Introducing Rainbows and Daydreams

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My teenage daughter recently lost her part-time job due to the covid-19 pandemic, as she worked in the hospitality sector. So she decided to set up an online, handmade gift shop called Rainbows and Daydreams selling bespoke wooden home décor gifts, handmade resin keyrings and clay hearts. As she is still only 17 and studying for her A-Levels next summer, I have been roped in to help her - I mainly order in stock from suppliers, keep track of orders, accounts etc while she creates the items. We have a Facebook and Instagram page and an online Etsy store and we are planning on setting up a website in the next few weeks. The shop only launched last month and we have already had over 25 orders, so it is going well for being such a small and new business.  

Starting a business from scratch has been a learning curve for us both but I am proud of how well her little business is doing. At the moment Rainbows and Daydreams just has a small product range of bedroom door signs, family surname signs, photo jigsaw gifts (currently running a giveaway to win one over on Facebook), floral initial keyrings, personalised rainbow shelfie stackers and a few Christmas items. We have some more wooden personalised Christmas items on order and we hope to expand our ranges over the next few months. Eventually we want to add more products specialising in clay heart wedding place settings (I made them for my own wedding last year and they went down a storm), wooden home décor and gift items etc. 

As we sell on Etsy (we have only had 2 sales so far but it's a start) we have been looking at postal boxes  as we want items to arrive nicely packaged and safely. While searching online we came across Lil Packaging, who sell eco-friendly packaging which is certified plastic-free. The packaging is made from sustainable and compostable kraft cardboard and the printing is with vegetable based inks. I think that using sustainable and plastic free packaging is so important as often you find parcels are full of plastic wrappings which is so wasteful. I also think the fact we sell handmade wooden items with no plastic involved it makes sense for us to uses plastic-free sustainable packaging.

Running a business alongside my teenage daughter has been challenging at times as we have had a few clashes (she is at the age where she is fiercely independent and thinks she knows best). But it has also been really nice spending extra time with her, watching her do something she loves and seeing her designs come to life. I am very proud of her. 

We have lots of plans for Rainbows and Daydreams over the next year and hopefully we will be able to grow the business and turn it into something special, as I truly believe it has the potential to be wonderful. 

If you are looking for any home decor or wooden Christmas items then  please give our social media pages a like, we can be found on Facebook  and Instagram  we have lots of lovely Christmas items being added in the next few weeks including family surname baubles, elf ID cards, Santa driving licenses, reindeer lost tag, memorial baubles, stocking holders, Christmas eve boxes, fillable shapes and gaming controller holders as well as a couple of cute gift ideas and some festive bundle sets.