The series that started it all, "sweetie gummy"~
Originally, I made a dress for myself from some fabric with conversation hearts on it. After posting my dress on social media, a lot of people started asking me if I could make more and sell it.
At the time I had to put a pause on my job as a nail tech due to pandemic lockdowns. So when I saw that there were people interested in my sewing, I thought maybe I could take a few orders here and there.Â
Unfortunately, when I went back to try to source more of the fabric I learned it was no longer being produced! And that gave me the idea of making my own version of conversation hearts print... So I started drawing the motifs on my iPad. I'm not too sure what happened along the way, but eventually I ended up adding gummy bears to it? Looking back on it now, the design was really rushed and I am not very proud of it.
I took inspiration from Angelic Pretty's Sugar Hearts series, and I knew I wanted my fabric to be printed on chiffon. I had the fabric printed, and once it arrived I started sewing the samples.
The dress on the left is the original dress I released in 2020, and the dress on the right is a OOAK I made later in 2022. I think you can definitely see an improvement in skill hahah...
I was really ambitious with the sweetie gummy release. I decided to also make necklace, rings, wristcuffs, mask, hairclips, and matching barrettes. And priced very low. I made all of that because I was expecting maybe 5 customers at best... Who knew I would end up getting over 100 orders on the first day and having to close the store once we got to 50 dress orders!
The whole process took me over 1.5 years to complete. Looking back I don't think it was a good financial decision at all either, because I felt too scared to sell new products if I didn't finish fulfilling all the dress orders. So I basically didn't really earn any money during this time.
I am still super grateful to every one who waited for their dresses. To this day, I still get some customers asking me to rerelease it.
Even though this series got some harsh criticism in some communities, it remains special to me as it reminded me the passion I had for designing. That's why I am considering revamping this series. I want to re-design the print and make a more polished, well thought out collection someday. ^__^