I'm "Not on the High Street"

Just wanted to let everyone know that my cards are now available on notonthehighstreet.com. So if you want to shop in UK pounds (and if you're actually in the UK, they don't currently accept international orders) take a look. :)

Whatever happened to...

Weekly Wedding Picks!
Well I have been posting them, but haven't been putting them here.

Week 2- Wedding Hair Loveliness
Week 3- Wedding Decoration

So I've been thinking a lot about hair related things this week now that I've chosen my dress (see this post on paper and cloth I'll write more about my dress hunt later.)

I was vehemently against a veil and tiara when I first went shopping but since trying them on I've become a convert. However I really want to make both. One of my bridesmaids makes jewellery so we're going to work on the tiara and the bridal jewellery together.
I've been investigating veils and there are so many options.

I think I know the style I would like but I'll reveal that another time along with some photos of me in wedding dresses (not *the* dress though). In the meantime, here's some flickr veil inspiration.



1. bride with veil, 2. Bride and Veil, 3. Birdcage Veil , 4. Birdcage veil., 5. Finishing touches, 6. Sunset Bride, 7. Vintage Bride, 8. Vintage Fashion for a Modern Bride, 9. My veil

Hot hot hot

What a gorgeous weekend. It started with a wedding on Friday and ended with a lovely walk on the sea front. Here's Toby enjoying an ice lolly!

Guess what?

I've only gone and chosen my wedding dress! Yay :)

Sneaky peak...
I tried this one on ages ago and despite trying on about 30 since, I came back to this one. I'll write more about it later on my other blog.

Featured on cuteable

Yay! Thank you Lynsey for the first blog mention for my new stationery line.

Teal Delight

Here's a peek at the cards I made with Charlotte's suggestion of teal. I chose silver as the other colour and some new envelopes arrived today which match perfectly...




I decided a white background worked well for this card. What do you think?

Have I told you about the new UK site, Folksy yet? I'm on there along with lots of other great sellers so take a look. It's in beta so if you spot anything that the developers should know about, send them some feedback.

Happy Birthday to me and the winner is...

charlotte narunsky said...

Anything with teal!
Orange, aubergine, silver - you name it!

So I'm going to have fun with teal for my next lot of cards and will be sending some to Charlotte too.

I'm off to enjoy the rest of my birthday, will be back soon. x

Big Day Out!

I was so down yesterday with the relentless rain (although I could just look at my sunny blog banner to cheer myself up I guess!) so I literally leapt out of bed this morning when I saw the sunshine. I had a lovely day out in the Suffolk countryside to celebrate the sun. I started in the town of Woodbridge which has lots of cute little shops and galleries and I had coffee and homemade brownie in my fave bookshop. I then headed up to Snape Maltings and wandered around the shops, bought some bits in the antique shop (photos later) and had a delicious lunch. Finished the day at a local farm shop buying fresh vegetables and British strawberries. A perfect day.

Pushing for Promotion

I don't know about you but I hate promotion. I hate opening myself up for rejection. But this week I've been brave and have been emailing and posting and pimping. Here's what I've done, let me know in the comments if you can think of other good ways for designers/creators/crafters/artists to promote themselves...

• Emailed the editors of my favourite design blogs with a mini-press release
• Submitted my work to some consigment stores
• Created a facebook page
• Twittered a bit
• Blogged every day
• Updated my We Love Etsy page
• Listed every day on etsy
• Added photos to flickr (bearing in mind the TOU)

I have some other plans but I don't think that's too bad for my first week. I'll be back tomorrow, in the meantime, enter my contest, read UK Handmade and The Crafty Bride oh and put your feet up and have a cup of tea!

Weekly Wedding Picks- Necklaces

This is the start of a new series of weekly wedding picks- this week, jewellery.

Once you have your dress all picked out and ordered, thoughts then naturally turn to what jewellery to wear on the big day. Look no further than these perfect possibilities for your wedding day necklace…

1. sparklesisters 2. lazygiraffe 3. luxedeluxe 4. beautyuncut 5. thelondonstudio 6. luxedeluxe

Of course you could make your own wedding jewellery (an option I'm considering if I don't go for beautiful vintage). I've found these tutorials which might help you make your own necklace (and other bridal jewellery).

DIY Network :: Craft Stylish :: Craft Stylish :: beadage

Let me know if you've seen any more great DIY necklace projects.

Prizes :)

It's likely that you've worked out by now why I've been asking for your favourite colour combinations. It's because I'm coming up with colours for my new line of cards...


And the winner (randomly drawn) will receive a set of stationery made in their favourite colour combination. The winner will be announced on my 200th blog post (scheduled to be Saturday 12th which is cool as that's also my birthday- hopefully I'll get chance to pop on and draw a winner). So, enter now!

All about the brand

Before I start, I'm not an expert on branding but I have picked up a few bits in my day job and in the last few years that I've been on etsy.

A brand is more than a logo and a colour scheme. It's covers everything from your products to the way you deal with customers.

My product line has a strong, bright colour scheme backed up with simple illustrations. This is because I chose these words to represent what I want my business to look like:

• Fun
• Colourful
• Energetic
  
• Simple

Fun, Colourful & Energetic are hopefully obvious and I think the colour scheme and look reflects that.

I chose Simple as this is the style of illustration I like. It also represents how I plan to do business- Simple to contact, Simple pricing, Simply great products!

I know that sounds a bit cheesy but it's the beauty of a small business- we should all be able to keep things simple for our customers as we don't have 10 departments. We are marketing, sales, customer service and CEO all in one package.

My last point on brand is that it should be recognisable which is why I've tied together the banner, avatar, products and product photos with a unified look. Did you see I've listed my first product- take a look!

Don't forget my competition, I will be announcing the prize on my next post.

Sneaky Peek

A fresh start

As you may have seen in my earlier post (don't forget to enter the competition), I have a fresh new shop waiting in the wings.

I am going to try and blog every day describing the progress of the new shop and maybe sharing some hints and tips about opening a shop on etsy along the way (as I've done it once before so maybe I've learnt from that!)

For me, the start was a doodle several months ago in my sketchbook of some paisley designs that I then scanned and played with in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I could've just added new cards to my current shop with this new design but I'd been feeling that pinkangel wasn't really the name or feel that I wanted any more. So the time seemed right for a new shop. Paper and Cloth is a name I've been using for a while (this blog and the domain name) so I decided to open the etsy shop too.

Next came some thoughts about branding. I knew I wanted to use my new paisley design and bright colours so after playing around in Photoshop for a while, I came up with the new look. Branding isn't just about a pretty banner and avatar though and I'll talk more about my brand in the next instalment!

Ordinary Beauty

1. day2day day 1, 2. day2day day 2, 3. day2day day 3, 4. day2day day 4, 5. day2day day 5

A week of ordinary beauty. Join in here.

Exciting times ahead...

Not long until my 200th blog post so in honour of that and another little something I'm working on, I'll be having a bit of a giveaway.

Prizes to be revealed soon but in the meantime start posting comments on this thread answering this question...

What's your favourite colour combination?

Winners will be announced on my 200th blog post and will be chosen randomly using a random number generator.

Clickety Click

Hey everyone, I've been finding some great stuff on blogs & flickr lately so thought I'd share some here...

• Create knock out photos for your etsy listings with KMC
• Read the new magazine from Design for Mankind
• Have fun with wordle [via Design for Mankind]
• See the beauty every day with the flickr group day2day

And I meant to say a while back that I'm on twitter now so you can follow me if you want.

And finally, here's a little flavour of the photos in the day2day flickr group...



1. day2day day 3, 2. Day2day - doughnut, 3. day2day 3/5, 4. Relax - day2day 4/5, 5. eggs, 6. Day to Day: yardstick, 7. new potato 37/365, 8. dead leaves on the dirty ground 5 of 5, 9. Day2day - machine embroidery thread