Wholesale Orders

Sorry for being a bit quiet on the blog front recently - I've been suffering with a mystery ailment (well that sounds much more exciting than the reality, which was insufficient iron in my blood!!) and haven't felt up to doing much of anything... which has made for an interesting time with the kids still on school hols and a wholesale order from a lovely lady, just up the road from me in Cheltenham, who I met at the Home & Gift exhibition in Harrogate.... you might remember the post I wrote about it here.

While we were at the exhibition her eye fell on this:

Personalised Airplane Picture

As her company centers around Aeronautical gifts, it seemed perfect!

So I've been busily creating 5 of these framed pictures - they're basically done, but still need pressing and framing:

All 5 pictures with the banner reading "Up & Away"

I love the pinks - might have to some more pink & grey things

We also settled on some of these canvas drawstring bags:

But the ones I'm making for the shop won't be personalised so I've gone for a larger plane:

So a bit of work still to do this evening - as I'm delivering the order tomorrow morning!

I've also got a mountain of other orders that have been piling into the shop in the last week, which is lovely and next weekend I'll have lots to show you, but does mean I might not get round to everyone at Handmade Monday this week - although I will try my best!

My little girl also starts school on Tuesday, so there'll be a totally gratuitous mid-week post about that (hopefully without me shedding too many tears!!)

How NOT to finish anything in a week!

Arrrrrrggggg! This week has been all over the place!

I've been trying to work whilst the kids are on school holiday (as has every other craft-business owner who's also a parent of small/young children) and this week I've spectacularly achieved almost nothing!

I've posted out a couple of these:

Dark Green VW Beetle Hanging Ornament

Red VW Beetle Hanging Ornament

Felt Airplane applique

A rainbow of VW Campervan Hanging Ornaments

All of which can be found in my Etsy shop and on the new exciting website I am proud to be part of Uniquely UK

I've been trying to get a fascinator started for a local customer. The brief was 1950s style, with a veil to match her dress which has shades of grey, cerise and black... I have the exact thing in mind, but it's a fiddly job that I really can't be doing in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed as I'm generally too tired and the light isn't good enough, but also can't be doing with the children about. So I'm LONGING for their nursery day this week!!

I've also had feedback from my lovely Father-in-Law who I made this picture for:

Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II Felt Picture with a personalised number plate

My Father-in-Law worked for a large very posh car dealership in London in the 70s and 80s and these were the type of cars they used to work on every day - so we thought he might like it. His initial comment was delight that he could finally say he too owned a Rolls!!!

So nothing much new with me, but I do have all the school uniform labelled (can't believe my baby is nearly 5 and about to start school!) which was a rather long & boring job! I'm hoping a hop round the Handmade Monday blogs will inspire me to get something new created this week... watch this space!

Being Featured on The Guardian Website

A couple of weeks ago I had a very exciting phone call from someone at The Guardian. The phone call was to ask me as a member of the Guardian's Small Business Network (which I joined a couple of months ago) if I was planning to enter the Showcase they are running:

I was rather taken abact - they'd done their homework on my business, been on my website and even read some of my blog posts and wanted me to enter the Home Business Innovation section.... so I have and guess what? I've got my entry published on their website!!!

That means I've got past stage one - The Editors!! They basically weed out all the entries that don't meet the criteria or that are not suitable for the showcase and then they publish the ones they've selected to go forward to the next stage.

The second stage is the shortlisting, which starts on the 9th August 2013 and this is where the panel of judges will choose 3 companies. These three will have a write up done by a Guardian journalist for the main website and the Finance section of the newspaper and then ultimately there's an awards ceremony next year (May 2014) where they announce the winners of my category and all the other categories.

I don't really expect to get shortlisted as there are some amazing companies already through and there are more to come, but just to have got this far feels wonderful!

Anyway, you know I'll keep you posted!!

Now I'm off for a scoot round the Handmade Monday Blogs with a cuppa and some naughty (but very nice) chocolate brownies!

Campervans for the Cushion Competion

A while ago a very nice lady called Suzie contacted me from a company called Terry's Fabrics and asked if I would be interested in getting creative with some of their fabrics, in return for blogging about it... Would I?!? Erm, Hell Yeah!!

This is the range that she sent me:

LOADS of choice (in fact it was hard to restrict myself to less than 25!)

The 4 I chose in the end (it could have been smaller pieces of 8 fabrics, but I had a couple of projects in mind so I went for larger pieces of these materials:

And of course the one I HAD to have.... the Campervan material!








I then discovered that there was a bloggers competition running to make an 18" x 18" cushion cover, using Terry's Fabrics and the winner will win £250 worth of vouchers to spend on the Terry's Website!

So, in super quick time I have put together my entry - inspired by the Blur pop art album cover, with the different quarters being different colours, I give you the Family Campervans:

Each Campervan is personalised with the family member's name

Being shown off on my living room sofa

A collage of the close up shots of each Campervan

The fab campervan material on the back in an envelope style

Side view showing off my neat sewing!!

I really enjoyed coming up with the design and suspect that this will probably be quite a popular item, so keep your eyes peeled for it in the shop soon!

I will be keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the Terry's Blog to see the other competition entrants and more excitingly, who wins all those lovely vouchers :-)

Edited to add: I'm cheating a bit today - I'm going to add this to the Handmade Monday post as I've been so busy this weekend and not had a chance to get on the laptop till just now (6pm on Sunday evening!!)

5 Tips to a Successful Trade Show

Regular readers of my blog will know that I have recently exhibited at my first Trade Show, the Harrogate Home & Gift Trade Show 2013 and wowee, have I learned a lot!

I felt the show went really well, especially given it was my first one and I had no real idea what to expect - the people I met were lovely (both fellow exhibitors and the buyers) and the exciting ideas I have come away with are enough to make my head burst!! If you can afford the outlay (it's not just the price of the stand, but also kitting it out, travelling expenses, accommodation and food whilst you're there) then the contacts you make and the leads it generates definitely make a Trade Show worthwhile doing.

I'm going to share the 5 most important things I've discovered this week on my emotional roller coaster ride!

1. Plan out your stand - do a mock layout and take pictures. Come back to it an hour later. How does it strike you as you walk up to it? Would you stop and have a look? Are your items getting lost? Or do they jump out at you? Think about the items you want to be seen most, or that will draw the buyer in for a closer look. Make sure they are placed at eye height with any lighting you are using focused on them.

2. Prepare for the questions you'll be asked - think about what a buyer would want to know and have your answers ready and written down on a sheet of paper that you can easily refer to. You may know all the answers backwards, but if for any reason you get thrown off track (imagine a buyer from John Lewis stops to talk to you!) it's essential to have the facts at your finger tips! So all you need to have all your retail prices and the trade prices you are offering. What volumes of orders can you cope with? If like me you hand make all your pieces and someone (that pesky buyer from John Lewis again!) asks if you could handle an order for 1,000 of a certain item, what would you do? How long would it take you to fulfill? Do you have backup in place for that situation? Do you have a minimum purchase amount? Do you offer free carriage? Do you drop ship? (terms explained in a minute) What are your terms?

3. Expect the unexpected - our exhibition hall was air conditioned, so although the temperatures were soaring last week, I didn't expect to have any problems with overheating - however the air conditioning packed up!!! We spent two days completely boiling, which made it very difficult to concentrate and as a result the pepped up start to our 4 days of exhibiting fell rather flat in the middle. It also meant that our buyers didn't stay very long and weren't all as enthusiastic as we'd have liked! We were being given bottles of water by the exhibition organisers on a regular basis, which was a relief as if you're manning a stand on your own, you can't keep nipping off to the cafe to buy water!

4. Making friends with your fellow exhibitors - as I just mentioned, if you're exhibiting by yourself on your stand, you need to make friends with your fellow exhibitors... not only will they help keep you sane over the course of the exhibition, but you can also then take turns at keeping an eye on each other's stands while you take loo breaks, lunch breaks, fresh air breaks, etc. I had some wonderful neighbours, specifically the most gorgeous couple ever, Jayne & Ged from Jola Designs who make beautifully clever cushions & canvases and Denise from Denise Moloney Ceramics who designs amazing plates, mugs & tea pots. We had a fantastic time - getting to know people under circumstances like this make for very intense friendships which I hope will last a long time!

5. The most important - GOOD SHOES! You are going to be standing up (something most of us are not at all used to) for up to 9 hours a day... I happened to bring with me 4 different pairs of shoes and I was VERY glad for it - a seasoned exhibitor recommended 2 different pairs of shoes per day. One lady did resort to wearing her slippers on the last day because she'd worn inappropriate shoes previously!

I mentioned different terms above... I thought I was fairly au fait with the terms I would encounter at a trade show, but there were some I'd not come across before, so I'll give you a brief summary of the most common terms used this week:

Minimum Amount - you can decide if you will place a minimum value on wholesale orders, so each order has to exceed a certain amount to qualify for wholesale prices

Free Carriage - Will you offer free shipping? Or does the buyer have to pay 'Carriage'

Drop Ship - where the manufacturer ships direct to a customer when an order is placed - this is particularly requested by online shops, so they do not have to hold large amounts of stock. It's also popular where the items require an element of personalisation (like the majority of my items) so this can be done once the order is placed.

Pro-forma - this is when the exhibitor sends the buyer a detailed breakdown of the items purchased and the prices, along with the terms (i.e. payment must be made within 30 days, payment must be made before items dispatched, etc) and the sellers bank details, which then allows for the buyer to make an online payment for the goods.

I hope all of that has been useful - I learned so much this week that I could just go on for hours (but I won't bore you all any further!) instead I'll just leave you with some pictures of my stand and now I'm off for a mooch around the other Handmade Monday posts with a cuppa and some cake!

Christmas In July!

Well, it's turned nice & hot this weekend, so we've been out in the garden or in the local pub gardens almost all the time.

The kids have had a great time playing and hubby & I have had a lovely
time relaxing with friends!












But now we're back to Monday and no more sunbathing for me, as I have just re-opened my Etsy shop after my "holiday" month (i.e. time to panic about the Home & Gift Fair in less than 2 weeks - EEEEEK!)

And very excitingly I'm taking part in the Etsy-wide "Christmas in July" promotion, which is an American tradition, whereby shops offer a discount on Christmas goods halfway through the year for organised shoppers to get a head start!

Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

In some western countries, July has a minor number of marketing opportunities. In the United States and Canada, there are no national holidays between the first week of July (Canada Day on July 1 in Canada and the Fourth of July in the United States) and Labo(u)r Day (the first Monday in September for both the US and Canada), leaving two months with no holidays. (Some Canadian provinces hold a civic holiday in August, but this is not a national holiday.) The late July period provides relatively few opportunities for merchandising, since it is typically after the peak of summer product sales in June and early July, but before the back to school shopping period begins in August. Therefore, to justify sales, shops (such as Leon's in Canada) will sometimes announce a Christmas in July sale.

As a lot of my funny goodies could be bought as Christmas presents, I thought I would offer a store-wide promotion, not just the Christmassy items, although they are all in the shop now too:

So you just need to use the code CIJUK10 at checkout to get 10% off all orders over £10 for the whole month!

Now I'm off with a cuppa for a slightly belated hop round Handmade Monday :-)

UK Handmade Interview & a Day at Pre-School

I forgot to mention a couple of weeks ago that I had been interviewed by the lovely and ever-so patient Kirsten Miller of UK Handmade for their Road Less Traveled series. I was a little bit nervous as it's the first proper interview I've done since starting Grace's Favours but it wasn't scary and the end result is something I'm really really pleased with and as soon as I can work out how to I'll be adding a "Press" section to the website!

to see the rest of the pics (and read the words!) click here

The other thing I wanted to share this week was the session I did at my daughter, Seren's, Pre-School class. Her teacher (who knows what I do for a living) asked if I would be interested in going into the nursery for a day to teach the Pre-School children how to sew! I was delighted to be asked and decided that I would get them doing a basic sampler like this:

Flower sampler

So I cut out a square of material for each child and machine stitched round the edges so it didn't fray once they started sewing. Then I drew the flower in 4 different colours (green stalk & leaves, orange centre, red for one set of petals and purple for the other set of petals)

I'd ordered a batch of large plastic needles and some embroidery threads in different colours and armed with all of this I set off for nursery on Tuesday morning.

Seren was beside herself with excitement and all her friends (actually, thankfully only 6 of them and 2 staff members!) were really enthusiastic about their "lesson"

Here are some pics from the day:

Great concentration from the boys - surprisingly!

Seren (in the heart dress) very keen to get every stitch right!

Mary: Are you sure I'm showing him right???

Sue: I'm sure I can do this!

One of the best results!

Stopped for lunch and a play, great progress!

They all worked SO hard, I was really proud of all the children! We didn't quite finish our projects in the day (interspersed with playing, running round outside and many pit stops for food and drinks!) so I'm going back in a fortnight's time to help them finish off.

I really really enjoyed my day with the kids, but my god, was I exhausted at the end of it!! I have a newfound respect for Nursery Staff!

Now pootling over to Handmade Monday now for a mooch round to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

VW Baja Bug Cushion - FINISHED!

Well this was a heck of a commission! I started it before I went on holiday in May, but quickly realised it wasn't something I was going to be able to put together in a week, so thankfully my lovely customer was happy to wait until after the holiday to get it finished.

This is how I left it before I went away:

To be honest I was thinking of starting again as it just wasn't coming together, but then after a couple of weeks away, and with renewed vigour, it started to take shape:

And then once I added the customisation I was really pleased. And this is how it finally turned out:

I've also finally done something I've been meaning to try out for ages - a collage of photos - this one shows the two pictures I got from the customer as the brief, and the end result.

I'm really pleased with how well it's turned out, but next time I'll have a better idea how long a piece of custom work like this will take!

Even though I didn't write this specifically for Handmade Monday this week, I'm going to link it up as we've just got back from a weekend away and I don't want to miss this week out!!

Welcome to the world of Uniquely UK

Hello my lovelies :-)

Sorry for being absent for a while... we had a wonderful holiday and came back last weekend, very reluctantly!

Having spent the week trying to get my head back in the game, I am now feeling quite motivated to get things going again!

However I may have mentioned that I'm going to be exhibiting at the Home & Gift Fair in Harrogate this year, so I've decided to keep the majority of my shops shut for another month to give me enough time to prepare for the event.

Buuuuuut.... there is one shop that I won't be closing as it's really new and very exciting and a collaboration with 9 friends... it's called Uniquely UK!

We are all existing and established designers & makers, who sell through Etsy, but we have felt for a while that we wanted to do something as a group to try and bring the unique, high quality and unusual items that we make to the forefront of UK consumers' awareness.

We are working towards running our own website, but in the interim we have opened a Folksy Shop

And here are the lovely Designers that I'm working with:

Aisling Dezines
Damson Tree Pottery

Erika Price
Jane Crick

Purse Poppet
RDR Photography
Rebecca's Emporium
Tatania Rose
The Feminine Touch

I would LOVE it if you guys would check out our collaborative shop and if you've got 5 minutes (although you'll get lost and spend hours ;-p) check out the gang's individual shops!

Now I'm off for a long overdue catch up at Wendy's Handmade Harbour Blog......xxx

PS. I've also got links to two of my cohorts' blog posts about our shop - both blogs are fab and worth reading so I thought I'd add their links in here:

The Feminine Touch's Post
Rebecca's Emporium's Post