New stickers....

....for packaging!

When I am at fairs I can explain to people why my chickens are flat packed (saves the customer money on postage if it's a gift and on the actual cost of the item) but when my chicken doorstops are in stockists, the owner of the shop/gallery doesn't want to have to follow every potential customer around the shop explaining my products! Hence the stickers :)

I have to say thanks to Matt for these as he managed to sort them all out so that they would print the right size for me in about 10 minutes the other day. It would have taken me about 4 hours and countless swear words!

Oooooh Folksy front page!

My work was featured on the Folksy front page yesterday :) How exciting!

You can find the Central Europe map stickers here if you would like to buy them!

And did you know that you can curate the Folksy home page yourself? Just make a Pinterest board of things on a theme picked from Folksy and use Folksy in the title and it could be chosen. Simple! Thanks must go to Little Ledbury for featuring me and to Paula from Wychbury for letting me know.

Craft round up from 2012

And here's to another crafty year in 2013 :)

1. Upcycled badges on new packaging, 2. Inside one of the upcycled, refillable journal/notebook, 3. Limited Edition Liberty fabric chicken paperweight, 4.Upcycled stickers - 1970's illustrations, 5. Limited Edition Liberty fabric chicken paperweight, 6. British Wildlife upcycled bunting - heart shaped, 7. Heart bunting packaging, 8. Peter and Jane stickers, 9. Gardenia the chicken pincushion/paperweight, 10. Custom stickers, 11. Sweetie Mum and Baby, 12.Limited Edition Liberty fabric chicken paperweight, 13. Mini upcycled bunting - plants and flowers, 14. Decka the pincushion/paperweight chicken, 15.Richard Scarry card, 16. Pink chicken pincushion/paperweight, 17. Sammy the Shunter gift tags, 18. Mother and Baby chicken, 19. Threads notecards - set 3, 20. Heart gift tags

You can see a larger version of the mosaic here.

Stickers, get your lovely stickers!

Just like one of my customers has done :) Sophie from Imogen's Imagination (gorgeous hats!) had a stack of old product photographs and didn't want to just get rid of them so she contacted me and asked if I could make stickers from photographs. A test sample was made up using some of my own photographs and yes I could!

I think it's a great idea to use up any old product photographs you have hanging around. It would work equally well with old brochures or other promotional literature.

Now all Sophie has to do is decide how she is going to use her stickers and what to put in the space on her shelf where the photographs used to be! Isn't upcycling great?

What I did this morning....

Not the most imaginative post title but it is what it is!

I turned about 300 pages of old catalogues into lots of pretty paper flowers to use on cards.

However I still have about 100 pages to go.........

I also made some button cards :) I'm trying to get lots of things done from my to do list and this is the start of it.

What have you done today?

New things :)

I have LOADS of new things to post in my shops! The photo's are taken but it takes time to get things across in the shops. Here are two new things that made it in last night!

These mini music envelopes are in both my Etsy and Folksy shops.

And these cute Richard Scarry stickers are in the Folksy shop!

I'm making progress in getting both my shops up to 100 items before Christmas but the Etsy shop is well ahead with 91 and my Folksy shop is lagging behind with 61. I had to remove lots of my one off gift tags from Folksy as they no longer fit with what they deem handmade (!) so that is why there is a big discrepancy between the two. I'm determined to get at least one to them to 100 soon!

Craft Fair in Ilkley!

 I will be at the lovely Riddings Hall in Ilkley tomorrow for an Arts Market Extravaganza!

Aren't these flyers gorgeous?

I have been busy making lots of gift tags, chicken doorstops, stickers, cards and mini envelopes and lots of one off designs! Do come and say hello if you pop by :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

In my shops at least :) I have added two new products to my range - some cute Christmas stickers and matching gift tags.

Aren't they cute? I found the papers when I knocked something off my overcrowded shelves and they fell off too! They are, of course, in my Folksy and Etsy shops. Actually, the tags are just in my Etsy shop as I'm not allowed to sell some of my gift tags on Folksy (due to the changes as to what they classify as handmade) and these ones don't fit the bill!

These hand drawn robin ones are allowed though and they fit the Christmas theme quite nicely so I thought I would show them off again :)

Are you crafting for Christmas yet?

Vintage maps

I love vintage maps but what I love more are damaged vintage maps - that's because I have an excuse to chop them up and turn them into pretty things! I have recently been making sets of vintage map stickers and have listed two lots in my shops.

Canadian map stickers

UK and Ireland Map stickers

If you are looking for particular countries or areas of countries then give me a shout as I may have a damaged map waiting to be prettified :)

P.S. The tidying saga is taking much longer than I thought but windows are being washed and carpets cleaned so that's why. I think we are tackling Anya's room today.......

My creative space - upcycling is fun!

I spent a bit of last night and most of the morning so far turning security envelopes (you know, the patterned ones) into fabulous stickers!

Bet you didn't know that there were this many variations did you? And trust me when I say there there are plenty of designs not pictured!

I then took some photographs ready for listing them.

I even took some slightly fancy pictures!

I've even managed to package up one set. The rest of my morning and probably most of my afternoon will involve listing these in my shops and packaging up the other 8 sets that are waiting!

For more Creative Spaces pop over here.

My Creative Space

Today I have been working on the girls crafty table in the front room. It makes a great space for photographing my work and things just tend to stay there to be honest! The girls have been banned from it as I have several sets of similar gift tags that aren't strung yet but need to be kept separate from each other. I'm hoping that by tomorrow they will have their table back!

There are stickers and gift tags waiting to be packed up and the stickers are waiting to be photographed too. The pile to the right of the table is stock waiting to be put away.

And this pile of pages is waiting to be turned into envelopes :)

More creative spaces over on Kootoyoo's new blog just for Creative Spaces

New sticker packaging

When I just used to sell my stickers online I didn't need to worry about packaging as I had photographs of the actual stickers so people could see what they were buying. This is what the stickers used to be packaged in.

Great for online selling but not so good for craft fairs! So this is what I have come up with - simple and could do with some tweaking but it will work fine for now :)

Close up - front view

Close up - back view

The see through packaging is a mixture of the bags I use to package up my gift tags and some sturdier packaging that you would recognise if you ever go to Ikea. You know the plastic bits that they put the price tags in on sofas etc? Well one of those came home with us on a bathmat (we hadn't realised!) so I grabbed it to reuse! I also have something similar that was in one of the wallpaper books I talked about yesterday. It's a lot better than the plastic bags I use for the gift tags but I doubt I will get something similar again - unless I go to Ikea any time soon :)

And don't worry about the original packaging being used - I use my mini envelopes for snack and trip money at school so all they need to be ready to be reused is a blank sticker!

Stickers galore!

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will have seen that I have been posting lots of stickers sets into my shops. These are the sticker sets that have been waiting in  Flickr since mumble mumble. Yes that's right, since March........

Anyway, that wait is now over so here are a select few :)

Pirate stickers

 

 

Flower stickers

Nature stickers

Fairy tale/fantasy stickers

Circus stickers

I have another 6 sets waiting to be photographed (waiting for any decent light!) and hopefully they won't be in my Flickr stream for as long as these ones were before being listed! Although saying that I have about 40 items waiting to be listed already...........

My Creative Space

I know it's a day early but tomorrow I will be getting ready for Anya's 7th birthday party (kids after school in the house!) and I didn't think you would want to see photos of me moving the piles of craft crap upstairs or cleaning my toilet?

Today I am sitting on the sofa making 80 lots of stickers (5 stickers in each set)

Luckily, whenever I make gift tags and badges and there are little bits left over I tend to punch those bits out and leave them ready to turn into stickers. I have London Underground, flower shapes, Thomas the Tank Engine, security envelope butterflies and houses and a few more for good measure! My task today is to take the little bits of paper and run them through my sticker machine so that they can become stickers.

I'm packing them up in money envelopes. The ones I had previously were blank on the front but these ones I got had writing on them - as you can see I didn't let that stop me!

And why am I making these? For goodies bags for We Make London - I will be sending down 80 of my business cards too for good measure :) 2 doses of Swirlyarts in one bag!

Some new products

I have been a busy girl listing lots of new products onto Folksy for the September Stars. Here are a few of them :)

 Some cute recycled envelopes featuring Mabel Lucie Attwell.

Some cute gift tags in sets of 5 - just in case you don't need the usual sets of 10 I offer!

Some recycled stickers - there will be lots more listed at some stage.

 Come back tomorrow when there will be a 'clucking' giveaway :)

The benefits of sorting and tidying

No trust me - there are some benefits! I have found a great deal more stock than I thought I had and looking through my Flickr photographs I realised that I have photographs of the items but that they just haven't been listed yet! Things like this.

Actually I have just listed this as my September Star listing for today over on Folksy!

I also found a lot of cute little sticker sets that I am yet to list. I sell these online as you can look at the pictures of them and get a good feel for what stickers are in each set. I haven't yet sold them at craft fairs as I store them in some of the mini envelopes I make and they are not conducive to getting good sales if people can't see them! I am loathe to buy new packaging products just so that they can be seen (and you would only be able to see a few anyway) so can anyone else think of a good way to show them off at fairs. I was thinking of making up a selection of 'spares' so that people can handle them and see the size and type of stickers that are available but I'm not sure. And bear in mind that my table is normally full to bursting point anyway!!

Some new stickers

Two new sets of stickers in my Etsy shop. Both recycled of course :)

A set for someone who likes quilts - I had great fun going through my extensive lot of books for this set!

And a set of London underground stickers. More to come soon once I have edited the photographs!

Stickers!

I have been a busy bee making lots and lots of stickers recently.I love the way they use up the tiniest pieces of paper so that hardly any bits from the books I rescue is put into the recycling.

2 different sets of people stickers.

A set of nature stickers (these have already sold!)

And these are my favourites yet - 3 little pig stickers!

Check out this guy hanging out his washing!! Fabulous :) I'm seriously considering taking this set of of my shop as the pigs are so cute!

These are available in my Etsy and Folksy shops.