wouldn't feel comfortable selling these to people. So, I'll take them all out. And then these can go at my packing station and be used for packing orders. The internet's telling me 12 months, so we're well past that, which is a shame. These are so cute. Oh, buddy. I'm emptying out the last package of winter bun washi tape into this bin. I don't know if it's all going to fit, but that's the last of the flat packed ones. Yes, we hit the same milestone with Sassy Santa recently. That's the last of it. And that's exciting. So, I had 2,000 of these because the manufacturer accidentally made it twice and so I purchased the extras. And then this same thing, but I had a thousand total.

And here's the final look at this area. The washi I kind of just stacked it. I would maybe eventually like to move it down here, but for now it's going to chill and I should refill that crank bin, but yeah, that's a future job. This area is just mostly empty. I did put these two items here. And then here's how this area is looking. And I just put this here for now cuz I want this to land it side, not upright. But I need to store it somewhere else. Just not on these shelves at all. These are all my Animal Crossing amiibo cards. But this is where they live for now. And I forgot I had all these bags here. These are the ones I put orders into at the end of the day. And I forgot that these were here cuz I completely ran out of these and was scrambling for any kind of bag to put orders in for a couple pickups. But these were just sitting here the whole time. I could have been using them. It's now Thursday and it's my last day. I can film before leaving for the weekend. I am here tomorrow, but tomorrow's game stream day. I've spent most of my day so far editing. I forgot to do some editing yesterday morning, so I was a bit behind and I'm still not fully caught up on the edit. It doesn't all have to get done today, though. But I might return to it. I had to step away so I could pack orders. Although, I did have a decent chunk of editing time this morning cuz I woke up really early. I woke up at 5:30 from a stress dream and then just couldn't fall back asleep. And I also kind of didn't want to fall back asleep cuz I knew the dream would resume. So, I was just awake and then was up and at it earlier than normal. So, got a lot of editing done. Um, but now in terms of orders, I'm in a bit of a pickle once again. So, on Monday, uh, it wouldn't let me generate labels for packages. It wouldn't even generate like a shipping rate or anything. Some kind of weird glitch. And that happened like it started midpacking. So, I had three orders that couldn't go out that day. And I was like, "Oh, I'll just send them out on Thursday. " Well, it's Thursday and I went to create the labels for those three packages and pack some new orders. But I once again cannot make labels. Well, that's not true. I can make labels, but I can only ship them at full retail price, which is a problem because I have a really good discount, especially for US and international, and that discount is not showing up. So, I'm trying to send a package internationally, and it wants to charge me $65. A package this heavy would normally cost maybe 35 to send internationally, but it's charging 65. And I'm upset because those are the packages that I was supposed to send out on Monday. Like, they've already been delayed. I don't want to delay them anymore. So, I'm tempted to buy labels for just those three and those can be part of today's mail pickup and I'll just eat the cost difference, you know, and then the rest of the orders that have come in since I can send out next week, not Monday cuz it's the holiday, but I guess Tuesday, assuming the issue is fixed by then, cuz I called Canada Post being like my discount is not applying and they said it's like across the board this is an issue with people and it started yesterday. So now I'm mad that I didn't like print out these three labels a couple days early cuz if I had done that either Monday night or like Tuesday, I could have printed off the labels as normal at least for those three, you know. Um but yeah, I think I just will buy the labels at the expensive price, eat the cost so I can get those out and save the rest for next week. What's annoying though is there was zero communication from Canada Post and there still isn't. not even like a banner at the top of their website saying we're experiencing issues. Like there was no information anywhere. I had to call in and I asked them to if they're going to like notify us when the problems fixed and he doesn't know. Um he was saying he wished at least there was something on the website, but Canada Post has not been good at communicating what's going on. So I'll just wait. I guess I'll just check in the next time I go to pack orders. See if the rates are fixed. Like I'm leaving for the weekend. And the earliest I can check is Tuesday. So, it is what it is, I suppose. I mean, I'm still getting these orders out within a week of when the person placed the order. So, that's not too bad. Oh, also, when I called Canada Post, I could hear my own voice echoing back to me really loud. And so, I immediately brought that up and the guy's like, "Yeah, a lot of people have been telling me that. " And I'm like, "Okay. " There's just like this insane echo. And

so, it was hard for me to even speak. I kept pausing mids sentence because I'm talking over myself and it was really confusing, but his voice came through without echo. Long story short, Canada Post needs to get their together. You know what? You can buy shipping labels through ShipStation from Canada Post that are slightly discounted. So maybe I should try purchasing them that way instead of through my account. So it's showing 64. 68 if I ship through my own account, but 57. 80 80 through Ship Station's account. So clearly their rates have not been affected by this issue. The guy on the phone said it affected like 80% of their accounts or something, which is nuts. So I'm going to buy the label this way. Save a few books. You know, insufficient wallet funds. Don't make me load money. It doesn't even let me spend my loaded money. — There's $25 locked into my balance. I can't spend that 25 and I can't add any more to that. And that's what I need to use to pay for the ship station labels. So, I think I'm just gonna have to pay the full price on my account, the $65, because that just gets charged to my Canada Post account later. I guess $65 it is. This one's going to the US. And at this weight, it should cost $14 to ship, but it's actually costing 25. The third one also going to the US. They qualified for free shipping, so I don't know how much they would have been charged. Um, but it's costing 28. 50 to ship. So, the original shipping price was probably meant to be like 1617. Oh my gosh. Without the discount, this package to Australia would cost $86. 15. And that's assuming this is accurate. I suspect it doesn't have the box weight added. So, for over 2 kilos, it's going to be even more. It would be $11167. I need my discount back. Now, I've had problems where the discount is not applying at checkout for what customers see, but I've never had the issue where I don't get the discount when I go to purchase the labels. So, it's different. All right, it's now Tuesday. The weekend has passed. The Easter weekend went well. Just a quick trip to visit some family. A highlight though of the trip would be that uh Christian's mom made little goodie bags for my nieces and in each goodie bag was a copy of my coloring book and so I got to sit with my nieces and color in some pages in the coloring book together. So yeah, that was a highlight of the weekend. It was so cute. Now before I end off the vlog, I do have some updates regarding the Canada Post issues, regarding the fraud, regarding some products. So, first off, the Canada Post issues, they're thankfully fixed so I could send out packages at the normal rate that I'm supposed to be paying. So, I packed up a bunch of orders today and those are going to be picked up soon. Now, an update with the fraud situation. So, I talked about how I set up a workflow where it will check to see if an order is a high fraud risk, and if so, it will cancel the order and will not capture the payment at all. Uh, well, I got to see it in action because the fraudster placed two more orders. So, the first one was marked as medium risk and therefore did go through. So, I had to cancel that order and refund. But then the second order was flagged as high risk and therefore payment was not captured and the order was automatically cancelled. So, that's good to know that the system is working. Plus, I've had normal orders come through. So, that's good cuz my fear was that I didn't have something set up correctly and that no one would be able to check out. But, it was all working fine. The good orders were coming through. It stopped a fraudulent order. But, one fraudulent order did still get through. So, I've updated the workflow so that it's checking to see if it's low fraud risk. And if it's low, then it'll let the order go through, but if it's medium or high, it will not let the order go through. So, a bit more of a strict threshold than I had before. And I just have to because this person keeps hitting up my store. And I have noticed in the past that those medium fraud risk orders often do end up being fraud. It's rare for those to not actually be fraud. So, I'm doing that. It might catch a few friendly orders here and there, but it's only going to do that if you're doing something suspicious with like the billing address of your car not matching correctly or not being able to be verified, things like that it's looking for and some other factors. But I think this will just save a lot of headaches on my end and on the end of the people whose cards are stolen. Like if what I suspect is true and that they're testing these cards on my website to see if they work. Like assuming they're stolen cards that are being tested to see if they work, no charges will be on these people's cards. So that helps them. And maybe it'll deter the thief from trying

it on someone else's website. I don't know. Maybe they do test multiple websites. I don't know their process, but at least hopefully saves the card holder some headache and saves me some headache cuz then I don't get hit with the chargebacks. Because if someone issues a chargeback, they get the all their money back. Plus, I have to pay $15 US on top of it just out of pocket as like a penalty for the chargeback. So, long story short, the fraud filter is working, but I'm making it more strict. And that is the Shopify Flow app. If anyone is curious and wants to have it on their shop, it's free, at least for the features I'm using. I don't have to pay anything. And now on to product updates. So today I was designing sticky notes and I've emailed a manufacturer to get those made. A different manufacturer than I usually use. So in the past I was using sticky notes plus. They're based in Ontario, but they outsource the sticky notes to the US cuz they're like official Post-it brand ones. And then I'm now trying a different company which I assume also outsources. I think they're just registered to be like an authorized seller of the sticky notes. I don't know. Um, but it's called Burke Group. Yes, Burke Group. B U R K E. And uh though their price seems even better than Sticky Notes Plus, at least for what they have listed on their website. I'm still awaiting my quote, but I'm going to give them a try, see how it all goes. I forgot to talk about the actual sticky note art. So, I wanted bow frog to be a sticky note. So, I did that, the digital bow frog. And I added a ribbon around the edges and some of the paint blobs. And originally, I thought it would just be pink and purple, but I felt like it needed a little bit more. And I wanted more paint blobs, but not just reusing the same ones. So, I added in some yellow blobs, and I think it looks really cool. And then I wanted a Froggy Chaos notepad. So, that's what this one looks like. It ended up being a border design. Just slightly heavier at the bottom than it is on the other edges, but other than that, it's kind of just your standard border sticky note, but so cute. And then I ended up doing a third one, which wasn't originally on the list, but I had to do the gothic froggies, the one that's kind of just Halloweeny. I had to do that as a sticky note as well, cuz we have it as the washi. It's not going to be a notepad, but I figured why not a sticky note. So, this is the design I came up with for that. And for all of these, I did put the Bailey J logo on the front. So, I don't have to stamp the backs of these. It'll just save me some work. Although, depending on the design in the future, there might be times I don't want to put the BJ logo on the front and will still stamp. But for these designs anyway, I'm not going to have to stamp them. And I also ordered all the notepads. I sent off the art again, waiting for the quote and payment link and what have you, but the orders are sent off and it's in the works and I'm about to order all the prints for the shop update. Um, and then there's not a whole lot left after that. They'll be like bookmarks, the sticker sheets and diecut stickers and then possibly the DTF zips I keep talking about. I'm looking into those last cuz that's been a maybe item this whole time. Uh, so we'll see. And I just need to order clothing blanks in general cuz a lot of sweatshirts have been sold out cuz I haven't restocked in so long other than the zips. And also could use some more t-shirt blanks. I did restock them recently, but certain sizes just go as soon as you restock. And so it's like, okay, you never know which sizes are popular that week. So I'll have to order more blanks, too. Oh, the pens. There was negative news on the pens. So, the manufacturer I've been talking with over the last couple weeks, they've been really spotty with communication. Like, I only hear from them every few days and like they couldn't get me any info at first. Um, but then they were asking for art, but they didn't have a template, so I kind of made my own thing to send to them and they were like, "Um, no, we can't make that. " And they said they can't do any custom pens actually, which is weird because like then why were they asking me for art if they can't do the customs at all? Cuz they also were telling me like, "Oh, it's a higher order quantity, like a higher minimum, like 3,000 per design. " And I was like, "Okay, I'll do 3,000 per design. " And then they were like, "Actually, we can't do the custom ones. " I was like, "Okay, I think they just don't want to do these pens. " Or maybe it's true that they can't make that particular style of pen. But basically, I got shut down and I was like, "Okay, um, that's a dead end. " So, what I was just looking into today is the possibility of doing UV DTF transfers on pens. Kind of like how people do cup wraps, you can do pen wraps. Like, I didn't know this was a thing. I had to Google it. I was like, "Can you put UV DTF transfers on pens? " Yes, people do that. And so then I was trying to hunt down a pen in a style that I like cuz I

do still love the idea of something with a transparent barrel. This is just a Papermate kind of thing. And ideally also a rubber grip and then the design goes up here. That would be more labor on our end to make the pen art, like put the pen art on it, but Christian could do that. like I can make some and like figure it all out and then teach him how to do it. And even maybe some days I'm helping him do all the pens cuz it'll take a while. But it'd be so nice if I could just bulk order different pen barrel colors and then put the transfers on later. Like I don't know, that could be a good way to avoid those super high order minimums that come with fancy pens. I mean, if I did other pen printing styles, I'm sure I could get a lowerq, but it's just been a thing. Um, I'm just trying to find a way to make a nice cute transparent barrel with rubber grip work for a design. And I feel like UV DTF might be the solution to that. So, I'm struggling to find pens like this though that are plain and uh have a decent size space, no branding on it. And so, I've reached out to a manufacturer that has ones I like, but they have acrylic like clip-on acrylic images on them. And so I'm asking if I can buy them without the acrylic, just plain, no customization in bulk, and see what colors they offer. See what they say, cuz they do have some colors in their photos. And they're really cute colors, too. So hopefully it works out. Um, but also the acrylic clipons could be something cute to do in the future, like an interchangeable acrylic clipon. I could sell them alone without the pen, and then you can just swap out which little picture is on your pen. I don't know. Maybe, maybe someday. We'll see if I can even get these pens to begin with, like the plain ones. Will they let me have them plain? I don't know. Cuz the ones you can get with the clip-on acrylic charm, there's no barrel printing. So, I'd have to add the barrel printing myself. I need to wait till I have the pens in hand before I can, you know, measure out how big the DTF transfer would have to be, order some test transfers, see if it works, then order the bulk transfers. And so hopefully this process doesn't take too long, otherwise it's going to have to be released later in the year outside of the Froggy collection update. So yeah, those were the updates on the products. And now that I'm mostly caught up on product design, I want to get back to the dining room upstairs. I want to paint it next. So I ordered some roller replacements and I ordered more tape. They're both here and I want to go out and get the paint this week and start painting. So stay tuned for the next vlog to see some of that. And that's all I have for you for this vlog. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Hey guys, welcome to a new vlog. It is currently Wednesday, March 25th.