Mom of the Month December 2008 I am The Ornament Girl®! Each of my seasonal ornaments is handcrafted by meticulously layering many tiny pieces of ribbon and fabric, resulting in the stunning finished piece. Many of my quilted ball ornaments are embellished with glitter, and will add a dazzling touch to your holiday decor...these ornaments absolutely sparkle under the lights of the Christmas tree! They also make fabulous holiday decorations, arranged in a basket or bowl as an elegant centerpiece, and even hanging in a window. No matter what your style, these handcrafted ornaments are sure to become cherished holiday heirlooms.

What do you sell?

I sell handmade quilted Christmas ornaments, based on an old-fashioned technique that my mother taught my sister and I when I was about 14 or 15. She had learned the basic technique at a small demonstration at a local craft store, and came home with bags of supplies...the three of us sat around the kitchen table all afternoon and tried to make them. By the time Christmas came around that year, we had a nice little collection.

I didn't really pick it up again until the first Christmas after I got married...my husband and I barely owned a single Christmas decoration. One day, I was poking around in a Dollar Store, and found some cheap Christmas ribbon. It wasn't even very pretty...but it was the closest thing to fabric that I could find (or afford) at the time. I went ahead and bought a couple of rolls, and went home and attempted to make a few ornaments with it. From then on, I made some every year, which I mostly gave away as gifts. It became a Christmas tradition for me.

How did your business get started?

About four years ago, in need of a little extra Christmas money, I decided to put a few ornaments up for auction on ebay to see if they would sell. My first round of auctions received almost no traffic at all, and not a single bid. I was disappointed, but decided to give it one more try. The second time around, every ornament not only sold, but received multiple bids. I continued auctioning as many ornaments as I could make until Christmas, with 100% success, and even opened an ebay store. What started out as a short-term way to make a little bit of extra money, turned out to be the unexpected beginning of a business.

However, after the holidays had passed, I was once again back to almost no sales, and I realized that I faced several difficult issues...how could I sell a seasonal item year round? Not only that, how could I market a product that most people didn't even know existed? I began reading and researching everything I could find about selling online, and soon figured out that there would be further possibility for success if I branched out from ebay, and opened my own webstore. I found www.wahmshoppes.com, and although I knew virtually nothing about running a website at the time, I decided to go for it. I continued trying to teach myself everything I could about running an online business, and for everything I learned, I realized there were ten more things I still needed to learn. It has been an ongoing and never-ending process.

How do you balance work with being a stay at home mom?

I will admit, sometimes I DON'T think I can balance it all! Being a mom with two young kids at home with me, it is hard to maintain an average working day, but I do try and keep a loose schedule for myself...otherwise I just couldn't accomplish everything that I need to. My kids have gotten pretty used to the fact that I have to make ornaments all the time, and they do very well with it. I keep a mini sewing basket with supplies, and I end up carrying it just about everywhere with me, so that if I have an extra minute, I can work on an ornament. I find myself making ornaments while I have my kids outside to play, while I am waiting at the bus stop for my son to come home from school, and even while I am cooking dinner. I also find myself staying up really late many nights working on the other aspects of running the business, like shipping and upkeeping my website.

What advice would you give to other mom's who are just getting started with their at-home business? What do you consider to be success?

I think that success is when you find something you love doing so much, that money is not the motivation behind doing it. It's when you realize that your work is actually a path to accomplishments that you may not have thought possible at first. My personal success has been to begin receiveing national and international recognition, and I have recently been featured in several magazines and newspapers in the United States and Australia.

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