bye bye, little muffintop!

so i finally did it - in the wee hours of the morning, my sweet little muffintopdesigns shop was renamed.  i am now "the lovely smith".  while i've been trying on that name for a while and it definitely is the ONE, i am very sad to be saying goodbye to the muffintop.  new business cards have been ordered, a new etsy banner uploaded, a heartsy deal on deck and now i'm looking at revamping my packaging.  i have kept my 'colours' - it was my intention to maintain my current palette, knowing that i was eventually going to take the plunge, and hopefully it will help with the transition.  i am going to keep my blog and twitter accounts the way they are, just because i'm not ready to completely let go yet.  and really, the "muffintop" is still a part of me.

this has been a long time coming.  i think there will be a period of mourning, but i am still quite excited.  i think that moving in this direction will free me to think a little more outside the box - and better describe what i do now.  the lovely julie already refers to me as TLS - so funny but yet it was kind of the push that i needed to click the button to change my name on etsy.

thanks, little muffintop.  i will always love you!  (now i have to re-register my business name when ServiceOntario opens.  crap, i hope no one has taken it yet...)

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still thinking about the name change...

 i am still thinking about renaming my shop.  even though i am horribly relucant to let go of the "muffintop" (the one i possess in real life, not so much, sigh!) i really do feel like i should.  i know that julie and L doth protest much, and M likes the muffin stamp i designed ages ago and still use on my packaging, but i think that "jewelry by muffin top designs" does not look professional as a byline on the fashion pages of InStyle.  not that i'd ever get there, but a girl can dream, can't she?  i also seem to get a lot of web traffic to my blog and my shop by people searching for things like "muffin top jewelry" or "muffin top shop".  can i give that up?  i don't know.

anyhow, the latest name i am enamored with is "TheLovelySmith".  (i wiki-ed the definition of "smith" - here it is.)  i can envision a handcrafted wooden sign hanging outside a small, thatched roof studio cottage in the forest and me hammering over an open flame.  kind of dorky and sappy, huh?  i do kind of feel badly referring to myself as "lovely" (self-esteem is not my strong point, obviously) but it just FITS for some reason.  i don't know if i can parlay the muffin into a lovely smith, but maybe this is what i've been looking for?

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omg. the reality of changing my name.

so today, etsy rolled out to shop owners the ability to change your shop name.  i can do it, but only once.  and i am still debating with myself whether or not to change it.  i am nostalgic about the muffin top legacy (ha ha ha) and am reluctant to lose all the marketing that i have done over the past 4+ years.  however, i feel that "muffintop" does not truly represent the work that i do now and really have been seriously throwing around ideas for names. 

they are as follows:

solder & flux
solder & burn
metallique
tumbled
rock silver hammer
pyrograph (it means writing with fire - how cool! but is it too close to pyromaniac?)
sterling & solder
torch & burn (i don't know why i like names with "&" in it but i do and this is my shop)
evolved/evolve/evolutionary (no, the words individually, not with the slashes in between)
or just my last name - rainville

this "short list" is so not a short list.  i'm torn.  this is a once in a lifetime change and i don't want to make a misstep.  because i've made quite a few in my lifetime, LOL.  sigh.

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changing my name.

no, not my REAL name - but my etsy shop name.  for a while now, i've been kicking around the idea of renaming my store.  while sweet and cute, "muffintopdesigns" probably fit me when i was making bright beaded jewelry and sewing sock monkeys, but, alas, i no longer do that.  (seriously, i barely ever touch my beads anymore.  sigh.)  one of the biggest reasons that i haven't done that - and honestly, probably the ONLY one - is because i didn't want to have to give up my sales stats and feedback to start a brand new shop, which was the only way i would have been able to do it before.  (and admittedly, i think it's kind of neat that people refer to me as "muffin".)

but now, etsy has made it possible for me to change my shop name, while redirecting my old URL to my storefront.  it's all outlined in this article here, and i'm kind of excited.   (sidenote - of course i just ordered 500 business cards from vistaprint, isn't that always the way it goes?) so i have about a week to think about whether or not i want to change things up, or let them remain the same. 

not that i'm a lemming, but i would love your honest feedback about whether or not a name change would be good.  i'm really torn and could use some insight.  i would be changing it to some variant of my real name or something along the lines of "solder & flux designs" (as long as it isn't taken). 

anyways.  thoughts?

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