It's cold Oop North!!!

Is it me or has winter suddenly just appeared? I don't just mean the weather as we haven't had any sunshine for ages but I found myself waking up at 6.30 this week and thinking it was an hour earlier as it was so dark outside! It was also pretty cold too so I did the only sensible thing... I turned the alarm clock off and went back to sleep! If that wasn't bad enough I woke up yesterday morning to go to work and found my car covered in snow!!! Blimey it's cold Oop North!!!

I've decided not to push my business until next year when I have a few things sorted out, (such as moving into my new house and creating a proper craft room) but I have noticed this week there has been a big increase in orders and the more I do the more orders I seem to get! Word of mouth seems to be working as they all seem to be coming from people who know someone who's bought/received one of my products.
I'm not complaining though, in fact I love it, the only downside is that I still have to fit my full time job in too, not very easy when its shift work!!!
I'm going to keep this post short as I have lots to do but I wanted to show you some more letters that I have done.
I normally paint with the lighter colours but this customer requested one letter in red and two in teal.

It took me a while to work out what 'teal' was, but after a search on Google  it appears it's a shade of bright blue.

I have also done a K for a new baby girl in pink but I haven't uploaded the photo onto my computer yet!

On the subject of photos... A few weeks ago Wendy over at Handmade Harbour had a give-away, the prize was a book about how to take great photos of your crafts.

Now I didn't win this but it made me think about just how poor my photography skills are so last night I went on Amazon and ordered myself a copy of it! Hopefully it won't take too long to arrive and then there should be a vast improvement in the quality of my photos!!

Next weekend I am off on a romantic weekend away to Bruges so I won't be joining in with Handmade Monday then but I shall try to do a post in the middle of this week.

Until next time,
Jem
x

A little trip Down South and a wedding

A couple of weekends ago I took a trip down south to the beautiful west-country (or as I prefer to call it - HOME!)
We went to Brean in Somerset, despite having lived just half an hour away from Brean for much of my life I never visited this place although I had heard a lot about it. We dropped really lucky with the weather, it was tipping it down on our way there and on the way back but for the time we were there we had sunshine, yes sunshine in October!
Although Brean itself is very touristy there are plenty of beautiful quiet little villages nearby. whilst travelling down one of the country lanes we came across this cider farm shop

Inside this Aladdins cave the lady serving was very friendly and as soon as we entered she offered us a taste of their scrumpy! Despite being from the area I'm not a big fan of cider but I'm assured this scrumpy tasted delicious! What I did taste was some of their butterscotch brandy, WOW, it was amazing! So much so we bought 2 bottles, one as a Christmas present and another bottle for ourselves at Christmas!

Something I noticed whilst we were driving through a nearby village was their bus shelters, not your standard metal and glass ugly looking shelters but stone ones that have clearly been lovingly hand-painted

How gorgeous are they? As a big fan of giraffes this one was my favourite!

The trip was over far too quick and it was back up north and back to work my day job.
When I returned I received a short notice order for a wedding gift. The order came on Wednesday for a wedding on Friday and all that was requested was 'something with the wooden hearts'
These are the wooden hearts referred to

With not a clue where to start I thought about trying to create some sort of hanging piece using craft wire... I soon discovered that me and wire do not work well together! Hats off to Wendy who makes it look so easy when she uses it on her plaques!
So after a tantrum creative thinking session I decided to stick with what I know - twine! The end result was some wedding bunting,

Bunting seems to be quite popular lately and I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, unfortunately the photos aren't great as the silver writing doesn't show up much but it reads Mr / & / Mrs / Lomas / Bagden Hall / 12.10.12

I've had some good feedback from it and I'm thinking about making some for myself in the Jam Dalory colours to go above my stall when I finally get round to doing a craft fair.

I'm working on several more of my free standing letters at the moment, thank you to all who commented on my last post about the teddy bears, the majority went for dungarees and so that's what I went with.

A lady at my other job also wanted an initial for her 1 year old grandsons bedroom and was chuffed with the teddy bear and buttons design

Until next time,
Jem
x