Ah ha! It's genius! (I hope)

So my good friends Val and Bailey started thier own Etsy store. They've had a few sales so far, too! Well, I too, have always wanted to open my own business and Etsy seems like a great place to start. Granted, I'm nowhere near the point of opening anytime soon, but I had an awesome idea for what I could sell in my store this morning! I wanted to share with you guys to see if you think it's as brilliant an idea as I think it is. :o)

Let me take you back...

As you know, I have two bigs dogs. They both just turned 2 years old this summer so in the past 2 years we've gone through lots of toys/beds/carpet cleaner as they went through their peeing/chewing/eating stages. A while back I had bought 2 new crate beds for them. And if you have dogs, you know how expensive those bad boys are. I think for the both of them I spent almost $100 just on the crate beds. Crazy, right? Well, turns out Cocoa was not a fan of zippers, so she proceeded to eat the zipper off her bed and then started eating the foam out of the bed! (On a side note, she also ate the zipper off a big pillow of hers, too, which I proceeded just to sew shut instead.) Major, on the other hand, was fine with his bed, but he would have accidents every so often and pee on it. I of course just kept washing the bed lining and putting it back on the foam for Major's bed and just tried to keep Cocoa from eating anymore of the foam out of hers. These were expensive beds, I wasn't just going to throw them out! Well, after both beds got peed on, again, while we were out of town, I decided it was time to throw out the foam inserts, but I had plans for linings (since I just threw them in the washer and cleaned them up).

Val and Bailey have recently gotten me into doing more crafts so this past week I decided I was going to fix those two dog beds. I went out and bought new foam for both of them and bought some velcro to keep Cocoa's closed since she didn't like the zipper it originally had. (I'm also going to replace the sewn shut pillow opening with velcro so that it's easier to wash...) This morning, I went to work refurbishing them. I cut my new foam to fit Major's bed and stuffed it in the liner and that one was finished. Then I took the old zipper off Cocoa's and replaced it with velcro. Then cut the foam to fit that one, stuffed it, and presto! Two new beds! (basically)

WELL, the point of this story is, that while I was stuffing Cocoa's bed, I started thinking about how that foam is kind of expensive, but I was able to stuff two (pretty big) beds with one $16 roll. So, not too bad. That, of course, got me thinking...anytime I needed a new dog bed, why couldn't I just make my own? That's when the lightbuld went off! I could make homemade, custom even, dog beds and sell them in my store! (once I open the store...obviously...) They could be the same quality materials as the ones sold in the pet stores, but I know for a fact I could make them for way cheaper!

What do y'all think? Would it sell? Would people buy them??

And once I started thinking about that, I thought of all kinds of other things I could make to sell, too. Like aprons and other sewn things. I like to sew...I'd like to get better...but I like to do it. I have a sewing machine and a mother AND mother-in-law that are great sewers that could totally help me out in the learning department. How fun would that be??

I keep saying that I would love to stay home once we have kids, but I know that I'll get bored. (and my husband is worried about losing that extra income) I like to DO things. Maybe this could be my thing to do. I could stay home with the kids, while also making things for my store, and if people bought these things, I could also be making a little money on the side.

Would you buy something from my store? :o)