Buy Irish: Birthday PixiPots

This post was meant to be up last night, but I have an awful cold at the moment and fell asleep at half 8 instead! Colds really take it out of you, so apologies for that.

Last weekend I sat down with the lovely Vanessa over a cup of tea for a chat about her business and to pick up my birthday PixiPot. I had emailed Vanessa after I came across her Facebook page asking if I could order a purple medium pot with birthday decorations on it. I could not have been more delighted when I saw it and to hear all about this young Irish entrepreneur's journey. I have since filled the pot with little presents for my friend and red polka dot tissue paper. The pot was presented in the lovely purple tissue paper but I couldn't wait long enough to take pictures of it!

Tell me a bit about yourself: Well, I'm a teenager, I'm 18 and still in school in 6th year. I do the pots and painting in my spare time. I'm a big fan of playing sports and love them all!

How did you come up with the idea? Its kind of funny. My nanny had a ceramic ornament in her house that would sway form side to side when the light would hit it and it brought a smile to my face, so I thought yeah! thats what I'm going to do. I went out and bought a pot and painted it then I went to the Art&Hobbie shop to buy stickers. It turned out good!

What made you decide to sell them? I set up my business with Foroige which is a youth organisation. They have a programme called NFTE (Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship) that teachers young people business skills and how to set up a business. I'm heavily involved in  Foroige so I took part in this programme. They are really supportive of my business, which is in its third years now.

Thats brilliant, well done for that! Do the pots take hours to make and is it annoying, or do you really still enjoy what your do? I do still enjoy doing them because when I look at them they make me happy and when people buy them they say ''ah there really cute.'' I get pleasure out of making other people happy. But when I have a big craft fair, the pots and stickers would be everywhere over the house thats when it gets a bit stressful!

You say you do craft fairs, whats that all about? I have to book a stall. I had one in the RDS at Christmas time, and Foroige organised that. You go out and trade for a few hours. Before Christmas I had some that I organised myself in Kildare and Tallaght library. I try to grow my business as much as possible and try to sell where ever I can.

So tell me, do you think you'll stick with this?  I'd like to think that id stick with it because it is something thats very useful and can be used for anything, but next year when I go to college and have loads of work to do maybe I might not be able to do them as much as I'd like to.

Does art interest you in general? Are you going to be an artist in college? Eh, no! this is the only artistic thing you can do! I'm not good at art but I'm kind of creative, thats where PixiPots come in.

where did you come up with the name PixiPots? I actually didn't come up with the name, my sister did. We were sitting around the table having dinner thinking of names because I had a product that had no name! I called them magical because you never know what you can put in them.* My sister said pixies are magical, why don't you call them that?

So your sister gets a percentage of the profits for thinking up the name then? No!

I'd like to thank Vanessa for making my lovely pot and for her time answering all my questions! You can find her on her Facebook page PixiPots  to see samples of her designs. She has told me that she ships worldwide and is more then happy to make a pot for any occasion. I know I will be a returning customer, her effort and care for each individual pot clearly shows, making home made and buy Irish a must for me. 

*Personally, I would love to get one for my pens and pencils. I would also love a smaller one for all my make up brushes and hair pins too. It would add some lovely extra eye-catching pieces to my bedroom and bathroom! Its all going on my wish list.