A Peterborough Woman's Rustic Handmade Signs Are Selling Around The World

Peterborough's Elyse Kellar saw a sign and it changed her life—enabling her to build a small, home-based business called Your Custom Signs that is catching on locally, nationally and globally.

Elyse and her husband Patrick

"Sometimes things fall into our laps without even realizing it," Elyse tells PTBOCanada. "My husband, Patrick, had made me a wooden sign with one of my favourite quotes on it for Christmas one year. The sign read, 'You Are On A Quest, Never Stop.' It was amazing! I was blown away at how well he put this together for me—the time he spent working on it, the attention to detail and the customization to it was the best feature to the sign."

After Christmas, an inspired Elyse found herself wanting to get crafty when giving gifts, like her husband had done for her:

"I had made a sign for a friend for her birthday," she explains. "I picked through a handful of quotes that I thought suited her most and then narrowed it down to one. I got on my computer and designed what I envisioned the sign looking like. It took some time to get it the way I wanted but I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted my attention to detail to be known as well as my uniqueness that I put into the sign. I hand-painted the sign and gave it to her! She loved it!! She couldn’t thank me enough. I also wrote a little note for her on the back of the sign, making it extra special."

After making a couple more of her rustic, whimsical signs for friends and family members—kinda beta testing a business—and making some for around her house, Elyse realized she was on to something and had found her passion. The signs are perfect for decorating the home, and she also had the idea to branch off her signs into wedding decor.

Her next step was figuring out on what platform to launch her business. She decided the peer-to-peer e-commerce website Etsy was the perfect place to do so.

"I always shop online and I always come across Etsy—Etsy is focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies," she tells PTBOCanada. "You can find so much on that site. So, in January 2015, I started up an Etsy store online called Your Custom Signs. I made some goals for myself. I wanted to reach 20 sign sales by April 2015. I reached that goal in a month! I couldn’t believe the support and the love I was getting from my clients."

Currently, Elyse has sold close to 600 signs through Etsy alone and a large number of sales have been generated locally through her social platforms Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter—"the power of social media!" she says.

Elyse is getting clients from all over the planet—including Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

"The thought of people all around the world having one of our handmade custom signs in their home motivates me everyday," she tells PTBOCanada. "Knowing that my stamp—'Your Custom Signs – Handmade in Peterborough, Ontario'—is on the back of all these signs gives me such an amazing feeling. I’m doing something I am so passionate about and something I truly enjoy and now I have my work displayed in homes across the globe."

Weddings have become a big part of her business.

"We have found that wedding season is our busiest," she tells PTBOCanada. "Our most popular for weddings is our Wedding Guest book Tree or Branch. We paint the tree or branch in white and we have two birds sitting together in the tree. We also add the names and date to the guest book in any font style they like.

What customers love about getting these guest books is that we can customize them however they want. The birds can match the theme or colour for your wedding, the font style can coordinate with the other décor you may have."

Elyse is thankful to friends and this community she loves for getting behind her passion—and the unfailing support of her husband and mother.

"My husband is my rock, my anchor, my motivation and my extra set of hands. He is the maker of all the signs, cutting them, putting them together and making sure they're perfect for me to start designing with. My mom, Jody Gozzard, is my assistant painter. Throughout my childhood, my mom always enjoyed crafting, painting, you name it! I must have got this love for art from her."

For more on Your Custom Signs, "Like" them on their Facebook page and go to their Etsy page.
 

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