Washington woman surprises friends with online sales

?If you want something done right, you?ve got to do it yourself.? That was the attitude Washington resident Gabriela Canchola was left with after ordering hair decorations for her daughter. Canchola?s daughter, Isabel, loves to wear bows, ribbons and flowers in her hair.

?She?s a princess,? Canchola said. ?She?s definitely a girly girl.?

Canchola placed an order for those decorations to a vendor over the Internet, but the material never arrived.

Canchola looked at the ornaments and decided she could make them herself, so she did. Before long, Canchola?s friends had found out about her handiwork and requested that she make bows for their daughters, too. Canchola saw that she was on to something and so created a Facebook page to sell her hair decorations. She has also hawked her wares at the farmers market numerous times over the summer and fall, including last Thursday evening.

The Internet has been Canchola?s primary educational resource for making bows. She found videos on Youtube of people demonstrating how to make the bows and ribbons.

?I looked at the ribbons and I thought, ?I don?t know where to start,?? she said. ?The loops were the difficult part. You have to make four loops, insert a hairclip to hold them together and then use a piece of string to sew it all together. I was not getting any perfect loops. It did not look like a ribbon.?

Canchola had to practice for many hours before she could emulate the persons in the videos. She said she can now make a bow in 10-15 minutes.

?Sometimes I get to a point where I have to start over,? she said. ?That happens about once every six bows. I may not like one of the sides, so I take it apart and start over.?

When Canchola felt confident making hair accessories for other people, she started a Facebook page dedicated to her craft. She asked Isabel to model her creations, so that Canchola could take photographs of her and upload them to the Internet.

?My customers will order stuff from the page and I?ll tell them, ?I can deliver it to you or you can pick it up.? They?ll say, ?This is where I live,? and I?m like, ?I know where you live.? They say, ?Wait, what?? Then I tell them it?s me, Gaby. A lot of people at the beginning didn?t know it was my business. They wondered, ?Who from Washington is making bows??? Canchola said.

Her Internet customers take photos of themselves wearing the hair accessories. Canchola said that their online friends see those photos and ask their friends where they bought the accessories.

?That?s how I get even more customers,? she said.

Canchola uses the Internet not just to sell her accessories but also to find her raw materials.

?The lady I get most of my stuff from lives in Los Angeles,? Canchola said. ?I try to stick with the same vendors because they?re the ones I know.?

The vendor in Los Angeles supplies Canchola with bottle caps and artificial flowers. Canchola receives a variety of colors of artificial flowers, which she then glues together. She then puts a bottle cap in the middle of the flower as an additional decoration. The bottle caps of the flowers she displayed Thursday were mostly of Sesame Street and Disney characters.

Canchola also makes headbands for sale.

?I take a ribbon and I wrap it nice and tight around the frame,? she said. ?It is a lot of work because you have to make sure your ends are tight, or else you?ll have bubbles.?

Canchola said her work gives her blisters, especially from the glue gun.

?I use the glue gun for everything,? she said.