PHEW - THAT WAS THE WEEKEND THAT WAS

Hi everyone

A very busy weekend following a hectic week.  It's definitely a feet up and watch television evening - well, it will be once I have done some more work.

Yesterday I took part in the Play Kenya Craft Fair in Pirbright and a great day sales-wise.  I sold my lovely black cat jute bag, as well as one I made in the week with a Scottie dog on a red sequin lead.  My mini-cards were a great success and I also sold one of my cuppa-candles.  I completely forgot to take photographs and my cake-making friend, Linda, took some instead but they may have to wait for next week to be posted on my blog.  The craft fair was pretty near to 100% handmade, which was lovely.

Today it was the Wedding Fayre at the Frensham Pond Hotel.  I have taken part in a wedding fayre at this venue before and it is always very well organised.  Mala, the Sales & Events Organiser, regularly visits each stallholder throughout the day to see how their day is going; there is always good follow-up after the event and a really nice touch is that we get vouchers for tea and coffee and a sandwich.  Lots of interest in my wedding stationery, a request for a quote and I hope there will be follow-ups once the brides-to-be have ploughed through the large bag of promotional material they collected during the event.

Earlier this week Mala asked if I could produce some wedding stationery to go on their welcome table - their colours were going to be purple and white.  I produced an invitation and place name card.  Mala also asked if I could produce two menu cards for the table, which I made in similar colours to the invitation and here are photographs of them:

The following are a of pic of my stall and a sample invitation I was recently asked to produce :

One of the highlights of the event was this cake:

Isn't it fantastic?  All those lovely vegetables.  The picture doesn't do it justice.  The cake is made by the brilliant Cruikshank's - have a look at this website and you will see the gorgeous cakes he makes.  I asked him if I could take this photograph and promised I would add his details as a thank you.

It's over to Handmade Harbour for me now to catch up with everyone's week.  Thank you everyone who commented on my blog post last week - as always very much appreciated.

A slightly quieter week for me - hopefully - although I do have two events to make for on Saturday, but thankfully nothing on Sunday.

Have a good week everyone.

Jill

WORK, WORK, WORK - ROLL ON CHRISTMAS

Hello everyone

What a soggy and miserable day today is - only weather-wise that is.  I don't think it has stopped raining all day - thank goodness we did a bit of gardening yesterday as the ground is now pretty muddy.

A busy week again - it's that time of year, isn't it?  You just can't sit back and think everything has been finished, you are on top of your work and it's time to put your feet up, can you?

On Friday I took part in the Autumn Fair at the Normandy Therapy Garden.  A little surprised when I arrived to find that I was going to be in a small marquee - there were three other stalls in with me.  If you recall Friday's weather it was very, very windy and although the marquee was well anchored to the ground, the sides were flapping a bit, but we did have quite a bit of sunshine during the morning.  I know the organisers as I have held a card-making workshop there so it was nice to see Penny again.  Thank you everyone for the numerous and very welcome cups of free coffee.  The event was very well attended and I am pleased to say I made a small profit.  The Therapy Garden is a lovely place and if you live in this area or if you visit here, please do go along and have a look at it.  It provides great learning opportunities for people who may not get the chance to work with plants.  You can also buy vegetables there, plants and some pretty amazing wooden structures (plant frames, bird boxes, etc).

The only disappointment and nothing to do with the Therapy Garden is the signposting here.  About three years ago our Parish Council (PC) promised to put up signs to the Village Hall and the Therapy Garden (they are on the same land).  True to their word, they have put a sign up - directing everyone to the Manor Fruit Farm!  Great if you know that the land where the Village Hall and Therapy Garden are situated was formerly the fruit farm but if you don't live in the area, it will not mean anything to you.  I feel a letter to the PC coming on.

I made a few items of new stock and here are some photographs taken at the event:

This one is made with what felt like 1,000,000 ribbon circles!

An autumnal ribbon wrapped around a polystyrene ring, decorated with same ribbon ties and topped off with felt flowers and brown beads in the centre of the flowers

As you can seen, the sun did shine during the day 

A work-in-progress wreath.  navy blue ribbon wrapped around a polystyrene wreath and decorated with sea shells (bought from The Works, not removed from a beach).

I had a lovely order for a large quantity of my decorated jute bags from a friend this week - thank you Lesley.  I am going to enjoy working on these very much as they are to be butterfly themed.

I have a meeting at a local day centre on Wednesday to discuss holding regular card-making workshops there.  I should have more information for next week's Sunday blog and will tell you all about it then. I hope that not only will this be of interest to the people who use the centre regularly, but also to local residents, people who have attended my card-making workshops and newcomers to this lovely craft.

A very busy week which ends with a Craft Fair in Pirbright on Saturday and a Wedding Fayre at Frensham Pond Hotel on Sunday.  I have a feeling that this time next week, I might be asleep!

Between now and then it is work, work, work - no doubt the same for all of us involved in the world of handmade.  Have a great week everyone and don't forget to visit this week's bloggers taking part in Handmade Monday - would you believe it is week 138??

Jill  

END OF A BUSY AND EXHAUSTING WEEK

Hi everyone

It's raining and apparently it is going to be soggy all day today, and on and off for most of this coming week. Yesterday was such a gorgeous day - the last day of warm sunshine this year?

This last week has been frantic - I feel exhausted and plan to take today off, well making cards, etc so less mad than last week.  I eventually finished the finals bits of the wedding stationery at 7.15 pm on Friday!  I had visions of handing out the Order of Service to the guests while still collating them, then on to the Reception Hotel to finish putting together the table plan!  A very close shave.  The  church service was lovely and both the bride and groom looked perfect.  The groom, best men (yes, 2) and ushers had waistcoats similar to the cream of the invitations and their button-holes were of a similar orange to the ribbon used.  The bridesmaids dresses were also a matching orange colour and the page-boys had waistcoats similar to those of the groom.  It was all very beautiful and a lot of hard work had gone into all of the arrangements.  True to tradition, and to the wedding stationery deadlines over the past few weeks, the bride was 10-minutes late - was I surprised?  Not at all.

Here is a photograph of the table plan when it was about to be 'stuck' down- not all tables had the same number of guests on, but the request was not to make the cards the same size as some would look a little empty.  It matches the design of both the invitations and order of service and I had a lovely message from the bride on Friday evening saying how pleased she was with everything I had done

Sadly, I had to leave while the register signing was taking place.  I was at an event in Pirbright and although a friend was covering for me, I had been away nearly 2 hours and felt it wasn't fair to be away any longer.  

The handmade event was very successful in the number of visitors - but I don't think it was successful for all stallholders.  I noticed that someone selling knitted toys (Postman Pat, etc) didn't do very well.  There were 4 stalls selling jewellery (too much competition?) and lucky for me only one other card-seller, whose cards were completely different to mine.  My mini-cards were a big success again - so the next few days will see me working hard to build up my stock.  I was very pleased that my friend, Linda, who covered for me while I was at the wedding, did very well with her cakes.  This was her first event and as anyone knows who has been at a craft event, not doing well at your first show is very disappointing and so de-motivating.  She sold lots of cup-cakes and took orders for her Christmas Cake (lots of tasty samples to try made it very popular).

It's Handmade Monday time so do nip over and check out the other blogs taking part.  Lots of gorgeous makes and great posts.  Don't forget that even if someone doesn't take part in Handmade Monday and you are normally a regular visitor to their blog, it's still nice to drop in and see how they are doing.

I hope lots of you Handmade Monday bloggers are going to take part in my World Card-Making Competition.  Make & Craft are sponsoring the competition and have generously donated three prizes.  Even if you are not normally a card-maker, why not join in?

The non-crafty stuff

Did you read Eva's latest guest blog post?  She certainly has a knack of making you want to immediately book up to go to the places she writes about.  Many thanks Eva, a great post and as always the photographs are lovely.  I hope you are enjoying your holiday in Budapest.

I attended a fund-raising dinner on Wednesday of last week.  Almost needless to say it was for cats - Woking Cats Protection.  The proceeds of the raffle raised £1,250 - a brilliant amount and one very generous person bid £250 for a 4-ball game of golf that was donated by Club where the dinner was held.

My two lovely foster kittens, Ash and Micro, left home last week - well my home that is.  They went to their new family on Thursday and I know they will have a very happy new life.  My temporary kitten-fostering has come to, what I hope it to be, a temporary end.  I was due to have two 'new' ones on Friday, but one has been homed and the other one has gone to a different fosterer.  So, the pen is empty, no more squeaking kittens calling for me, no water-bowl tipped up, no biscuits thrown around the place (on the plus side, no litter trays to empty!) - sad.

My pottery course began again last week and this time around I am doing the morning and afternoon sessions.  I spent last week working on pieces created last term and this week will begin creating a major project (or two) and finish off the 'left-overs' as they become 'cooked', etc.  It is good to be back with everyone, a really nice group and one new person this term, so I no longer feel like the 'new girl'.  I worked on a test piece to identify possible colours for the necklace and earrings I made last term; the firing may not be carried out for a week or so as there needs to be a reasonable number of pieces to ensure the kiln is full.  All great fun and I really enjoy myself.

Lots of catching up to do over the next few days: card-making, tweeting to people who have either tweeted me, RTd my blog posts, mentioned me, etc - I have been very neglectful recently (particular apologies to Dawn and Lesley).  I have three card orders to make - one of which is urgent (this is beginning to feel familiar), blog posts that I must comment on, and website work, and, and, and.....  

Have a good week everyone.  If you would like to be guest blogger or enter the card-making competition, please do get in touch: christmaspiecrafts@virginmedia.com.  I will be back on Wednesday with my usual mid-week post and don't forget to drop in on Friday to read my guest blogger's post.  How about joining in Caroline's UK Handmade Thursday blog hop? Have a look at the posts from last week's contributors and make a diary note to join in this week

Jill