Wask Blog

Introducing a little candle ring called A New Flame. It’s a stainless steel ring that features a real tiny candle – although we do not recommend lighting it while wearing it and are not liable for any damage if you choose to do so! It can get extremely hot in a very short time.

Continue reading New product: A New Flame Ring

The latest Wask product is a mug that cries coffee! This idea has been in the works for a couple years now actually. It’s been trickier to create than I expected, and due to the cost of it, the first batch is only right-handed. If there is enough demand then we can likely include left-handed handles in the future, and potentially other colours too. 🙂

When I thought up cigarette candles, I thought it would have definitely been a regular mass made product at this point – but I couldn’t find them as a real product on the internet and instead mostly found some artsy edited photographs, etc. So I decided to make them!

These are the Death Wish Candles. 💀

Continue reading New product: Death Wish Birthday Candles

I’ve put up some new stock of the 2-tips matches online. The manufacturer has made some changes in the way they produce their matches now. They’re still the same size and function the same, but (in my opinion) are unfortunately aesthetically less pleasing now.

I’m naming these newer ones “Version 2” or “V2” because I feel they’re significantly different from my original product photos, so I want customers to be informed.

Version 1:
• Warmer shades of wood
• Match head appears more white & smooth

Version 2:
• Muted tones in the wood
• Match head appears more textured and grey

This may be the match we carry indefinitely as trying to switch suppliers is not a priority at the time, but feel free to leave any questions or comments!

I’ve wanted to make these miniature push pins since 2017! They’re made from stainless steel, and I wanted to keep a very geometric design to them. Buy them here!

In December of 2017 shortly after launching Wask, I was trying to figure out what type of route to take for the brand vibes. I made this animation with 3 little Unbreak My Heart Paper Clips sleeping soundly in a bed, but then they get ripped out by a giant hand!

It wasn’t really my vibe in the end so I never really finished it… but now that it’s 5 years later I feel like it’s fun to post it on the blog anyway!

Introducing our latest product, the Sinking Feeling Soap! It’s handmade by me and therefore may contain some small imperfections.

This soap is a long time coming. It started with an idea a few years ago to create soap with words on it that would change as you use it, but words are so small and detailed and I realized it would probably have been impossible to make with soap. So I went with a visual route instead – smileys!

I created the first prototype last year but it had a major flaw in it from the method I used to make it. Feeling defeated afterwards, it took me a long time to get around finally fixing it.

The soap consists of 6 layers of smileys (in the image above I conjoined the 2 middle sad smiles to represent one larger “layer” since they’re the same). I was originally going to simply have 3 layers starting from the top: happy, neutral, and sad. But since most people will use a bar of soap by picking up the bar and rubbing it from all around, I realized the design has to work from the outwards into the middle. So that’s why there are so many layers!

The soap takes forever to make. It has SO many steps! I’m currently pricing it at $40 CAD which is actually greatly undervaluing my time per bar – and therefore in the near future I will have to decide to either raise the price or turn this into a limited edition item. So grab it while it’s still a bargain!

Update: I ended up making a little TikTok video cutting one up to show the layers working. Afterwards I looked at the soap and realized how extremely poorly I was actually cutting it up. Too funny!

We’re now using Shopify’s Planet App to automatically offset carbon emissions from the shipping of our orders.

We’re currently on their Century tier which funds a mix of nature-based carbon removal and innovative solutions, such as direct air capture and mineralization.

The funds go to companies such as: 44.01, Carbofex, CarbonBuilt, CarbonCure, Charm Industrial, Climeworks, DroneSeed, Grassroots Carbon, Heirloom Carbon, Loam, Noya, Pachama, Planetary, Remora, Running Tide, and Sustaera.

Let’s talk sticky notes!

The Out of Line sticky notes are my 2nd bestseller after the Think Twice Dice. One of the unique selling points of these sticky notes is that they’re a custom size and feature 3 punched holes on the left, and these little details also make a difference when it comes to finding a company to make them.

I’m actually on my 2nd manufacturer when it comes to these sticky notes. A general overview of each:

Manufacturer A: This was my first low quantity order. The manufacturer didn’t shrink-wrap the sticky notes as agreed. They were just placed straight into a box with no protection and therefore many were damaged. The printing on them was dark and desaturated. Although it’s normal for sticky notes to have a slightly bump or curve where the glue area is, these were extremely bent in a very unprofessional manner. The cherry on top was that the were hardly sticky at all! I couldn’t sell these, so I just keep them for my own desk notes and give them out to friends.

Manufacturer B: This was a big improvement from the first one! Every aspect was better: they only have a slight bump in the glue area, the printing looks more vibrant and correct, they were shrink-wrapped into their packs of two and they were stickier. Now a lot of the time when you re-order a product from a manufacturer, things can be a bit different the next time around (this happens so often!) and in the 2nd batch the red line was thicker and brighter. I actually like both versions of it.

So I’ve had a few people recently let me know that the sticky notes aren’t that sticky and may fall of the wall, so I wanted to dig a bit deeper into why and I asked my current manufacturer about this. I got a bit of insight about the 3 types of glue they use:

• Chinese glue from Zhejiang. Apparently most sticky notes on the market use this type of glue (I’m assuming she’s referring to the smaller batch, custom made sticky notes). The viscosity is the worst of the 3 glue types and the lifetime is about half a year.
  
• Chinese glue from Guangdong. This mimics 3M glue, but to use this type of glue, the company has a minimum order quantity of 10,000 units.
  
• 3M glue. This is the best one they offer which is the most expensive and also has a very high minimum order quantity (not sure how many).

I want to improve the stickiness of my current sticky notes but I feel like I only have two options at the moment. I currently only order small batches between 250 – 500 units, so one option is to keep working on my brand and building product demand until the time feels right to actually hit a 10,000 unit order. Or I can do a new outreach to a bunch of new manufacturers and see if I can find a better sticky note quality for a lower minimum, but that’s time consuming and also a whole new risk (minimums might be higher, there may be high “mold fees”, other issues could come up).

But I’ll keep my eyes peeled!

I’ll have to stick to the current manufacturer and method in the meantime, but if anybody knows of other good sticky notes manufacturers, please share!