HERBERT, Sask. – It was easy for Maria Enns and Cecelia Enns-Schulz to create their company name because New Leaf Handmade Goods is how they describe their business.
“We like to think that the materials we use to create our products are turning over a new leaf,” Enns said.
The sisters-in-law have been operating their handmade craft business from home for almost a year and plan to keep it that way.
Both women hold teacher’s certificates and occasionally do substitute work, but they prefer not to make it a career.
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“We both had babies around the same time and we decided that we didn’t really want to work away from home very much,” Enns said.
A company that makes new notebooks out of old textbooks inspired them to do the same.
“Different kinds of covers we thought would be fun so we bought a binding machine last year. That was our big venture,” Enns said.
The women, who describe themselves as artistically inclined, work on their own and meet monthly to discuss new ideas and things to change. They quickly learned how to divide the work.
Enns-Schulz makes many of the items while Enns organizes, lists and photographs them for the online store.
They find much of their paper, fabric and furniture at second hand stores and garage sales.
They’ve recruited Enn’s grandfather, an avid garage saler, to keep his eyes open.
“I get the best paper from him, old ledgers and newsprint. He comes home with all sorts of strange things. It’s great,” she said.
“It’s important to us that what we create doesn’t require a whole lot of newly manufactured parts. There’s personality, and a few stories attached to our materials.”
Enns said she wouldn’t be doing this business if she and husband Charles were not farming. They rent land in the area and have been grain farming for three years.
“It would be nice to make money. Farming is doing all right now but I don’t know if it will work out every year to make enough income to just live here. I don’t want to work away from home so being able to have something here is important to me.”
She said much of the inspiration for her creations is drawn from nature.
Enns realizes that there are less expensive notebooks available.
“They don’t have the same character and you don’t find interesting things in them. On the back of each notebook we write the story of where we got the paper. If Grandpa found that ledger paper at a garage sale, then we write that in.”
The partners hope to find local outlets to sell their creations but they have also set up web pages on a site called etsy.com.
They launched a page in June to buy and sell handmade, vintage products, one in August for products made from old clothing and necklaces and another in October for photography, original art and cards.
They also offer a blog, do it yourself projects, a newsletter and customer feedback.
Enns said 60 percent of sales are from online shoppers. Most are American but some are also from Australia, Austria and the United Kingdom. Thirty percent of sales are made at trade shows and the remainder from the Grasslands Gallery in Val Marie, Sask.
Enns said they are trying to increase sales through more art gallery gift shops.
Galleries take a 30 percent commission, but the web pages require a lot of work. Shipping costs and dealing with lost packages are headaches they can also do without.
