Hannah S.

My name is Hannah. I am a 30 year old stay at home mom that majored in Commercial Art and graduated in 2005. I have had a life long dream of having a home studio and creating artwork and selling it but my dream didn’t become a reality until recently. In 2007-2009 I was a preschool art teacher and substitute teacher. My favorite year was in 2008 when I was in charge of art and music class for the 2 to 4 year olds. The director asked if I could put together a school play for the preschoolers that involved the songs they were learning in class. We had a CD that featured every letter of the alphabet with a corresponding animal. (such as A is for Alexander Alligator) We were on a tight budget, this being a church Mothers Day Out program so I had to devise a plan for budget friendly costumes for each child, keeping in mind that they also needed to be TODDLER friendly and comfortable to wear. I put my art degree to work and I brainstormed and came up with a perfect solution; UPCYCLED costumes!!! I went to the local thrift and dollar store where I bought cotton T-Shirts in every color I could find. That means I only spent about 1 dollar so far for each child. I had 26 animals from Alexander Alligator to Zed Zebra. I then went to our ARTS and CRAFTS closet at the Daycare and looked at what resources/supplies I had to make the costumes. I found lots of colored felt pieces and scraps, yarn, cardboard etc…which were all available and all FREE because they had been found in / donated to the craft closet by parents and church members. I also went to the local Dollar store and bought packs of thin headbands to attach the ears to for all of the costume heads. I did find an awesome foam dino head for one dollar that could double as an alligator head. That made my cost go to about 1.50 cents out of pocket per/each costume. The costume idea that I can up with was pretty simple but very effective. Each T-Shirt was the color of the animal if represented with fur feathers or a round belly sewn to the front of the T-Shirt and each costume had a coordinating tail attached to the back. I mad an alligator, a bee, a cow, a donkey, an elephant, a fish, a goat, a horse, an inchworm, a jaguar, a kangaroo, a lion, a monkey, a narwhal, an otter, a penguin, a quail, a rooster, a seal, a tiger, an umbrella bird (letter U), a vulture, a Walrus, a Fox (letter X), a Yak, and a Zebra in a matter of a few weeks. Those early costumes were simple yet effective and extremely cute and budget friendly and were a major hit with the parents. My daughter was letter U so she marched across the stage as Uppity Umbrella Bird and I was so proud of her and all my students as they marched across the stage one at a time to the tune of the Animal Alphabet Song. Being an artist and always wanting an outlet to create something with my hands at home, and being a seamstress and photographer are what naturally evolved into the next major step of my costume making career. Two years ago, I was looking at all of the costumes I had made that were in the day care storage for future Use) and realized that there might be a market for making these T-Shirt based costumes and selling them to moms all over the united states that wanted a Handmade costume for School plays or Halloween but not having the time to make them. I had virtually no money to start up a business, but I did have the costumes I had made for the preschool and I did have an Etsy account and experience selling things online. I also happen to be a freelance photographer and I know how to use a sewing machine, so I decided to take pictures of my daughter wearing the costumes and see if they would sell online on my Etsy Account. At first I sold budget friendly simply costumes for around 30 to 40 dollars each, and as time went on, I was able to save money from the costumes I made and sold and buy more fabric to make even more new costumes and new animals. I advertised that I was willing to design and sew ANY species of animal that the customer could dream up. Customers started emailing me with their ideas and I started drawing sketches of new designs and the costumes became more and more elaborate. The headbands with ears on them evolved into hoods with ears on them…The T-Shirt bodies became 3D sculptures of felt and wire and feathers etc, but no matter how elaborate the costumes got, the idea remained the same. The favorite feature of the costumes is that they come with either headband ears (for kids that tend to not like anything touching their face) or the full felt hoods with ears. The costumes are also long or short sleeved T-Shirts so they are versatile for hot or cold weather. (Floridians have hot halloween weather) The greatest feature of all is that underneath all of that felt is still a simple cotton T-Shirt and the materials are those you could typically find in a craft closet. I have taken hundreds of pictures and now sew a wide variety of species and animals from my home. I am a regular mom and wife but an artist that has a passion to make animal costumes.