THE CARDS ARE ON THE TABLE

Hello everyone

Well, not on the table rather they are in a magazine, but 'the cards are in the magazine' didn't have the same ring to it as my chosen post title and there is a reason for the title.  In October 2011 the Popular Crafts magazine featured my Blog in one of the regular blog reviews.  As I am sure you read in the post when I mentioned this, I was very pleased and excited to see my Blog 'in print'.  Shortly after the magazine was published, Katherine Jewitt (the Editor) contacted me to ask if I would be interested in reviewing a card-making kit.  Even better was that the version recommended for me to 'test drive' was about cats!  A double whammy and as you can imagine I said yes very quickly.

The pack arrived not long before we were due to go on holiday in November and I knew that I would have problems completing it before then, so I took it with me.  Along with holiday gear went laptop, camera, cables, paper, crafting kit and the kitchen sink.  Once or twice while Richard was out climbing the million and one steps in and around Valletta, I was back at the apartment drawing and colouring while sitting on the balcony sipping something nice and fizzy.  Who had the better deal?  Me - those steps were many and steep.

Despite creating greetings cards, I haven't actually drawn anything for many, many years and this review required me to do that.  Initially I had some pretty strange shapes to the cats I drew and did think I would have been better taking photographs of Jazz and Daisy that I could have drawn from.  After some trial runs, I managed to get two cat-shape outlines onto card and off I went with the fun bit of drawing the patterns in and colouring - oh boy colouring-in is such fun and made me feel about 5 again.  OK, I know that is a looong time ago, but I can just about remember it and know it was great fun.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was very, very pleased when I had completed the project - particularly as we had a few hiccups with the Wifi in the apartment and I had visions of whizzing around Malta try to find an Internet cafe from which to send my final pictures.  The magazine is due out at the end of this week and apart from my review it is packed with lots of other great projects and articles, and I am really honoured to be in such great crafting company.  I really recommend you buy a copy of the magazine and once it has been published, I will put a couple of pics in my next blog - have you ever seen red, orange, green, yellow and blue cats?  Well, you are in for a treat.

I have been working on my new ranges this week, as well as building my website - takes a long while as have to photograph everything I make, change the size, make other alternations and ensure it looks good on the site, add information, and also think about the various pages that require setting up.  The hardest part so far has been the About Me page - I am sure this is the same for all website designers.  Too much detail about the things I do might not be interesting, but then again too little may make the site uninteresting.  Progress is slow but sure - although it has taken me absolute ages to get to this stage, I am still working slowly as I want to ensure the website is good when it first goes live.  No 'going live' date decided up on yet.

One of the areas I want to move into are card-making workshops and I prepared some handouts which I distributed at events prior to Christmas.  I have two people who want to sign up but really will need more to make it worth while and enjoyable for everyone involved.  If you know of anyone who wants to spend a fun couple of hours creating cards in or around the Guildford area, please ask them to get in touch with me.  With Valentine's Day and Mother's Day fast approaching, now is a good time to start making cards. I hope to have a Stampin Up demonstrator taking part as well.

It's Handmade Monday and for the second week running I don't have anything to actually 'show' as my makes this week have been for my website, and not yet ready for posting on my Blog.  Plus, having had a painful left arm for a couple of weeks, I went to the doc's and discovered it was the return of the tennis elbow that I had suffered from not so long ago!  It hadn't occurred to me that it had come back again, but it's very painful and the only consolation is that it is in my left arm and I am right-handed.  Rest, medication and some pain-relieving gel prescribed - the first one is very hard to manage though.  However, I am taking part in Handmade Monday this week as it is a great way to find out what other crafters are doing, so why not join me in checking out the other contributors' blogs and read what they have been up to during last week.  Believe me, you will see some pretty amazing work and read some great posts.

Have a great week - I will be back on Wednesday.

Jill

EXCITING TIMES

Hi everyone

I always begin to write my blog 2 - 3 days before it is due to be posted (I forget things otherwise) and at the moment (Friday morning) the weather is grim!  Tipping down, flooding in the garden and very dark, grey skies and it is miserable.  However, I am pleased to say that I feel much, much better - cotton wool has disappeared from my head and my brain seems to be working again and I don't feel dark, grey and miserable.

Returning to this section of the post at the end of Friday hasn't seen much improvement in the weather - a teeny, tiny bit of sunshine and then it ran away!

Daisy is very sensible and settles down to a cozy day snoozing in a comfortable chair with a good book and later on a glass of wine, getting up for the occasional biscuit.  Jazz hates this weather but hates being stuck inside even more, spends all of his time rushing out for a few minutes and realising he is wet, rushes back in and shakes himself over us - firstly having walked over every 'just-cleaned' surface!

I have found that evening crafting is a bit of a no-no with these two at the moment; I often do cutting work for my cards while watching television.  Unfortunately, two cats on my lap prohibits me from even picking up a pair of scissors let alone using them to cut paper.

The reason for the title of this post, Exciting Times, is that I have received an email from Popular Crafts saying they would like to feature my blog in their favourite blogs feature in the next issue!  The feature will include a pic of my blog and the web link.  How exciting is that!  I am so very pleased and really looking forward to seeing my blog in print, so to speak.  In addition to attracting new blog-followers to Christmas Pie Crafts, my current followers and those blogs I follow will, I am sure, enjoy some new visitors too.  I am not too sure of the publication date of the issue my blog will 'appear' in, but watch this space for further news.

The day hasn't been spent only following the USA weather news throughout the day (I have a brother and sister-in-law who live just outside of New York and want to make sure they are both OK) as I have made a start on Christmas cards.  About time too, I hear!  Last year for Christmas I began a range of small (3" x 3") cards and they sold incredibly well at fairs.  They can be used either as greetings cards or gift cards and were popular with children or people who had to buy a lot of cards, but only needed small ones.  I have a big stock of general all-year-round ones, but decided today was the day to make a start on Christmas ones, and here are the first 5:

I have added ready-made embellishments to each card, as well as clear 'jewels' to look like snow.  In addition to selling these as single cards, I also sell them in packs of 5.

As the weather is very similar to how it was when I first began this post, I feel very motivated to carry on card-making - it looks just like winter out!    Raining heavily, pretty chilly and windy.  Roll on summer.

I'll be back blogging on Wednesday - likely to be a late evening post though as 31 August is my final day in my 'day-job'.  I am pleased to be leaving the stress and long, long days behind, but will miss the people I work with.  However, 1 September sees a complete change of work style for me - full-time (or nearly full-time) crafting.  I have a long list of all the things I need to do: clear out cupboards, clear out drawers, empty boxes that have been full for ages - as well as replenish my card stock and carry on putting my new ideas into practice.

Enjoy the rest of the Bank Holiday everyone

Don't forget that on 21 September I will be making a blog post about what everyone (buyers and sellers) expect of Craft Fairs, so if you have ideas, requests or suggestions, please let me know and I will add them to the list.

Jill

WEDNESDAY'S (WISE?) WORDS

Hi everyone

A break from the norm.  I have decided that I will try to blog mid-week as well as on Sundays just to keep everyone up-to-date with life at Christmas Pie Crafts.

It's the time of year when I and my fellow crafters begin to think of Christmas - well to be honest, the more organised have not just been thinking of it for several  months, but have a considerable amount of stock already made.  Me?  I like to kid myself that as my tastes and style changes so often, if I make something in the summer for December, I won't like it when it comes to sale time!  However, I do find it a little difficult to sit and make cards with snowmen, Santa Claus and Christmas trees on them when the sun is blazing down outside (not that we have seen that happen much recently).  Because of this my production rate has been fairly low, but I know that I will need to kick myself into touch or else.

Yesterday I had a lovely surprise visitor.  Towards the end of last year I had a stall at an event for the local Parkinson's group.  A lady who had been to the event had my details and called in to buy some cards from me - it was lovely to see her and she bought several cards, and arranged to visit me at one of my Christmas events.  It's great to get new business, but even better to get repeat custom because it means my greetings cards are enjoyed.

My visitor prompted me to think about the events I have booked for this year and also because I have seen a lot of posts recently on craft forums relating to what to do (or what not to do) at an event.  Lots of great ideas.  I know that fellow crafters read my blog and thought they might like to contribute to a future post on my Blog about craft eventing?  As a business person, what do you do that makes you stand out at an event?  What do you think your fellow crafters should do/can do to raise the profile of handmade at events?  I am aiming to have a one-off post on Wednesday, 21 September 2011, so bags of time for you all to put your thinking caps on.  All contributions will be acknowledged by way of a link to either your website or blog or both (you choose) so the post should be of benefit to everyone.  Let's not just leave it to crafters, how about contributions from our customers and potential customers?  What do you want from us at events?

Enjoy the rest of the week everyone - I will be back with my usual Sunday blog at the weekend.

Jill