I was so excited to find this Chanel top at the thrift store last month. My first time thrifting Chanel! I've refrained from listing it yet because making sure you sell authenticate items is super important as a reseller. Being accused of selling fake items is not something I take likely, plus can kill your reputation and maybe even get your account suspended. I've shared some of the most helpful tips I've come across to help you authenticate your own Chanel clothing below:

As far as I have seen and read, Chanel only makes their products in France, Italy, and Spain. It will be easy to spot a fake if an item has a country origin that is not one of these, and especially if it's China. In my experience, Chanel clothing is made in France or Italy while some of their shoes are made in Spain. This top was made in France.

Most Chanel brand tags have either a white tag with black lettering, or a black tag with white lettering. Depending on the age of the garment the tag could look different. There will be a hang tag from the brand tag that will tell you the season of the item. Unfortunately on this item it has been washed out, but on other Chanel item you will find the season, size, and style of the item. This is quite a large tag and could be uncomfortable to wear, so don't be concerned right away if it is not attached. Another giveaway of a counterfeit item is the writing on tags being crooked or words being misspelled. All writing should be consistently straight and placed within the edges of the item. 

Another thing to note is that while a lot of designers have something like an interior hologram  to show authenticity, Chanel items do not. 

Chanel clothing is made of very high quality, natural materials, like silk, linen, and cotton. If an item feels flimsy and cheaply made it's not Chanel. This top is 100% cotton.

Uneven and inconsistent stitching will not pass Chanel quality control. I like to especially look at stitching ends and edges to check to make sure the stitching does not go back over it self, which is a clear sign of sloppy stitching. 

Counterfeit designer clothing items often have sticky residue or glue on the hems.  The fabric was glued together before being sewn to be easier and save time. 

Chanel clothing starts in the hundreds of dollars. If the item feels cheap and you can't imagine someone paying that price for the quality, it's probably fake. Have any other tips for authenticating Chanel clothing? Let me know down below!

Did you know millionaires on average have SEVEN streams of income? Obviously it's impossible to put in 40 hr/wk into 7 hustles, so the more you can include that are passive (ie put in the work at the beginning and then make money from zero work) the better. 

I actually came across the concept of drop shipping and Etsy on TikTok. You start an Etsy shop and create your products through a third party that is completely in charge of creating, storing, and shipping the product. You create designs and start up your shop, and then after that you put in very minimal work while the third party company does the work for you. These companies have a number of products you can add designs to, but so far I've been focusing on mugs because personally I love mugs, and I think a lot of other people do too! I've broken down the process and tools I've used to start building my Etsy business below.

First off, think about your passion or niche that you can relate to and create cute content about. Are you a mom? Plant lover? Own a guinea pig? I recommend for starting out to stick with a topic you are comfortable, like creating a consistent brand, and then branching out later (I'll cover that below). 

LOVE Canva. You can create and design anything.  I use it for social media content, blog photos, and now my Etsy designs. I pay $12/month for the pro plan so that I can access all the templates and have higher quality photos. Luckily they have a whole free month of the pro plan, so utilize that trial! You can use my Canva code HERE and we both get free premium upgrades!

Once you have the free trial for a month create as many cute designs as possible. I looked through Target to see what kind of styles and designs people are being sold right now. I promise you don't have to be super creative. People make a bunch of money from just creating designs with black lettering. Make sure to increase the quality when you download your design to make sure if shows up clear on the mug, and download it as a png file. 

If you don't have an established Etsy account yet that is totally fine. I recommend using a pic of your face for your profile and make sure to add in the bio what your niche is to attract similar people.

Next is to find the third party drop shipping company you want to use. I have been using Printify, and I am super happy with them. They have a wide variety of products, very decent product and shipping prices, and they produce and ship within just a couple days. 

Printify makes it super easy to link your account to your Etsy store. The only issue I faced was I did not know that you need to have listed one item in your Etsy store before you can start listing from Printify. I created a little bogus listing and then deleted it once I had started listing from Printify. 

Printify will transfer over a lot of your item's information into your Etsy listing, but I like to go in a make a couple of changes to make my items more searchable. I add hashtags as well as some recommend item specifics (like material and color). 

Once orders start rolling in, I like to manually go into Printify and tell them to start producing the mug. You don't have to do this as they will start producing the item within 1-2 days, but because of the production time I like to get it started right away so it can get to the buyer quickly.

And that pretty much sums up how to get your Etsy passive income stream off the ground! If you have any questions. or any other pieces of advice to add, let me know in the comments below!

When thrift stores (and pretty much everything else fun) closed in California for a couple months, I found myself with a lot more time on my hands. I decided I wanted to be proactive and started researching new ways to make money from home. Some of which are even passive! (i.e. you put in the work at the beginning, but then as time goes on you make money with no extra work) I thought I would share with you guys a couple of the easy ways I've started making some extra money on the side of reselling!

I'm really excited about this one, and I actually got the idea from tiktok! People make killer money selling mugs on etsy, and it is actually completely passive income. Essentially how it works is, there are a number of printing companies that are integrated with etsy. You create a design for mugs (or really any item!) through the printing company that is linked to your etsy store. When someone buys one of your items the order is sent directly to the printing company who fulfills and ships the item for you. They even update your buyer with the shipping info. After creating the design there is literally nothing else you have to do besides accept those direct deposits! (If you guys are interested I can share more about what this process looks like in a more in-depth post!)

I've kind of become obsessed with scanning my receipts into the Fetch app. How it works is, you get points from your receipts for certain brands of items. Mostly grocery items. Essentially, these brands want you to purchase their items so you can scan in more points. However, you can literally scan any receipt in. Gas, clothes, eating out, whatever! Even if your receipt doesn't have any of the participating brands, you still get 25 points per receipt scanned. Once you've received a certain number of points you can redeem them for gift cards. And they have so many gift card options! Amazon, Sephora, mall stores. For most gift cards, its around 1000 points for $1 of gift card. But if you are looking to buy those items anyway, its easy extra money! You can use my down load link HERE to get 2000 points right away!

This is something I've always wanted to do, but just never felt comfortable with. I wish the stock market had been something we were taught in school (also taxes..) BUT Acorns makes it really easy. You take a questionnaire at the beginning by what kinds of risks you are comfortable with, and what your longterm financial goals are. After that they round up your purchases from a linked card and start investing the change for you. Its been fun to watch the money we invest become more money! Also super passive. I check the app literally every morning. If you use code UC266F when you open an account, you and I both get $5 to invest!

A number of times through quarantine I ordered and tried out products that were of interest to me, and ended up not only getting free products, but also getting paid anywhere from $20-30 just for sharing my input! I use the site Ambassadher which has a lot of influencer style campaigns, but also many product review campaigns. A couple that I did were for beauty products. I ordered and tried out the product, and then filled out a survey about how I found the product. Easy! If you gave the item a favorable review, they may ask you to leave feedback on the site you purchased it from. You can check out Ambassadher HERE.

This is not necessarily something new I started doing in quarantine, but I did start applying to more campaigns! You really don't need a lot of followers to get paid to post, so long as you have decent engagement. One of my favorite sites for influencer campaigns is Heartbeat - they offer a lot of campaigns for stuff I am interested in and often share about already, like clothes, accessories, and yummy snacks. You can check them out and sign up HERE. 

This is a platform I am still researching and building, but does well for a lot of people! Essentially, you offer virtual skills that companies and brands can outsource to you. Personally, I am offering data entry and blog post writing skills. There are so many different types of skills being offered on Fiverr!

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope I was able to offer you some new, fun avenues for you to make some $$$.  The one I'm most excited about personally is the etsy mug shop, because its SO easy and passive. Would you be interested in seeing a better break down of how to start your own etsy mug shop? Let me know down below!

While other states have been open for weeks, the lovely state of California is still very much in shelter in place. I'm definitely bored, so what have I resorted to? Painting butts.

One of my favorite bloggers, Kathleen Barnes/Carrie Bradshaw Lied, shared on her instagram about this project she was doing to keep herself busy, and I loved it! I had been researching modern / abstract bathroom art, but redecorating is EXPENSIVE so I loved seeing a DIY project I could try. I definitely recommend practicing and drawing out a sketch butt with a sharpie before attacking a piece of paper with paint. Once you break down the picture into single lines, it's actually pretty easy! When it came time to paint I just traced my best sharpie practice butt. (I've never typed "butt" this many times and I'm loving it.) I think it makes for cool modern bathroom art!

The only paintbrushes we had were for walls and big paint projects, so I ordered this 10 piece set off Amazon for $7.99. I also got this frame set, 10 frames for only $33.99! Thats only $3.39 a frame, which is a killer deal. Great for a collage wall!

I had so much fun with the butt (lol) that I decided to get all artsy and take a stab at a few more paintings! A number of them went straight into the bin but I did like how two ended up! Hubs said we could hang them up in the garage (lol) but I convinced him to hang them in our living room. :)

A designer belt is a great way to posh up a bread and butter outfit. The last two designer belts I've purchased was a GG Gucci belt from an outlet mall...

...and the one I most recently bought is a black elastic Prada waist belt for under $40 off Poshmark!

The thing these belts both have in common is that they were wayyy too big when I originally bought them. You can get a lot of clothing items altered, but the great thing about belts is that they are so easy to alter yourself, or super cheap to take into a cobbler! The Gucci belt was way too long, so I took it into a shoe cobbler who only charged me $5 to add a couple more holes and trim the end of the belt off. 

The Prada belt consists of an elastic piece that I had to take about six inches of material away from. I didn't want to actually cut up the elastic band in the event I wanted to do anything different with the belt in the future (or gained weight lol) so what I did is, I sewed u where I would want the belt to end with dental floss, then sewed down the ends for a cleaner look. Almost looks like a bow!

A great way to find some killer designer deals is to start looking outside your usual size!