Getting Organised

Today I thought I'd share with you some photos of my studio before we move house again, as we're moving back to London next month.

I've absolutely loved having a whole room of my own to work in, hopefully our new house will have a spare room I can lay claim to. I've been slowly collecting lots of storage and stationary so that I now have a super organised workspace! Everything has it's own little drawer and I know exactly where to find it (this is so unlike me as I normally live in total chaos...)

Acrylic hello sign from Oh Dier

Lots of lovely coloured ink pads for hand stamping Minifelts packaging.

These tall drawers were perfect for storing washi tape, felt tip pens, my Minifelts sew in labels and ribbon in.

I chose lots of clear acrylic trays and boxes from Muji so that I could easily see where everything is. The jewelry tray at the bottom was the perfect size for storing little beads, buttons, keyrings and brooch pins in. The other drawers then hold my cottons, printed envelopes, thank you notes and other packaging supplies.

Whilst I was busy sorting my desk out I thought it was about time I organised my templates too. I used to store them all in one large folder in a big jumbled mess, and it took me ages to find a template when I needed it... So I decided to separate them all out and create a folder for each animal design.

There's lots to do before we move, starting with flat hunting next week so if you know of any nice affordable areas of London a short commute from Greenwich let me know!

Letterpress Workshop

This weekend I went to a letterpress workshop at Print For The Love Of Wood in Great Harwood with Kris from Shore Cottage Studio. I've always wanted to give it a go, and it was loads of fun!

We were shown how to hand set and lock up the type, how to mix the ink and press our own prints.

There were loads of drawers full of different type to choose from, we decided to start off with the large wooden type, and print some posters on the flat bed press.

  Here's Kris' design on the press ready to be inked up and printed. 

and here's my first attempt, a sign to go on my studio door. 

We then used the smaller metal type on the proofing press. I chose a quote that was pretty long and took a while to assemble! Unfortunately I can't show you a picture of that one yet as it's going to be a present, I'm really pleased with how it turned out though.

I also printed some discount vouchers to send to customers, so keep a look out for these when you order from Minifelts.co.uk! The percent symbol proved particularly difficult, as it didn't exist in the sets of vintage type so we had to construct it from some zeros and a slanted line!

 To finish the day Kris printed some business cards with the polymer plates he'd had created to use on his own Adana press.

A great course that gets a thumbs up from me! 

If you've been thinking of trying letterpress printing, I can highly recommend it. The course we did cost £100 for a full day 10am - 5pm. I'll definitely be trying out some more workshops in the future! 

I'm back!

Hello! Sorry for the complete lack of blog posts over the last few months. Recently I took the decision to leave my part time job working from home and go back to a full time day job, which has unfortunately meant less time for Minifelts. 

As much as I've loved having extra time to spend on my little business and watching it grow over the past few months, it has been a bit lonely working from home all the time. Plus my new day job involves listing products and editing photographs so it'll all come in handy with Minifelts anyway! 

So with less time to spend on sewing and a big increase in sales this year already, I decided it was definitely time to invest in a sewing machine! 

I have to admit I'm rubbish on it at the moment, and it is going to take a lot of practice before I'm as good as I am at sewing by hand but it'll make things so much quicker and easier in the long term. I decided on the Singer Confidence 7463 that I'd seen demonstrated at the Knitting and Stitching show as it looked pretty easy to use and had blanket stitch. 

I definitely think I chose the right one, I'm amazed at how easy it is to thread  I've borrowed my mum's sewing machine in the past and it's taken me ages to work out how to set it up but with this one it only took minutes (it even has a very helpful diagram printed on the machine itself in case you forget!) 

So far the biggest challenge hasn't actually been mastering the machine but thinking about how to adapt my designs so that they work on the sewing machine, and allowing for things like seem allowance as I soon realised it's much harder to sew really close to the edge of the felt. So I think a few changes might have to be made!

If you have any sewing machine tips or advice on adapting patterns I'd love to hear them. 

Sale! - Grab a stocking filler

I'm having a mini sale! Including a mixture of old designs and one off pieces. They'd all make great little stocking fillers and are ready to ship. There's only one of each design so it's first come first served. Drop me a message if you'd like one and I can take payment through Paypal. I'll be slowly adding them to my shop, but you lovely blog readers along with my facebook followers get the first chance to snap up a bargain!

Brooches £3.50, Keyrings £4.00, Purses £5.00 and a set of 2 finger puppets for £4.00.  

UK Shipping is £1.50. 

The Knitting & Stitching Show

On Saturday we traveled up to Harrogate to visit The Knitting and Stitching Show. We'd been a few years ago and I was intrigued to see how the show had changed, and with sewing becoming ever trendier if the show had started to attract a younger audience. (This didn't really seem to be the case!)

It was absolutely packed with people and aisles and aisles of stalls, mainly selling craft supplies and DIY kits. I have to admit I'd have liked to have seen a few more stands with peoples own creations for sale, but the exhibition part of the show was fantastic and really inspiring, there was a really good mix of different styles. I took a few hurried photos (I had to shoot quickly to avoid getting swept up in the crowds of people!)

I loved the sad rabbit.

There was a miniature knitted village with an amazing level of detail. 

I would definitely recommend paying the show a visit when it returns next year as it's a fun day out. I had a long look at sewing machines whilst I was there and it was a good chance to watch some live demonstrations. I definitely think I could do with one, I just need to persevere and get past the learning curve! I managed to resist the urge to buy one at the show (despite the sales pitch) but I did buy a couple of bunting kits by Tania Sneesby with lovely polar bear fabric and an angle poise lamp to help my poor ruined eyes! 

What was the last craft show you went to, would you recommend a visit?

All Things New

I've been super busy working away in the studio coming up with some new designs to launch in time for Christmas, and here they finally are. Introducing a new wolf design and a hedgehog.

 I've been wanting to add a hedgehog design to my range of cases for ages, although I think this one may be a one off piece as the spines took quite a while to sew. The wolf design came about as a combination of my iPod and iPad fox designs (which seem to be proving quite popular!) 

I've also introduced the new variations feature to my Etsy listings and I'd love to know what you think. Each item page in my shop now comes with a drop down menu that allows you to select the size case you'd like to order, by choosing the model of your phone/iPod. This means that I can now offer all my cases to fit a much wider range of gadgets and allows me to tweak the design so that it's a perfect fit for that exact gadget, whilst hopefully making it much simpler for the customer to see exactly what they're ordering. 

So what do you think, yay or nay? Good idea or will it make the shopping experience more complicated? I've also thought about adding another selectable colour option so that you can choose your own case lining. Is this a feature you'd be interested in? I'd also love to hear from any sellers who've started using it. 

Christmas Posting Dates 2012

I have to admit I'm starting to feel a bit Christmassy already. I bought a slightly Festive jumper the other day (by accident I thought it had flowers on but they were actually snowflakes) and I can even hear my next-door neighbours singing Christmas songs! The first few Christmas orders have started to come in so I thought I'd keep you all up to date on this years last posting dates so that all your gifts arrive on time. Which are as follows:

I'm feeling surprisingly prepared for Christmas orders this year, normally it's a mad rush to get everything finished but this year I've stocked up on materials and packaging supplies in advance, re-stocked my Folksy and Etsy shops and even have some new designs to photograph and add tomorrow. (I'm sure this feeling won't last long and I'll be sprinting to the post office at 5pm as usual!)

Who's feeling Christmassy already? I've started to shop around for some nice handmade ornaments as we never seem to decorate our house as we're always away visiting our parent over Christmas, so I thought it'd be nice to decorate this year for a change.