Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day Rainbow VW Campervan Competition

I blogged a couple of months ago about the 6 Weeks of Softies that Sew Mama Sew was holding on their website - it was so choc full of softie love and now they're back with something else fabby.... something that I gather has been running for a while but I only heard about this week.... A Giveaway Day Link Up!

So the idea is that everyone who wants to run a giveaway writes a blog post about their prize, today (May 6th) and then adds the link to the Sew Mama Sew blog which helps us all discover new blogs, chances to win fantastic prizes and hopefully for all the designers, new potential customers.

So here is my Giveaway prize:

It's a VW Campervan Felt Coaster and Key Ring - they are both new designs which I'll be taking with me (in all range of colours) to the VW Festival I'm going to next month - Hurst View DubFest which is near Lymington in the New Forest and runs from 12th - 14th June.

For this giveaway all you need to do is leave me a comment telling me which is your favourite Model and Colour of VW Campervan! (It's a bit of market research to help me make sure I'm taking the most popular styles and colours with me to the festival!)

I'm going to also post this on Facebook and Instagram and you can enter one whichever one you like (but multiple entries won't count)

The giveaway will run until 9am Thursday 14th May (BST) and I'm happy to ship internationally.

Good luck!

Easter Wreath Giveaway

I've been wanting to hold a giveaway for Easter for a couple of weeks, but I've been so crazy busy that it's only just happened!

So here's the VW Campervan Easter Mini Wreath that is up for grabs this week:

It's only open to UK residents due to the timescales (i.e. if I post it on April 1st it won't get to you by Easter weekend if you live abroad - I'm sorry but I promise the next giveaway will be worldwide)

So all you have to do is head over to the Grace's Favours Facebook Page and like & comment on the picture to enter.

If you don't have a Facebook account, feel free to leave a message on this Blog post and I'll add you into the draw at the end.

Good luck & I'll be back to announce the winner after 12noon on Wednesday 1st April.

Christmas VW Cuddly Campervan Giveaway... And the Winner Is.......!

Thank you to everyone who entered the Cuddly VW Christmas Camper Giveaway:

And the Winner is......

Well done Joanne :-D

I'm sorry that you couldn't all win, but I will do another giveaway in the New Year - maybe a sewing kit... watch this space!

Post-Halloween Post

I know it's a bit late and sadly things have been so crazy round here that I've been neglecting you guys.... but better late than never, right?!

Now, I love Halloween - I did a couple of fun tutorials last year and I was all set to do another one this year, but I kinda ran out of time... you'll see why below!

So for Halloween I had a request (the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN - DURING HALF TERM!!) for my gorgeous boy to be an Owl. Eeek! Cue a panicked Mummy frantically sewing into the night and.... Ta Da!

Excuse the photos taken on my phone, early in the morning in my messy workshop!

Patrick had a friend over for Halloween Tea and we made them Bloody Fingers and Nasty Gnashers:

Apples, Peanut Butter and mini Marshmallows

Frankfurters, lots of ketchup & hot dog buns

 Whilst I decided to have a go at carving a VW Campervan into my pumpkin this year:

And Seren went to a party dressed as a Witch (thankfully no Mummy-help required with her costume!):

All in all a very happy and silly Halloween! Hope you had fun too - what did your little ones dress up as? I'd love to see some pics... especially if they had handmade elements to their costumes!

Work In Progress

For this week's Handmade Monday I thought I'd do more of a pictoral post than anything else as I haven't got anything finished to share with you today.

I took a pic of a Work in Progress from my working week - making an R2D2 hat as part of a commission

As you can see there's also a Campervan with 3 wheels half done and there's a couple of other half finished bits hiding in my craft box - I'm terrible for starting more than thing at once!

(Thankfully though they did all get finished in the right order!)

Then this afternoon I was quietly sitting at the dining room table cutting out enormous letters for a commission (I've been asked to make a 5 foot name banner for another craft business so they can use it at craft fairs and it's all in this gorgeous hot pink colour! Not sure how I'm going to show you the finished pics of something so big, but that's a problem for next week) Anyway, I was sitting there quietly on my own when my 4 year old daughter Seren came up and asked if she could do some cutting out too, so on some of the scraps I drew her some flowers and she sat next to me happily cutting for ages:

I love the look of concentration!

And then of course the peace was shattered by my 2.5 year old son, Patrick coming up and asking if he could cut out too. Here he is sitting opposite Seren watching carefully to what she's doing and within 20 seconds of this being taken he was pouting because it was 'too difficult' and back to the telly he went!

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend :-) I'm off now to check out the other lovely blogs at Wendy's link up party on the Handmade Harbour website.

St Patrick's Day Parade

Today I'm revealing the first in the line up for the St Patrick's Day parade here at Grace's Favours HQ:

He's been made to the same dimensions and exacting standard as our normal Campervans, but he comes with a removable Shamrock Top Hat Brooch:

I've been trying to take some more interesting, lifestyle type shots, but I'm not sure I've got it quite right yet...

There will be some more entrants to the parade next week and hopefully my photo styling will continue to improve!

To buy this lovely fella, pop over to the shop

Too early to be thinking about St Patrick's Day?

Photo courtesy of Luxpresso.com

Happy New Year!

I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year - any sore heads out there today? I'm feeling a little delicate after a great evening at our place with some good friends, homemade curry (well, as the diet started today we thought last night should be a decent blow out!) and lots of yummy wine, champagne, toffee vodka and Baileys!

So as with all good hangovers, we've been talking about future plans and the usual resolutions and I started thinking about all the exciting things I can do with my business now that I am able to dedicate all my energies (when not being a wife, parent, housekeeper, chauffeur, cook, cleaner.... you get the picture?!) to it.

So I started thinking about Valentine's and St Patrick's Days... I think I will plan some new product lines which have the same items at their centre, but each will focus on the different celebration... so far I am thinking about VW Campervans and VW Beetles as the central items - they are certainly some of my best sellers, but I was also thinking about Mini Coopers and possibly Morris Minors.

Photo courtesy of Skybluefreelance.info

Photo courtesy of Classicandperformancecar.com

What other vehicles do you think would work well in felt?

The lovely thing about the car/campervan range is that they can be personalised, which is great for gift giving and they're a bit different which thankfully seems to appeal to folk!

Anyway, right now I have to get my house guests up (for the second time - they've all had to retire to bed for the afternoon!) and find something for my kids to eat for dinner.... ahhhh the life of a working mum :-)

Handmade Monday

I've decided to take the plunge and join something I've been reading about for a while - Handmade Monday which takes place, yes you guessed right, every Monday on the fantastic Handmade Harbour blog.

This post is to join in on the 91st Handmade Monday and it was after reading the gorgeous blog post from a fellow Etsian, Natalie from Free Spirit Designs which also featured my Poppy Appeal Brooch that I decided to join in.

Poppy Broch - all proceeds of sales during October & November are going to the Royal British Legion.

But today I wanted to share my newest VW Campervan, which has been designed for a wedding! The lovely customer who's bought it is the sister of the Groom and she was able to sneakily find out what colour Campervan the couple have hired to be their wedding car and so I've been commissioned to match their cuddly camper to it! Such a lovely idea.... what do you think?

Wedding car to hire from Beetles About

My Campervan complete with ribbons

It would seem a lot of people are choosing to incorporate Campervans into their wedding plans, so I'm hoping this will become an integral part of the VW range.... watch this space for more news!

Our 1st Product Review

Ohhhhhh I've had an exciting weekend (I know - it only takes the smallest of things!)

We had a BNR in one of my Etsy teams...  a BNR is a treasury which when you buy from one of the shops featured means one of your items replaces the item from the shop you just bought from. So in order to get featured, you have to buy something from one of the other shops feaured. Everybody wins because we all get more sales and more exposure. I bought in twice and was bought out again really quickly, which is very flattering.

So not only did I have a couple of sales from that, but I have also had my first ever product review!!

Here is the link to the article

I am over the moon as the recipient of the Campervan was really thrilled with it!

We're all going on a summer holiday...

.... Okay, now I'm showing my age with that title aren't I?!?! (Or I could just blame it on my Mum's love of Sir Cliff!)

We're off to Ireland tomorrow to visit my lovely 'out-laws' (don't quite know why my hubby's wonderful parents have always been called that, but it's stuck now!) and I honestly don't know who is more excited... me & Brian or the kids :-)

Brian & his brother Tony braving the sea last summer

Seren & Patrick refusing to leave the blanket!

I've got a ton of sewing to take with me as I'm doing a summer fate when we get back - anyone local to the Forest of Dean if you're around on Sunday 29th July we'd love it if you'd pop in and say hello. I've been so busy with orders that I've not had much chance to build up stock for things like this (which is great in one sense!) so this fortnight is going to be a nice change for me.

The other thing I've been working on this week (and it was a last minute request, so scuppered my chances of blogging for an evening or two!) was a Christmas Wreath which had been asked for by the Etsy UK Publicity team for their 'Christmas in July' event, which is held to promote a select number of UK based Etsy shops to journalists and publicity types in the hope that they will use some of the items in their festive shopping guides!

I was OVER THE MOON to be asked to participate and this morning I sent off my Christmas Wreath:

It is listed in my Etsy shop already because a lovely customer asked me in May (I dream of being that organised!) to put together a wreath for him to send to family in America and I am so pleased now that it was done in time to get into the Christmas marketing timescales.

The other thing that's been quite fun this week has been an order of rainbow VW Campervans:

Lastly I just wanted to finish with an apology... when I started this blog I intended to write a new post at least 2-3 times a week... well I've failed miserably on that score. So my mid-year resolution is to post more often when we get back from holiday (starting with the pre-requisite holiday snaps!)

Hope you have a good couple of weeks with some sunshine!!

Designing Soft Toys

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks... I've been making VW Campervans like there's no tomorrow, which has been fun as I feel like I've pretty much perfected the process now (sod's law says I won't have another one to make for a while now!)

I've also been toying with the idea (you'll get to the pun in a mo!) of trying my hand at designing teddy bears and other cuddly toys (now see it? Sorry!). I started with making a teddy bear from a Funky Friends Factory pattern for my son, who LOVES his 'Bear' as you can see:

Bear now goes everywhere, including to play on Daddy's 'Pooter!

Then a friend asked me to make her one:

And now my daughter wants one... so things are going bear-y well... sorry, I promise to stop with the puns now!

But I've not yet braved designing my own... I will, soon, honest! In the mean time, I'm going to continue to get a feel for how best to get the limbs all together and sewn into the body without an arm & a leg ending up in the wrong place!