The Athertons continue to field calls and emails from celebrities seeking the product, from Pink’s staff to the moms of The Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift. Atherton said Lady Gaga requests the water be shipped wherever she travels.

“That was our plan, to test our product with celebrities. If it worked with them, we knew regular people would buy it,” Atherton said. “We were getting more and more exposure.”

There was just one problem. “We had no distribution — 2009 was a hard year,” she said. “We were running out of money.”

Distribution: Things changed. Produced in Canada, h20 is now sold online at www.h2ospringwater.com and Amazon. It’s also in Super Kmart, some specialty natural markets and in Meijer, a Midwestern food chain. It has been picked up by national distribution centers Nature’s Best and Tree of Life.

In 2010, Paramount Pictures made h20 the official water of the animated movie Rango. h2O has partnered with 20th Century Fox to co-promote two DVD releases this year: Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked in spring and Ice Age: Continental Drift in November.

“Every film studio has called us, but we can’t get into a Publix,” Atherton said. “They think it’s a niche product. The first question is ‘Where are you distributed and what are your (sales) numbers?’ ”

Sales in 2011 totaled $500,000. Atherton recently began to draw a small salary, but the product is not yet profitable.

Advice to other mompreneurs: “Research the Internet voraciously to learn every detail about your product’s industry,” said Atherton. “No one should be able to ask you a question you can’t answer.”

First Friends Portraits

Artist Erin Chainani was home with her 2 1/2-year-old twins and looking for a creative outlet. One day, the Miami mom decided to paint portraits of her kids’ favorite toys.

“I wanted to do something that was important to them when they were little, so that when they grew up, they would have something they loved as a child,” she said.

Daughter, Uma, and son, Kaveen, screamed in delight when they saw the portraits of the pink monkey and the blue elephant. Soon friends were asking about toy portraits for their own kids. Chainani started her business, First Friends Portraits, in January 2011.

The big idea: First Friends Portraits (www.firstfriendsportraits.com) offers custom toy portraiture. Clients supply a photo or the actual toy, and Chainani uses watercolor called Gouache and pen and pencil to create an original portrait of the toy. Portraits are available in three sizes and are sold framed or unframed.

Prices range from $65 to $165. Personalized stationery using the custom toy portrait include note cards and address labels and range from $9.95 to $29.95.

Product development: Chainani started with one size portrait, but then began offering different size portraits to fit standard frames, plus her own service of custom framing.

In September, after receiving multiple requests, she began offering custom portraits of other subjects and a stationery line.

Research: Basically, there was none. “I was so confident in the uniqueness of the idea that I just went ahead and did it,” Chainani said. “It all happened organically.” Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, she said.