CASES FOR CANCER CO.

12-13-13

Today during 20 time we are planning on researching more about Mason Jars. We will plan out our steps. We want to look for places that we can buy or order Mason Jars from an inexpensive place. We don’t want to spend a lot of money on this if it doesn’t end up working. We also are wanting to look for plan out what accessories we want to put on our jars.

 

1-10-14

Today, we decided to change our direction with our idea. We realized when we were looking into the mason jar idea, that it would cost too much money to produce. We were trying to come up with another idea because we knew that we wanted to make and sell a product. When we started brainstorming products that we would enjoy making and find a purpose for, phone cases came to mind. Now that nearly everybody our age has a smart phone, we are always looking for ways to personalize something that everybody else has. Today, we found some plain clear phone cases that might be an option to use. They are relatively inexpensive, but we will still be searching for several more options and styles that we might want to use. After looking at several DIY phone case ideas on the internet, we came up with a list of ways that we want to decorate and personalize phone cases. We have a plan to make models of the phone cases over the long weekend next weekend. This is because we want to take pictures of these models to have on our social media accounts (twitter, instagram, etsy) . Customers will then have an idea of what their phone case could look like when we are finished decorating.

 

1-24-14

My group made an email and all of the social media accounts for our group. These accountsd include an instagram, twitter, tumblr, and etsy. These social media accounts will let people see our phone cases and get an idea of what we have to offer. Then they will be able to decide if they want to possibly buy one or not. It will also be a good way to communicate our ideas and see what customers think. Our company is officially called “Cases for Cancer”. This is because we decided to sell our cases and donate the money to Relay for Life, which is a cancer fundraiser we were all a part of last year. Since it’s coming up in the spring, we have enough time to get our business and all of our supplies together. We might include taking orders, but that is to be determined.

 

1-31-14

Today in 20 time we got a lot done. We created our sales pitch and cleared up all of the confusion that was going on. We came up with the purpose of our project, and we created a google presentation. We looked online for images and we found some ideas for what we want to do. We decided that in order to separate ourselves from the other group that is making phone cases, our will be personalized. The customer will be able to tell us what letters or items they want on their cases. However they tell us they want it, we will try to do it. That is what we hope will make our business successful, being able to change designs based on what the customer wants. We will have to see how the business goes and then make adjustments according to that. We also put the metro contract on your desk.

 

2-7-14

Today in 20 Time, we looked at more do-it-yourself phone case ideas. We have found several websites that give you step by step directions on how to make these types of cases. We found glitter phone cases, studded phone cases, chevron phone cases, and spray painted phone cases. These designs look the best on plain clear and white phone cases. Also, we have started coming up with a more detailed list of materials that we need, including Mod Podge and gloss finish spray. We are looking into what phone cases we want to use and what would be the most economic choice. In order to help us make this decision, we started looking into business plans as well.

 

2-14-14

We are trying to decide exactly on what phone cases we are wanting to use. We are having trouble because we are thinking that some of the places we are wanting to buy from aren’t very reliable. Their pictures don’t match their product description and we don’t want to spend money on something that we can’t rely on being exactly what we want. We continued looking at some designs and are getting more and more ideas on how our customers would be able to personalize their phone cases. We are really hoping that our customers will like our ideas!

 

2-28-14

Today a new idea has come to our attention, that after we create our phone cases, we can create attractive iphone stands. http://www.madebymarzipan.com/?x=3058 This will give us the opportunity to raise even more money for Relay for Life. That way, once someone has decorated their phone with the phone case, they can add even more to it.

 

3-7-14

Today we got a lot of things done that included deciding on 5 designs for our phone cases and then we found out all of the materials that we are planning on using. In addition to doing this, we also found some coupons that will help reduce the cost of our materials. We are planning on buying our supplies at Michaels because they have good quality products and we have the coupons for them. At the end of class we decided to meet on Saturday to buy all of the supplies and start making the phone cases.

 

3-21-14

Today in 20 time I wasn’t there for the entire class period because I had honor roll lunch. This made the class time shorter, but we were able to catch up quickly because Amela was good at explaining what we missed and what she worked on while we were gone. Our progress today was pretty good because we were able to get a realistic aspect on to what we are doing in terms of price and profit. Amela wrote equations that figured out what the cost for an individual phone case would be based off the labor (time we spent would have been multiplied by 7) and the price of the materials. We figured out the price for each individual phone case (the pink with flowers, ombre paint, magazine cutout, and glitter with paint). Each case ended up being really close to 10 dollars, so we have decided to sell each phone case for 10 dollars. That means that we only need to sell about 7 phone cases to earn back what we spent and then we can start making profit that will contribute to the donation to Relay for Life that we are going to make.Some hardships and things that we have faced included a couple of different things. For example, we made the cases over spring break and we had to buy the supplies, plan out what we were making and then actually make them. Finding all of the materials and exactly what we wanted for the right price was a little bit tricky, but we found some great coupons that cut down our total price for the materials a lot. Some other hardships that we have faced is some of the designs that we were planning didn’t turn out exactly how we wanted them. It is okay though because it is just making us expand our thinking more and is benefiting us.

 

3-28-14

Today in 20 time we got some opinions to figure out what phone cases are the most popular. We brought the phone cases to class and had people tell us which phone cases they liked the best and what they would change about it. We brought 4 phone cases, the pink with flower, the pink and white swirl, the blue ombre, and the dark gray with tinsel. The suggestions that people gave included using different colors because they liked the dark blue on the bore phone case and designing it like the pink and white swirly phone case. They said that we could even put different trinkets on the back, like a fish or some studs.I think that it is good that we were able to get people’s opinion and input on our phone cases because now we can put which phone cases are the most popular our website. We are trying to cater to a large group of people so that we can sell more phone cases. We are going to try to get together make more phone cases this weekend so that we can get our business on the road and started so that we can raise money. We also want to make sure that our phone cases don’t get scratched and so we are going to warp them in cute clear plastic bags. This will appear visually to people and also will protect the phone cases. This will work especially well when we are selling them at the Relay for Life booth or when we are transporting the cases to sell to people.People liked each of the cases and so that means that we are doing a good job at making a wide range of cases. We are coming along well with this project and I am excited for what is going to happen with this project for the most part.

 

4-11-14

Today in 20 time we didn't have a large amount of time because we had honor roll lunch. So when we got back from lunch we had about thirty minutes left to work. This meant that we needed to use our time wisely and make sure that we got everything done quickly and efficiently. We decided that we really needed to copy all of our blog posts over from the Kidblog to our website progress blog. We had already copied some of the posts. We had copied over the four most recent posts for Amela and I. We didn't realize that we were supposed to copy them all over until Mr. Washmon brought it up yesterday in class. Because of the type of website and the website we decided to make, which is a Wix, only one person can be working on the website at a time. This applies to adding blog posts. Erin started out putting hers on the website first, but then we were looking back on all of our blogs and we were getting confused on how many each of us had and what each of the dates were. So because of this, we had to pull up a calendar, look back at each of our blog posts and what date they were posted on and compare them. Erin was putting hers directly from her Kidblog onto the website, but Amela and I were each putting our blog posts from the Kidblog onto a separate google doc. The reason that we did this was so that it will be easier to copy and paste them, and it is also a lot easier for us to tell which one goes first and what order they all go in. After Amela and I finished copying them into our individual google documents, we compared them to make sure we hadn't skipped copying any. We managed to get all of them successfully onto our google documents, so now all we have to do is copy them onto the website later this weekend.

 

4-18-14

Today we worked on coming up with additional designs and making sure everything looked good on our website. We wanted people to like or pictures that we have so that they will want to buy them. Today I was in charge of tweeting out all of our pictures of the phone cases that we made so that they word will get out about them. I tweeted the group picture of the group of phones together. I also set that picture of our phone cases as our profile picture. I followed over 100 people so that makes people more likely to follow us back and so hopefully more people will see our phone cases more often. We are excited for Relay for Life and we are wanting to raise money. We are not sure if we are actually going to reach our goal but we are going to still accept it if we don't raise enough money. This is a little bit boring to be honest. I wish we were doing something else that would be more productive. Twenty time doesn't seem like a good idea, especially because this is the first year that you have done it. We are wanting to come up with more designs but we don't want to waste the time that we have because we haven't raised that much money yet. But that's okay! Beacuse failure is an option and it doesn't matter at this point. We are working on our website and wnat to plan out a time to meet to make more phone cases, but we are bust this weekend. We also want to take pictures of ourselves to have on out about us page on this website so that they all look good and so that they all have the same background and look better. We will just see how this weekend goes and see what the day brings and what the weather is like.

 

4-25-14

Today we had honor roll lunch again so we had a smaller amount of time to get things done. We have Relay for Life tomorrow at Wagon Wheel and so our main goal for today was to plan out everything in preperation for tomorrow. We just wanted to make sure that we were ready and that we won't forgot anything that we needed when we are going to sell the phone cases tomorrow. We made a list of things that we need to bring tomorrow, which included a folding table, basket for the phone cases, the phone cases themselves, a pouch for money, and a poster. We then made a list of things that we still needed to make and/or prepare. In this list we had phone cases and poster and we also needed to wrap the phone cases and make the labels for the phone casess. Because we still had all of these things to do, we wanted to meet after school and try to get everything done before tomorrow. So we decided to meet and make almost all of the phone cases, make the labels, make the poster, and wrap the phone cases. We are planning on bring about 15 phone cases to Relay for Life and so we made about 6 more. We also made a sign for the phone cases and we designed a label for the phone cases. The label looks really good and is really cute! We outsmarted the design software online to where we didn't have to pay $30 for design and then Annie's mom was able to print them out on sticky label paper that we had. We then wrapped the phone cases in clear plastic bags and ties them with cute ribbons. We are really excited for tomorrow and we are thinking we will have fun!

 

5-2-14

Today in 20 time we went over what we did at Relay for Life and we talked about what everyone did. We made sure that we had all of the phone cases that we didn't sell and we counted up the ones that we did sell. We also made sure we had gotten all ot the money back for the ones that we did sell. We did not sell all of our phone cases that we made last week at Relay for Life at Wagon Wheel on April 26th and 27th but we weren't always planning on selling all of them so it is okay. We started coming up with some ideas on how to advertise our phone cases so we can sell the rest of them but I don't think that it will work really well. Relay for life was fun because there were a lot of people there and there was a lot of fun things to do. we played frisbee and football and soccer and volleyball and a few bands performed, including Flood the Walls and Auto and also there was Zumba on the stage for a little while. There were also a few food trucks there including two snow cone trucks and an Asian food truck (that was good). The weather was nice except it was a little windy. I stayed until about one in the morning and then I heard that later after I left it was starting to rain and so everyone edned up leaving around 4. Overall, Relay for Life was fun and we didn't even stand at the table with our phone cases for very long because it would have been boring. We had some issues with some of them blowing off of the table because it was so windy but we solved that problem.

 

5-9-14

Today in 20 time we worked on something different. We decided to try to look online for events that we might be able to sell the rest of our phone cases at, We were looking for possible events in Dallas or in the DFW area but we are having trouble finding age appropiate events. There are a lot of concerts but why woul we sell phone cases at a concert? That seems pointless. We really just want to work on our ted talk but we aren't allowed to. That doesn't really make sense to me but oh well.  So oh well. Also what place is going to want 15 year old girls selling phone cases at your event? I wouldn't because it is sort of cheap for your event to have teenagers selling home made phone cases selling at your event. We do not know exactly what we are going to do but at this point we aren't trying super hard. So many (and I mean a lot!) of groups are slacking off and aren't doing anything but aren't being punished or have gotten in trouble or have even gotten talked to about it. So we feel like we shouldn't be having to do all of this work when so many other groups aren't doing anything. But oh well. We will be done after this year and the year is almost over. There are only a few more weeks left of school and not very many Fridays left either. We are not very excited for our ted talk but we are still giong to work on it only because we want to get a good grade on it because we want our grades to be good. We are going to prepare for it and we are trying to decide as a group what exactly to do. This will be something that we are going to work on at home.  

 

 

5-16-14

Today in 20 time we were working on photoshopping all of the pictures that we have.  We have pictures of each of the phone cases, including the most recent ones. We had a little bit of trouble uploading the pictures form Erin's camera to her computer and then accessing them on the software and then getting the software to work. Photoshopping photos is a long process, and I am not good at is so it takes me a really long time because I am trying to learn it as I do it. Erin is helpful because she knows how to use it for the most part. I am hoping that next year I will know how to use Adobe softwares and things such as photoshop. Right now some people are sitting next to me playing games and that seems