Getting ready for Movember 2013!

2 WEEKS TO GO EVERYONE!

2 weeks until the little spikes of hair start to peek through.

2 weeks until a dark shadow starts to appear on our friends', husbands', brothers' upper lip.

2 weeks until men start to compare how much facial hair they can grow.

2 weeks until the funny wax, the mini combs and the darker hair dye comes out to play.

2 weeks until MOVEMBER everybody!

This is one of my favourite times of the year... When everything MO comes to life!  Mo cookies, mo cakes, mo t-shirts, mo accessories and oh yeah - the real thing as well, all those men walking along the street with their little moustaches.  I love seeing and knowing those people participating in Movember!

And why wouldn't you?  It is SUCH a worthwhile cause and has become really popular in recent years!  This year will be the 3rd year my husband has grown a moustache for Movember and the 2nd year I have officially been a Mo-Sista also collecting donations and doing my bit to support him in his growing!

Movember is a moustache growing charity held annually each November to raise awareness and funds for many aspects of men's health, in particular about prostate cancer.

Last year I started my Etsy store selling Moustaches for Movember... I wanted to be able to wear a moustache as well as just watching my husband's grow :)  And so, my hair clip and jacket pin moustaches were born!  Here's the mini post I wrote about last year's collection of MOs!

This year I have got to work again, making new moustaches in a variety of new and exciting colours.  On Thursday I sat down FINALLY to do some sewing.  I haven't used my sewing machine all Summer and I could hear it crying for me.... I have missed it but I'm really glad I got it out and got sewing this week - all is well now!

This isn't a tutorial as such, but rather just a run down on my sewing day earlier this week - making a couple of moustaches for an Etsy order ... anddd a couple just for me and Jonathan :-)

All my supplies out, and ready to start moustaching!

Two different grey colours for my order, and a special teal just for me :)  It is my favourite after all, and I thought it would look great against my grey jacket I've been wearing a lot so far this Autumn.

Templates from last year in small, medium and large all ready to go!  This week I made 2 medium for the order, and 2 small for us.  I definitely have to make these more sturdy if I am going to keep using them!  Right now they're just paper, but I'm thinking of transferring them to something thicker soon.

Marked out with tailor's chalk and ready to be cut out...

All done and ready to be sewn up :)

Now to find some coordinating thread... I just about had the perfect ones.  It did mean for a lot of changing over of the spools on the machine... but oh well, it was only 4!

4 moustaches sewn up, stuffed with Poly-Fil and here they are ~ cute little chubby moustaches ready for their clips to be attached.

The smaller ones are definitely harder than the medium and large - just a bit more fiddly, and harder to stuff than the bigger ones... but I do like the way they look!

A bit of posing for my 4 moustaches while they were waiting for the glue gun to heat up!

All finished :)  1 hair clip barrette... and 3 bar pins to attach to a jacket, on your purse, your backpack... to wear as a bow tie, or maybe even a tie clip!?

So there I was a little while later, 4 moustaches richer!  2 to send out to my first Etsy customer of the Movember season (yey!) and the others for our house!  I chose a Toronto Maple Leafs blue for Jonathan and my favourite teal colour for me, but perhaps depending on the outfit I'll be borrowing his as well :-P

Here are the other colours on offer this year!  Lots to choose from ...

And with this new set of moustaches in all new colours I thought a new business card was needed too.

A few weeks ago I worked REALLY hard on the new blog header (look up!), and also my Facebook cover photo and Etsy profile picture so I thought it was time to put some of these to use on paper as well!  So I worked EVEN HARDER in Picmonkey and designed a few social media icons first (wow you graphic designers do fiddly work!) and then put it all together into a business card... 

For now they are just printed at home on cardstock, and the back side of it printed a little off colour so I definitely need to get these printed in better quality BUT for now, they'll do!  I'm pretty pleased with how they look :)  What do you all think?!  Did I miss anything?  Design feedback very welcome!

And so, with my thank you tag attached these MOs are ready to be delivered, in time to be worn right from November 1st.

In addition to being a really fun little project for my Etsy store (which yes, isn't that big!) I'm also donating $2 per MO to Movember for every moustache sold from now until October 31st!

Here's to a really successful Movember 2013 and please do go check out my Etsy store to see my listings =D

And remember, whether it's a real hairy one, or a hair/jacket clip...

* Wear your moustache with pride this Movember *