Meet Elizabeth from Little Elephant Crafts

As many of you know, EtsyBABY team members are extremely talented. We wanted to take a peek at the person behind the creativity. All throughout March, we will be interviewing shop owners, to get a glimpse of the designer behind those adorable baby products!

Meet Elizabeth from Little Elephant Crafts

Custom "Bun in the Oven" Pregnancy Announcements,
Baby Shower Invitations, Gender Reveals - Hand Sculpted $7

What inspired you to begin a shop featuring your own designs?
Two years ago I was working three jobs, longing to have a baby with my husband, and we were struggling financially to make ends meet as a newly married couple - I was frazzled and burnt out from working too hard.
One of my favorite pastimes was sketching out creative and unusual ideas for pregnancy announcements (for the time when we'd someday get to break the happy news to our families). As I came up with more and more beautiful and unusual ideas, I started thinking, "These are pretty adorable! I'll bet I could sell these on Etsy!"
After product research, many prototypes, photo shoots, technical logistics, and scrounging enough money together to get things started, Little Elephant Crafts was born right after Mother's Day in 2012! Since then, the past two years have been a whirlwind and a blessing, with Little Elephant Crafts thriving beyond my modest hopes for it.



How long have you been practicing your art/craft?
From my earliest years, I was a "crafter" - ever since I was a child making little play dough worlds for my Poly Pockets, and folding colorful paper houses for the brown rabbits that ran wild in the Austrian hills behind my family's house in a small town called Gaming.
My specific craft related to my Etsy products began two years ago with the launching of my shop, Little Elephant Crafts, and tied in to a lifetime of loving art and unusual tactile creations.

Custom Globe Adoption Announcements &
Baby Shower Invitations - Open and Reveal $10

What training have you had or are you self-taught?
I am self-taught, and always enjoy improving my skills through many many hours of practice. Experimentation and hands-on learning have been my best teachers!

What is your favorite material to craft with?
I love crafting with organic and tactile materials - eggs, moss, clay, paints, ribbons, etc. The feel of a little quail egg resting in my hand is so precious, and makes eggs my very favorite material to work with.

What has been the hardest aspect of creating a hobby into a business?
At first things begin small, and you think, "I can handle this order load, no problem!" and then as things grow you realize you need more space, more inventory, tax paperwork, a business bank account, business license registrations, and you stop and realize, "Wow, I am a legitimate business now, not just a hobby!" The most difficult thing for me was learning all of the business and legal aspects to running my shop that I had never dealt with before. It was an invigorating and steep learning curve that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Custom Stork Feather Pregnancy Announcements,
Baby Shower Invitations & Gender Reveals $5

Any advice for other Etsy sellers?
Create products that YOU love and find interesting - you'll be spending countless hours working on them, so make products that you care about.
For example, I made pregnancy announcements with organic materials because I LOVE babies, expectant mommies, family surprises, and hands-on crafting with beautiful natural items. I still love creating my products, two years later, after hundreds of hours spent with them, because I built a shop around something I was passionate about.

What do you enjoy doing in your off time? I adore photography, and have recently turned my photography hobby into a business as well (elizabethhudecphotography.com) Besides portrait photography, I love creating whimsical story photo shoots with hand-sewn costumes and hand-crafted props.
I majored in film production at George Fox University and a few years later went back to teach production design in the same film department, so creating sets, scenes, costumes, and special effects makeup is one of my biggest free-time passions and I spend much of my free time dreaming up my next big photo shoot.

Describe a typical day in your life.

Quail Egg Custom Pregnancy Announcements
& Baby Shower Invitations - Crack and Reveal $7

My typical day consists of communicating with customers, working in Photoshop, cleaning eggs, creating nests, sculpting little "Bun in the Oven" loaves, stamping, snipping, sorting, folding, stuffing, printing, labeling, mailing, managing inventory, and absolutely loving every minute of it all. I get to pull up my favorite TV show on my laptop and work on order production from most of the day. Then of course there's regular life - the cooking, the laundry, the cleaning, the errands here there and everywhere, and keeping "the factory" (as we affectionately call my office) and the house in order. It's a beautiful, busy little life, and I am grateful every day to live it!

Where can we find your products online?
Currently,  I sell exclusively through Etsy at Little Elephant Crafts