Felt Star Garland Giveaway

Two posts in one day... how does she manage it? I hear you ask... well the answer is... it's just as well you can't see the mess around the house, the amount of time the kids have spent on their tablets today, the amount of work I have piled up and the state of my hair!!

But anyway, I'm back with a little starry giveaway!

There will be 2 winners, picked at random at midday on Monday 2nd November (GMT) and to be in with a chance to win a garland, all you need to do is leave me a comment saying which you'd like to win - the Rainbow Garland or the Glittery Garland.

I'm happy to post internationally... so GO, GO, GO!

How Celebrity Endorsements Can Boost Your Sales

Now we all know that one of the best things that can happen to a small business is a celebrity endorsement... but how do you get that wonderful magical thing to happen.

Well it can be hard work. Here are 5 things that will help:

1. Work out who you want to connect with. I have chosen a number of famous (and infamous!) because they are interested in crafting or are part of my target customer demographic (i.e. they fit into the group that I am aiming my products at) it's no good following George Clooney if you are trying to get your products to new Mum's who need breast feeding cover ups!

2. Follow (stalk!) your chosen celebs. I follow a number of people on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram... including Kirstie Allsop, George Clarke, Jan Constantine, Benedict Cumberbatch (sadly not really him as he doesn't do social media, but a page run by his people!), Rosie O'Donnell, Taylor Swift, Marie Osmond, Martha Stewart.... I could go on!

3. If they tweet/post something that is relevant to you, comment on it. I.e. Get them to notice you. Interact with them.

4. If you have something you think would be up their street.... tag them or message them about it. Don't spam them with loads of links, but just if something really fits, let them know.

5. Persevere! It's not going to happen over night, but hopefully, with a bit of luck, your work will pay off.

And here's my celebrity endorsement story...

It's quite a small, insignificant thing, but it has already shown results.

I was mooching through my Twitter feed this morning, sitting in bed with a cup of tea, whilst the kids played and my husband complained about having to go to work (so in other words.... I had zoned them all out!) and up popped this tweet from George Clarke:

I read it and checked out the Instagram pic, which was this:

 So I thought I'd take a chance and reply with a cheeky request for a re-tweet. This way my tweet:

Notice how I put the key points in to catch his attention and save the need for any questions - yes, I'm donating profits to the Royal British Legion charity, the prices are included in the picture and there is a link to the poppies in my Etsy Shop

SO then I just carried on with what I was doing... hassling the kids to get dressed, shoving the dog off the clothes pile, soothing the husband about having to work, umpiring World War III as it broke out over which socks belonged to who and who had got dressed 'first'!!

Then... PING.... I checked my phone and saw that Gorgeous Gorge had re tweeted my tweet!!!

OHMIGOD OHMIGOD OHMIGOD!

When I checked 2.5 hours later, 4,500 people had seen my tweet! And my phone has been 'Kerchiiiiiing-ing' merrily all morning as orders are being placed!

So while, Gorge himself hasn't bought one (yet!) just by retweeting my tweet to his 93,000 followers has done my little business a HUGE amount of good and it's also helping the Royal British Legion, which is fantastic!

So, what have you got to lose?

How To: Halloween Spooky Spider Tutorial

In my previous post I shared some of the details of the Halloween crafts we got up to at Seren's 7th Birthday Party.

The Spooky Spiders, which were really straightforward to make, so I've done a mini-tutorial for them:

You Will Need:

Yarn (any colour)
4 Pipe Cleaners (any colours)
2 Googly Eyes
1 Large Needle
Pair of Scissors
PVA Glue (or similar)

Instructions:

1. Gather your materials.

2. Cut your pipe cleaners in half and wrap one around the middle of the other three. This will leave two legs shorter than the others, they'll be your front legs.

3. Add a blob (technical term) of glue to the centre of the pipe cleaners and stick on the end of your yarn.

4. Wrap, wrap and wrap some more! When you are happy with the plumpness of your spider, glue the end of the yarn to the bottom of your spider (Note: At this point you can chose which is the top & bottom of your spider - once you've chosen, bend the legs accordingly)

5. Add the googly eyes. If they are self adhesive, great.... if not, just add a blob (still a technical term!) to the back of each eyeball.

Your spider is finished!

If you would like to hang him up, cut off another length of yarn, thread the large needle and push the needle through one of the strands of yarn at the top of your spider. Tie off the yarn at the top and hang:

Enjoy your spider making!

We also made Felt Eyeball Coasters:

Which I've not done a full tutorial for, but have explained what we did here

Halloween Crafts

Seren, my almost 7 year old decided that as her birthday is near to Halloween, that this year she would like a Halloween themed craft party.

Ok. We can do that I thought and got Googling!!

The crafty items I came up with were Felt Eyeball Coasters* (using this great tutorial at Patchwork Posse)

And a Spooky Spider:

As I came up with this one all on my very own (as Seren used to say when she was little!) I've done a tutorial to go with this post - it's really easy and the two 5 year olds managed it perfectly as well as all the 7 year olds.

The kids also decorated ghoulish cupcakes and made rolo pastry eyes.

They had a great time and as far as kids parties go, it was far less stressful than 25 kids in a hall with a bouncy castle!!

*The Felt Eyeball Coasters are really really easy peasy! You just need 4 circle templates, each one a bit smaller than the last. For the largest, I drew around the largest mug we have and then made the template a bit larger again. The smallest circle (for the white of the eye) needs to be a good bit smaller than the black bit. Once you have cut them all out, glue the coloured felt onto the largest white circle, then glue to black circle to the middle of the coloured piece and the small white circle, glue to one side of the black circle. Make sure you cover each felt circle with glue right up to the edge. We used a normal PVA glue in cleaned out yoghurt pots and plastic spatulas - 1 for each child so there was no arguing!!

Here are some pics of the room, decorated in our Halloween goodies!

Birthday Girl and ghoulish cupcake decorating

Felt Eyeball Coasters

More Felt Eyeball Coasters

Halloween Candle hiding in a stone nook

Ghostie Fairy Lights

Eyeball Fairy Lights and my Halloween Wall Hanging

Collection of Spooky Spiders - particularly love the one eyed and no eyed ones!

Happy Birthday Seren!

Rolo Pastry Eyeball Making

The kids all had such a good time as you can see!

Handmade At Amazon is Live!

Well, we got there!! I had a few teething problems but I worked it out eventually and.....

Handmade At Amazon is now live! Phew!

Here's my Artisan Profile:

And here are the first products I've got listed:

Not sure why the 3rd listing isn't showing (a few kinks in the system perhaps?!)

So far Handmade @ Amazon is only available to US buyers, but they assured me it will be rolled out to the rest of the world, probably sometime next year.

So now, I'm just going to try and work out how to change the shipping prices to reflect the actual postage costs and list some more goodies!

Handmade @ Amazon

A couple of weeks ago I applied to Handmade @ Amazon - it's a little like Etsy, in that it's a market place for handmade products, but it ties into the main Amazon site, which opens up markets to a huge range of potential customers.

It's a little bit daunting applying to a huge giant like Amazon, but, amazingly, on Monday morning this week I got an email saying they had approved my application - yay!

So, now I have the next scary task... trying to navigate their system to get my products loaded... a very slow, somewhat bewildering task. that is currently being accompanied by vast amounts of tea & chocolate!

So I'm pretty sure that the 2 hours worth of work I just put into creating my storefront and first product, shoud have yielded more than this!!

HELP!!

Might have to resort to more chocolate and then tackle the user manual again to see if I can work out where I've gone wrong!

DIY Pirate Hook Tutorial - Make Your Own Pirate Costume Series

Arrrrrrhhhhh Me Hearties!

It be another in my series of Pirate Tutorials today.

Okay, that's enough Pirate Speak!

Today we're going to make a Pirate Hook to go with the Pirate Sword and the Eye Patch I've shared before previous International Speak Like a Pirate Day's (which this year is this coming Saturday)

You Will Need:

- Felt - colour of your choice (one A4 sheet per hook) 

- 2 x Plastic cups

- Metal hook from a plastic coat hanger

- Glue

- Ribbon or Braid

- Sugru (if you have any - otherwise you can use glue and blue tac)

- Awl (if you don't have one, anything with a sharp point, like a metal skewer will work)

Instructions:

1. Cut a slit in one of the plastic cups, all the way to the base and cut off the bottom (try to cut as close to the base as possible) then remove the rim as well as this makes it easier to flatten out. Flatten out on top of your felt and draw around the plastic. Cut out the felt leaving at leas a 1" seam allowance all the way round.

2. Glue the felt to the other plastic cup, folding the felt over the rim of the cup and gluing down.

3. Draw around the base of the cup and cut out the felt piece. Then glue this onto the base of the cup. With the awl (or metal skewer) carefully make a hole through the felt and the cup in the centre of the cup base.

4. Glue your ribbon or braid around the join at the base of the cup.

5. Insert the hook into the base of the cup and secure in place. If you have Sugru follow the instructions on the packet and attach the sugru to the inside of the cup, with the hook in place (see Picture 6) but if not, once the hook is in place, add a blob of blue tac to the inside of the cup, to hold the hook in place and place a blob of glue on the outside, where the hook goes into the cup. The glue will dry clear.

6. With a clear cup that has not had the felt wrapped round it yet, I've shown here what to do with the Sugru (or blue tac). Sugru takes 24 hours to dry, hence this being the last step.

7. And here is your finished cup ready to play with! Well done!

As I'm posting this on the day I've made my Pirate Hooks I've not got any pictures to show you of my little pirates playing with them, but check back tomorrow and once the Sugru has dried I'll allow them to be road tested!

Have fun and enjoy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Fun with Hama Beads

We love Hama Beads (or Perler Beads as they're sometimes known) in this house... we've made all sorts of things:

Shamrock made by Daddy

Aliens & the Mothership from a retro computer game (am trying to make out that I haven't forgotten the name of said game!)

A sunny seahorse

I've been building a Pinterest Board with Hama Bead ideas

And when a lovely lady approached me to host a 9 year old's birthday party I knew it would be great to involve hama beads somehow.

So I made up a bag with a hama bead tag like this:

My example felt bag

And here are some of the girls' creations:

And the birthday girl with her bag:

They are so much fun to make - all you need is a board (you can buy different shaped boards, but a square one is the most flexible in terms of making different patterns) a bunch of beads, some tracing paper/baking paper/freezer paper (a sheet of which usually comes with a pack of beads) and an iron.

I'd love to see some of the Hama Bead creations you make, so feel free to email them to me at simmi@gracesfavours.co.uk

That Sinking Feeling...

Last night, just as I was about to go to sleep my husband showed me something he'd seen on the Guardian website:

Felt Campervan by Lucy Sparrow

Grace's Favours Original Felt VW Cuddly Campervan

AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!

That was my first thought.

Well, that's me done for.

That was my second thought.

Bloody Hell... why can't I be an 'artist' and be featured in the Guardian?

That was my third thought.

And then I calmed down a bit.

Lucy Sparrow is a designer/artist/maker/call her what you will that I came across for the first time last year when she set up an empty shop front to make it into a felt filled corner shop:

Felt Food made for The Corner Shop by Lucy Sparrow as part of the Folksy Interview

Everyone from the Daily Mail to Etsy and Folksy wrote about it, so it was hard to miss and of course, knowing my love of felt, lots of friends and family sent me links.

And for the most part, when my jealousy is under control, I am very pleased for Lucy and impressed by what's she's achieved... but the Campervan.... that left me feeling not so pleased.

I know I don't have the monopoly on making felt campervans and whilst I believe I was the first person to create cuddly campervans (as I did extensive research before I made my first one and found none like it out there in internetland - I first talked about them here in 2012) I cannot stop anyone else from making the same iconic vehicle in felt.

But when someone much more famous and well regarded makes them... well, that feels a bit worrying.

Although I know mine are original and very popular, does the fact that Lucy Sparrow has had her's featured in the Guardian make mine less.... I can't even find the right word... worthy? Interesting to customers? Original? Creative?

No, of course not. But it is hard to feel cheerful when you see something that mirrors your most popular item, being promoted in the popular press, created by someone else.

I suppose the one saving grace is that unless Lucy is planning to make them to order and personalise them, my shop is still the go-to place for the original personalised Cuddly Campervan!

Felt Cuddly Campervans by Grace's Favours

And now that I've got all that out there I feel ok about it all again.

But it is hard to keep the green eyed monster at bay sometimes!

A Hard Decision....

I have come to a hard decision.

Last year I started introducing sewing patterns into my shop and the idea was that I would split my time between creating sewing patterns and making made to order items:

However, since March 2014 I have only created 14 new patterns.... that's roughly 1 a month.

If I want to take make my mark on the sewing industry as a pattern designer I am going to need to make more than 1 pattern a month, or at the very least, make sure that the patterns I am offering are far more in depth than I have the time for at the moment.

So while we've been on holiday for the last 3 weeks I have been wondering how to change the status quo as all my gorgeous customers have been keeping me mightily busy with their made to order purchases!

So I have decided to remove a large proportion of my made to order listings from my Etsy Shop and now have the following sections:

So in the Made To Order sections we now have the Campervans (the big cuddly ones and the mini ones) Baby Mobiles (which currently includes the Mini Campervans and Airplanes but will be extended in due course) Framed Pictures (because I love making them) and the Poppies which I make and donate part of the profits to the Royal British Legion.

I know that this will come as a shock to some of my gorgeous customers and I am really sorry about that, but as the shop was in Vacation Mode for a couple of weeks, I took the opportunity to revamp the shop and this will give me more time to create new patterns and hopefully next year to start offering Sew Your Own Kits.

If there is anything that we were offering as a Made to Order item that you would like to purchase, I will honour all the old items and their prices until the end of September. To order any of these, you can email me at simmi@gracesfavours.co.uk

Thank you all for your continued support, comments and love. Simmi xxx

How to polish sea glass (and get rid of the salt)

Whilst we're on holiday I wanted to collect some shells and sea glass from the beaches of Wexford so as to make a picture of a beach scene when we get home.

I've been collecting shells from our Wexford holidays for the last 10 years, but I am determined to get something actually made with them this year!!

I have in mind a felted beach scene in a box frame with the shells and small pebbles at the bottom of the frame.... however, whether I manage to actually make it remains to be seen!

Now, for the sea glass. I've seen some amazing things (Pictures & jewellery mainly) made from sea glass but I've never really managed to find much. But this week we went to a stonier beach (we usually favour the beautiful sandy beaches that are so wonderful around here) and my husband and one of his cousins' sons were brilliant at spotting the sea glass. So I came home with this little collection:

But I'm not keen on the salt residue left on them, obscuring the gorgeous colours and natural shininess of the glass.

So first I washed them in plain water... they looked fine and shiny, until they dried out. And then the salt returned. So next I tried soaking them in lemon juice.... thinking that the acid in the lemon would strip away the salt. But still no luck:

PIC

So finally I thought I'd try the other thing that was nudging at the back of my mind... oil. The only oil I could readily find at my Mother-In-Law's was olive oil, so I put a small amount onto a couple of pieces of kitchen roll and rubbed the sea glass over the patches of oil.

And, once dry.... voila!

Hurrah!

The piece I'm most keen on is the piece of safety glass, which is the one with the metal (Iron?) inside the glass, to toughen it. I think the sea glass will be made into a separate picture... hopefully of a fish if I can organise the pieces into a fishy shape!