Folksy shop front

If you have a Folksy shop you may have noticed that some peoples shop fronts are changing. I'd known about the changes for a while but hadn't got round to changing my own until I researched a Cuteable post and saw just how fabulous the new shop fronts looked!

I saved a photo of my old Folksy shop front before I replaced it with the new but then I stupidly managed to delete it and all of my deletes from this computer are hard deletes rather than sending to the rubbish bin. Ooopps! So the picture above is an old image of my Folksy shop from 2012 (thank goodness for blogs eh?) but you get the general idea!

And above is my new shop layout which I am really pleased with. I think the new banner helps a lot but I love the fact that you can now add links to all of your social media and the fact that it is nice and bright and white with added colour from me! There are a couple of niggles but I'm going to fill out the feedback form and let them know about it :) You can check it out in person here too!

Do you have a Folksy shop? Have you changed your shop front yet? What do you think of the changes?

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.

Some new Nana chickens

I've been busy today and have made some new Nana chickens. They are called Nana chickens because I use 'Nana' linens such as tablecloths and tray cloths.

This one here is Betty and I have two made from this fabric. I love the colour!

Chloe is a nice bright chicken who loves the sunshine! I have two of Chloe available for sale.

Chrissie is made from an unusual cross stitched tray cloth. I have two available but they differ slightly in colour as the person who made the original tray cloth wasn't interested in having symmetrical colours!

Freda is made from a large tablecloth which had been embroidered all the way round. Again all the stitches are similar but the placement of them on each chicken may be different from the one shown. I have six Freda's available.

Fabienne above is my favourite and she will be coming to BCTF with me so isn't available for sale yet :) I may be tempted to keep her for myself but I'll see how she goes at BCTF!

These will be available for sale soon but I need to show this post to a valued customer who has first choice :) I'll pop them in my Etsy and Folksy shops and update this post to let you know when they are available. And of course I can take pre-orders and reserve a chicken for you!

New product photographs

I was cursing the snow here this morning (it's 2.45pm and it's been snowing constantly since 7am) but it turns out that with a bit of brightening in Aviary, snow lit skies are great for taking product photographs! I hadn't changed the product photographs of some of my early gift tags since I started selling them so it was high time for a change!

The ever popular chickens :)

And their cousins, the brightly coloured chickens! My original photographs of these were taken in my homemade light box which was actually quite rubbish and gave off lots of weird shadows!

I love how these new photographs of the security envelope tags really 'pop' - the last ones were really wishy washy.

The wool gift tag pictures were fine but I needed to take new ones as I have reduced the number of gift tags available in a set and needed new photographs to show this. I have gone from 10 tags per pack down to 6. I've done this for a number of reasons but the main reason is that most of the tags I make are hand drawn and they do take a long time to make - I just wasn't making enough money for the amount of time I was putting in.

Do let me know if you like the new pictures :)

Tie chickens, not Thai chicken!

Yeah, good one Lynsey :)

As you may have guessed from the title, my long made (August 2011!) tie chickens have finally made it into my shops! They have been to fairs with me, and several have sold so you are seeing the last few available. They all have appropriate 1970's style names as they are indeed made from 1970's ties :)

Randy

Kenneth

Here is Clive

Duncan

Rodney

Simon

Trevor

Trevor and Simon have twins as the ties they were made from were huge - I believe the term is kipper ties :)

I'm on the look out for some gaudy ties so I can add to the tie chicken collection :)

Gift certificates

Whooot! I finally got my act together and did something within 24 hours of announcing that I was going to do it. That never happens! Ever!

You can now buy gift certificates in my Etsy shop :) They are available in denominations of £5, £10, £15, £20, £25, £30 and £40. Perfect if you suddenly realise you have forgotten to buy a gift for Aunt Marge who is visiting tomorrow. Or as it is the last day tomorrow to get things posted to America from the UK (Australia and Asia have already passed!) then you can order one and print it at home safe in the knowledge that you will have something to give from far overseas!

If you are thinking of adding some to your own Etsy stores then there is a great blog post here that explains in great detail how to do it.

Folksy gift certificates will be in my shops tomorrow (we will see if I can do this promising thing again!)

Another sale!

Phew! My Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale has just finished and the editing of all the shop information has ended too (long job!) I am now offering another sale but this time on (most of) my large envelopes. I haven't been happy with the style of them and have designed some new ones that are more envelope shaped and that are self sealing so no fiddling with sticky tape for you to get them closed!

The above envelopes can be found for half price (£2.50) in my Folksy shop. Along with lots of others!

And these are a couple of the sets in my Etsy shop. There are more in there too!

More exciting news

Well it kind of follows on from yesterday, but if you don't subscribe to Pretty Nostalgic or won't be able to get a copy then you can check out the British Makers Gift Guide online! Cool eh?

I'm off to check out the other talented folk I have been featured with!

Exciting stuff!

Have you heard of Pretty Nostalgic magazine? It's a lovely magazine published here in the UK and the 4th issue is due out very soon.

It's the Christmas issue and they have a British Makers gift guide.

In the magazine this page has the text 'Take our pledge to support local, independent makers this Christmas with our pick of the best (and most affordable) stocking fillers. So why is this exciting? Well take a look below.

See there on the right? Yep it's one of my Liberty chicken paperweights in the British Makers feature :) The guide that said they'd collected the best gifts for Christmas:) Oh yes!

And it is also very good for you as you can win every single one of these gifts! Everyone who subscribes to the magazine will be entered into the draw to win the prizes and winners will be announced on the 24th December. Just subscribe before the 20th December (there is 25% off at the moment) to make sure you are entered.  If you don't want to take your chances against all the other subscribers then the only other chicken paperweight in that fabric is right here :)

Here I am!

It just struck me that some people visiting this blog, especially those coming via Blogtoberfest *waves* might not know exactly where to find me online other than this blog. So I thought I would tell you all :) If you know all of this already then feel free to ignore me and go about your daily business!

Selling wise (which I will get out of the way first), you can find me on Etsy and also Folksy selling my upcycled treasures. I also have a range of chicken doorstops on Dorothy and Theodore - the fabrics used there are exclusive to them (in doorstop versions)

I also have a vintage shop online called Anya's Attic after our elder daughter! It sells lots of different things and is crying out to have the gorgeous things I found in France over the summer added to it. I just need extra hours in the day!

I am an avid Tweeter and am nearing 25,000 tweets! Erm, maybe that's where I can gain my extra hours from! I also have a Facebook business page, which I resisted at first, but now I love it :) You can find me too on Flickr, Linkedin and I also run Cuteable which is sometimes a chore yet at other times I find it thrilling to be looking at and finding all the cute out there.

My favourite thing at the moment (and something else I resisted) is Pinterest. It's fan-dabby-dozy and I love that I have somewhere to store all the great things I come across on the internet.

Like this cool tree.

And this yummy bread

And things that make me drool like this chair :)

So, where do you hang out online?
Do you have a Twitter or Pinterest addiction like me?
Are questions at the end of blog posts annoying or do they encourage you to comment?

Target reached :)

Whoot! 100 items in my Folksy shop.

And 100 items in my Etsy shop.

I would have reached the target earlier but I've sold three things today - not complaining though :)

A mini challenge

In a bid to get the stock that is sitting around and not in my shops, into my shops, I am setting myself a mini challenge. By the end of the weekend I will have at least 100 items in my Folksy and Etsy shops.

My Etsy shop should be easy as I only need one more thing in there to take it up to 100.

And my Folksy shop needs 7 more things in it to get up to 100. So 8 things over the next few days - it should be do-able shouldn't it? Unless you all buy things and then I will have work that bit harder!

New things in the shop

Yeah - all the chickens I made on Sunday have finally made it up into the shops :) I'm better at making than listing quickly it seems!

Meet Decka the doorstop chicken.

And Decka the pincushion/paperweight.

Meet mother and daughter Gardenia.

And mother and daughter Sweetie. All of the chickens are in both my Etsy and Folksy shops except Sweetie the doorstop as she is a one off :)

And I also listed these two notebooks in my Folksy shop :)

What I'm working on today

This is my temporary desk today - I had to wait in for the washing machine man to come so couldn't be in the studio as our doorbell doesn't work! After clearing it of all the kids stuff (it is meant to be their table!) I filled it with mine :)

Lots of stuff! I'm trying to get all those little itty bits and pieces finished off. I have lots of piles of half finished stuff around the house and want it all away really. Especially as Tara is having a family birthday party in a couple of weeks!

Stickers waiting for their packaging and pieces of paper waiting to be turned into stickers!

Images from magazines waiting to be put into my inspiration book.

This book is waiting to be chopped up - it has some pages missing hence why I am getting scissor happy!

Teeny tiny envelopes waiting to be folded and stuck together.

Oh and these two bags need to be sorted as there is unfinished wok in both of them!