Posts belonging to Category General

Welcome to another Handmade Monday.  If you’re joining in, please remember to add a link to this blog somewhere in your blog post – thank you.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there!  Hope you’re having a lovely day.  If you’re in the US, you may think I’ve gone slightly crazy, but I promise you I’ve not (yet).  I don’t know why the world doesn’t co-ordinate these events!

toilet door plaque

One of my commissions this week was for a ladies’ retirement home.  Specifically, the request was for six toilet door plaques, without wording, because some of the ladies have dementia and have lost the ability to read but can still recognise pictures.

toilet door plaque

Each one was slightly different and I really enjoyed doing the little plantpots, each with something different in them!  I’ve had an email from the retirement home manager saying they were exactly what they’d hoped for, which I’m pleased about

toilet door plaques

I’ve also started sending out interview questions for the Handmade Harbour features – if you want to promote your shop, let me know and I’ll send you the questions too.  The first one has just gone live and is one of the Handmade Monday linkups tonight.   A big thank you to Caroline, for agreeing to be featured and sharing some tips with us all.

What have you been making this week?  Looking forward to finding out…

Actually, it was two lovely surprises rolled into one!

A friend who I’ve not seen for over a year (how time flies!) phoned out of the blue and invited me to visit her in her new home – which was lovely in itself – and also to congratulate me on my plaques being featured in Handmade Living magazine.

handmade living magazine

Now, this could be old news to you (I’d already flicked through the magazine and left it on the newsagent’s shelf – I had no idea my plaques were in there!)  but this is brand new news to me!  It’s always exciting to see your work in print so please forgive me my little self-indulgent showing-off.

handmade living home shopping page

I’ve sold more than I usually do of these plaques recently.  I just thought it was mother’s day that was boosting sales for me!

a closer look

If you’d like an even closer look, you’ll find both plaques on the hanging plaques pages on my website.

The craft room one also comes as a door plaque – it comes complete with sticky pads so it can go straight up.

OK, so if you “do” Pinterest, you may be interested in Pinerly.

click for more info about Pinerly

Pinerly is apparently an excellent way to manage your Pinterest account.  Can I tell you more?  Well, not until some of you click that link and sign up – there’s a lot of intrigue surrounding it and I’m going to get shown a bit at a time.

But the trick is that once you sign up, you can invite people to the Pinerly party too and you will get a sneak peek and an invitation to join!  It’s brand new and we can be among the first.

register for Pinerly

P.S. Is it just me that’s cringing over the spelling of Pinerly?  Call me old fashioned, but surely a short vowel sound should be followed by a double consonant? OK, I realise I’m sounding like a spelling geek now and I also realise that maybe you’re all cringing at my geekiness.

One of the features of my hanging plaques has always been the wire hangers, with their twirly bits on the ends:

nana's kitchen sign - kids eat free

I’d already experimented a bit with using string instead of wire,  and was considering starting to use it more widely – and then the wire company changed the wire.

They changed it in a bad way – well, for me at least.  It’s softer and more pliable now, which means it’s less likely to keep its shape.  I’ve tried several other manufacturers and I always find the same problem.  Maybe for other applications softer is better but that’s not much use to me!

So I decided that, wherever possible, I’d change over to using a rustic jute string.

you are my sunshine

I actually think I prefer the string and I think some plaques look much better with string – it’s more in keeping with the shabby chic look.  It also makes posting easier (I probably spend hours cutting up cardboard to sandwich around plaques so the wire isn’t damaged en route) and is safer around young children.

personalised craft room hanging plaque

It seems that most customers don’t really have a strong preference.  However, if you would rather have wire, I can still do it as there’s plenty in stock (some of it’s a bit on the soft side though!) – you just need to ask.  Email me any time: Wendy@1stUniqueGifts.co.uk!

It will take time to re-photograph and re-upload all the photos on the website – but we’ll get there eventually.

After I was part of a feature in Popular Crafts magazine last month . . .

popular crafts

. . . I was contacted by one of the other people who was featured.  Hannah, from Span’s Studio, decided to run a regular feature on her blog, inviting people to share their story.

What a fabulous idea!  Mine is here if you’d like to read a little bit about how 1st Unique Gifts came about and especially the background that led me there.

And if you want to share your story?  Here’s your invite!

For a while now, I’ve had contact forms on my website, mainly because I’d read somewhere that people were more likely to use a contact form than send an email.

I’ve decided to get rid of them though.  Why?  Well, when people contact me using email, I’m able to reply.  Easy and simple.

Mostly, when people contact me using the contact form, the same applies – but not always.  Sometimes, my emails get caught up in spam filters and end up in people’s junk mail – Hotmail accounts seem to be the worst for doing this.  It does seem to be ok when they’ve emailed me first and I’m just hitting reply.

So, if you’ve tried to contact me using a form recently and you’ve not had a reply, please have a trawl through your junk mail – or feel free to email me: wendy@1stuniquegifts.co.uk

let's stay in touch!

I can’t be the only one who feels like ideas just pop in her head sometimes, seemingly from nowhere.

Today, I was making up some of these family plaques for customer orders when…

sorry about the mess but the Johnson family lives here

… PING! an idea for a clock – followed very quickly by several others – popped into my head.  Of course, I had to stop and scribble the ideas down quickly on the first thing to hand (a customer order!)…

ideas scribbled down

…before the ideas disappeared from my head (my brain seems to work pretty well – and almost independently, it would appear – when it comes to generating ideas, but also seems just as good at forgetting them!)

Now all I need to do is to find time to make up the ones I think are actually good ideas as opposed to the ones which just came along for the ride.

Do you get ideas popping in your head when you’re not expecting them?  Or are you much more organised than that?

Welcome to Handmade Monday – and I hope the sun’s been shining this weekend in your part of the world – despite the frosty nights, we’ve had some gloriously sunny days here in Cheshire!  It’s always lovely to see the sun shining but it’s especially welcome at this time of year.

As well as unseasonal sunshine, there’s been a high level of unseasonal sales here too – I can’t quite believe how steadily busy I’ve been since Christmas.  I had expected (and almost even hoped for!) a slow period in January, and the to-do list that I’ve been adding to since September is still just waiting patiently for me – I’ve made no dents in it yet; I’m still just working on getting orders out!

It’s a nice position to be in, admittedly, and I think  good percentage of the sales have come via the press that has been generated by Press Loft – one way or another.  I’ll be doing a blog post specifically about Press Loft soon because I think it’s something which might be of interest to some of you.

some people have sandwiches on trays - I have plaques on trays

Meanwhile, there’s not much that’s new here – but lots of new things to work on.  Among them quite a few door plaques have been prepped and are ready to finish – a farmhouse in France is awaiting some bespoke door plaques (maybe I’ll show you them next week!) and there’s a few fairies to paint on the pink ones.  And a couple of campervans, too – of course!

I’m looking forward to browsing your blogs and seeing what’s new in your handmade world . . .

Welcome back to Handmade Monday.  Hope you all had a fab Christmas and New Year break.

This week, I’m just going to show you one of the last things I completed before Christmas.

It was ordered in plenty of time.  However, with the frenzy of clock orders that turned the studio into a pre-Christmas production line, I put it to one side for fear of splashing it (if you’ve ever seen me and paint in the same room, you’d understand).  I also knew I had someone to deliver this one personally for me so it didn’t need to meet the last posting dates.

painting the camper canvas

It was a large canvas (60cm x 45cm, which is quite a bit larger than I usually work), and one designed especially for a child who’d had a holiday in a camper called Coral, which I thought was a lovely idea!

camper photo

The red background was to match his room, and the beige camper matched Coral!  I worked from a photo on this campervan hire website.

the finished painting with CORAL on the number plate

I did enjoy doing it and hope it reminds the whole family of happy times.  Now, though, it’s over to you . . . I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve been creating recently

It’s the time of year we dust off our new year’s resolutions and resolve to be healthier, more organised and . . .

Well, I’ve decided to scrap that idea and just make some plans instead!

My plans for 2012 include:

* Being kinder to myself.  I need to remind myself that I’m only one person and can only do so much!  I have workaholic tendencies, which is good up to a point.  I need to be more aware of where that point kicks in!

mint tea - a moment of calm

* Making a start on a new business idea.  This new idea involves creating downloadable designs – for cardmakers, people who sew and maybe just anyone who wants invitations, gift tags, etc.  I’m thinking along the lines of instant, printable downloads.  The more I think about this idea, the more I love it.

* Making a decision about the growth of 1st Unique Gifts.  I love that it’s growing, being busy and gaining small amounts of media attention.  I need to decide if I want it to grow more (therefore needing staff – which was never my aim) or contain it and keep it as it is (me, my paintbrush and my website!)

tools of the trade

* Making more stock – this will not only make the business more manageable in busy periods and allow me some precious time off, it will make delivery to the customer quicker at times too.

making art hangers

* Writing a book (!!).  Not giving too much away about that one yet and it may take more than just this year to complete.

* Trying to make more one-offs.  Paintings, mixed media pieces and (my great love) driftwood pieces

driftwood mirror

* Making a success of my vegetable plot, which means thinking beyond just tomatoes, courgettes and runner beans (which was last year’s plot, more or less!)

Looking at the above list, I think it may be becoming obvious why my first plan is to be kinder to myself!  I have far too much I want to do for just one human being, in one year.

Hey ho, there’s always 2013 . . .