Blooming Felt

Hiya

Well, most of the presents are wrapped, the tree is up, I've posted out all of the orders and fingers crossed, they all seem to have been received.

And just for good measure, I've decided to redesign my website (please bear with me whilst it's being updated) and introduce a whole new range of fantastic felted goodies !!

As most of you regular readers of this blog will know, my main line of business when I started out a whole year ago, was designing and creating hand-stitched textile pictures. Sadly, after a year, it has become apparent that hand-stitched textile pictures aren't the best sellers in the world and so I have had to take the decision to stop creating my pictures and concentrate on my felted accessories. My shop at notonthehighstreet.com has been manically busy over the last 2 months and as a result has virtually depleted all of my felt accessories. So, a radical rethink was needed. As I wasn't lucky enough to have a little set of elves that came out at night and made lots of new stock, I was working myself ragged trying to keep up with orders, look after the house, look after a husband and 2 small children and still do my part-time job. The time came for me to admit that I'm not superwoman and that I would need to work out how to continue to produce beautiful felted goodies without running myself into the ground.

Enter a fantastic company employing a small team of women in Nepal. So, for the last few weeks I have been designing lots of lovely felt accessories, sending the designs over to Nepal and the wonderful ladies there have been producing numerous samples of my designs. We're now in the finalisation stage and I am VERY excited to tell you that these goodies should be available for sale through my newly designed website in the New Year.

As a consequence of this, I have decided to drop the "Picture it in Stitches" name from my website and rename it "Blooming Felt". Unfortunately I can't change the name of this blog without scrapping this one and starting again, so Picture it in Stitches will stay here for the time being.

I will continue to produce the corsages, bracelets, hair accessories, keyrings etc., that I have always made myself, but everything else will be designed by me and handmade in Nepal. All of the items from Nepal are Fair Trade, made of 100% wool and are of fantastic quality. Do please join my mailing list on the welcome page of my website and you will be entered into a special draw to win one of my lovely new items. Below is a sneaky peak of just some of the samples

Oh, and if you fancy a bargain, all of my textile pictures are on SALE on my website with 25% off every picture - be quick because when they're gone, they're gone !

HAPPY CHRISTMAS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sarah xx

Just another day

Well, I'm still waiting for the postman to bring both the lovely stitchery and peggarty kits from Primitive Beginnings and also an order of merino wool I purchased through a website over 2 weeks ago !!

I'm really hoping that the Primitive Beginnings order arrives tomorrow because I'm keen to get them listed for sale on my website and also because the winner of the monthly draw (which will take place on Saturday) will be able to choose one of the lovely kits. Don't forget - to be entered into the monthly draw you need to sign up to my website mailing list (on the front page of my website).

The website I purchased the merino wool from is being SO slow in delivering. I've emailed and left voicemails for them to try and find out where the order is (it's holding me up!), but they haven't responded. My final email to them on Friday told them that if I hadn't either received the goods or a reponse to my messages by Tuesday, then I would request a refund from Paypal. It's just not on !! I wouldn't mind if the goods were out of stock or something, but when I ordered it said all items were in stock and delivery would be within 2-3 days. Grrrrrrr

I visited the Hylands House Gift Shop on Saturday with some of my textile pictures to see if they would be interested in either buying from me or selling them on a commisson basis. Unfortunately they weren't interested. I then read a very interesting article that a friend told me about on the Whip Up blog about how best to go about approaching possible buyers of your items and read, to my horror, that the worst thing you could possibly do was to just turn up unannounced and expect them to look at your products. How could I have got it so wrong ??!! I should really have thought about it much more before bowling up like that - how unprofessional must I have looked? :-( So, the upshot of this is that I shall be producing a mini catalogue of all of my items and sending it out with a nice introductory letter to all of the outlets I feel might be interested in stocking my products and asking whether it might be possible to arrange an appointment to show them some samples. I'm so THICK sometimes - and to think I used to be in Marketing !!!!! Durrrrr

This leads me nicely on to showing you all of the textile pictures I have produced to date - if you haven't yet had a chance to check out my website, all of these pictures are available for sale through my site - just click on the link below to view them. All of the pictures are priced at £20 each, except the "Name in a Frame" pictures, which are £30 each, as these are made to order.

Picture it in Stitches - Textile Pictures

I'm on countdown now to our holiday which is in just under 3 weeks time. We're off to the US and I can't wait !! I've started buying stuff from US ebay and US etsy sellers so that I can have the items delivered to my parents house and so save on postage !! This is a great big bag of gosgrain ribbon I purchased from the US ebay site. It only cost me $5.00, so about £3.00 - I shall be using it to make up "Grab Bags" of ribbons, buttons and fabric etc to sell at the craft fairs.

I'm off now to see what else I can buy !!

xx

So, today's the day ....

that I post my first ever blog entry !! Gosh, how nervous am I ??! After weeks and weeks of reading fantastic blogs belonging to other wonderful people, I have decided to take the plunge and set up my own blog !

But, the reason I am so nervous is because I'm worried that no-one will want to read it. After all, what's so interesting about a WAHM of 2 from Essex ?? Well, nothing really, except I love to craft and am hoping, through this blog to be able to share my work with you and to get inspiration, tips and lots of ideas from other blogs and (if I get any) readers !

When I'm not looking after the children or working for my Dad, I design and hand-stitch textile pictures, mainly for children but I do have a few other designs for adults - I've put a couple of pictures below of the type of thing that I do. I sell these pictures through my website www.pictureitinstitches.co.uk .







One of the other reasons for creating this blog is because I need a kick up the backside to get going with new some designs and ideas. I seem to be suffering what what writers would call "writer's block". Maybe it's called "crafter's block" for crafters, I don't know - but basically I seem to have hit a brick wall with regards to creativity. I desperately want to add other textile accessories and other fun and quirky stuff to my range on my website, but haven't been able to come up with anything really original or different. So by having this blog I'm hoping that it will give me the push I need to get going on some new stuff - otherwise, what will I have to share with you? Absolutely nothing, and then there's no chance whatsoever that you would ever come back and visit this blog again !!

So, I think that's just about it for today - I shall surf for ideas for a little while and then I'm off into the garden to lop a branch off a tree because I want to make a twig tree to use as a display at a couple of craft fairs I will be selling at ... but more of that in future posts !!

TTFN x