Happy Jubilee Weekend & A Giveaway!

Hope you are all enjoying your long weekend of celebrating all things red, white and blue! I'm feeling a bit groggy as one of the evil colds that have been going around has finally caught up with me. I've been eating strawberries and cream and lots of cake though. Rude not to! Here's my Victoria sponge and Jubilee socks combo from yesterday... IT'S GIVEAWAY TIME! Head over to my Storeyshop Facebook page now to enter my giveaway to win a free laser cut card of your choice. Just 'like' and/or comment on the most recent post to be entered. I'll pick the winner at random tomorrow evening. Good luck!

In other news, I am now a whole year older as it was my birthday on May 19th. Had a lovely time celebrating in Sheffield before heading to Sussex to see family and friends and then to Lanzarote for our last child-free holiday! Photos to come of the bump abroad but here are a couple of my lovely birthday presents :)

I haven't had today off as I've been busy catching up with card orders. Getting there so the waiting time should soon be less again. I am getting bump ache though from leaning over my cutting mat. Anyone got any tips for comfortable working?!

Hello Thirties!

So I have had a birthday. A big birthday. I have now entered my thirties (no, don't worry, I didn't make myself a card - this was an order for a fellow 30-turner a few months ago)! Actually my mother-in-law did hand cut me a card. It's a purposely rubbish attempt at copying my cards complete with a spelling mistake and fingerprints. 'Tis brilliant (I'll have to take a photo and add it in later)...



Anyway, the big day was last Thursday (thank you very much for all the birthday tweets!) and we celebrated by heading off for a long weekend in the Lake District. We stayed in a little cottage in Bowness-On-Windermere and spent a lovely few days walking, wandering, shopping (lots of charity shops!), relaxing and eating. Perfect. One of the highlights was The Jumble Room restaurant in Grasmere. Amazing food and lovely, hectic decor with mismatched furniture and loads of cushions. A little gem which we'll definitely be returning to!

My present is going to be a super duper new camera which I have been wanting for ages. I haven't got it yet though so these snaps from my trusty little point-and-shoot will have to do for now...












This week has been really busy with fitting in cutting orders with freelancing on a magazine over in Newcastle. Looking forward to catching up with all things Storeyshop over the weekend and next week. If you're waiting for a hand cut order, they should all be posted by Tuesday at the latest. Other exciting news is that I have a couple of new potential stockists wanting to stock Storeyshop goodies. Woo!

Happy Birthday Freya!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful niece, Freya. She is 13 today! I can't believe it has been 13 years since I heard my Dad on the phone to my sister when she called with the news of Freya's arrival in to the world. I was sitting on my bed, with my friend Natalie, when I heard that I'd become an aunty for the first time!

There was me thinking I was all grown up at 17 and now Freya is a teenager. I just found this photo (think it was the end of the roll of film hence the funny orange effect) of me sitting in my bedroom a few months later with little Freya. Check out my lovely decor in the background! Old ticket to see 'Blind Date' live, back stage passes for Symposium's concert in Brighton (anyone remember them?), ticket for 'Indie Day', postcards of Brad Pitt. They were the days!


I hand cut a personalised birthday card for Freya on a really sunny day last week when the shadows and reflections were so clear that I had to get my camera out and take some snaps!












As I was looking for a silver or gold pen to write on front of the black envelope for the card, I noticed the little cut out bits from the orange card so decided to stick them on the front of the envelope instead. How have I not thought of this before? So, if you order a card where the letters are cut out (most of my cards have the negative space cut out instead) feel free to ask for the cut out'ty bits too. You could stick them to the present wrapping or have them like confetti inside the card...

Car Booty!

Half my weekend was very boring and involved my tax return and accounts sorting (eurgh) and half was brilliant and involved dinner at our favourite restaurant and an entire day off (yay)! Still haven't quite finished the boring Excel spreadsheets and tax form but have made a good start. Saturday night dinner was to celebrate mine and Dave's meeting (a very random, Sliding Doors-like, evening in Sussex 5 years ago) and took place in The Crown in Catton. The food was amazing as ever and we sat by a lovely open fire. Perfect.

On Sunday, we went to the 'Food and Craft Fair' at Wallington National Trust House and tasted (and bought) lots of nice locally-produced Northumberland food goodies. Always a nice change to wander round a craft fair as a buyer too, and not have to sit behind a stall getting cold and a numb bum! I then dragged my lovely fiance round a car boot sale. He hates them but we did find some fab vintage mugs.

Today has been a busy one with lots of card orders made and posted. I have also just listed this new card which I made on Friday...



Rememer, there's still lots of time to enter my new giveaway to win a card. See the post below and good luck. Thank you to all of you who have commented, followed and tweeted so far!

Storeyshop Cards Are Being Copied

I'm really annoyed and disappointed today as I have just found someone selling hand cut personalised cards just like mine. Even very similar shapes and designs. It is a new shop and even the person's descriptions about her items have big chunks of the same text as mine. How do you fellow crafter and shop owners deal with this if you come across it? I would love to hear from you.

I guess there's nothing you can do except see it as flattery. It's such a shame that people who are obviously artistic and talented can't come up with their own ideas and concepts. I could never copy someone. It's really ruined my day to be honest. Must stay positive and see it as inspiration to come up with new and better ideas and products. On that note, here are some new 'I love you more than...' card designs...

Storeyshop Gets A Bit Older

Sorry I have been letting the ol' blog slip a bit but I have the perfect excuse. It was my birthday on Tuesday! I had a fab day with lots of lovely cards and presents and a surprise day out on Holy Island where I have always wanted to go. We even got (mostly) blue skies and sunshine so going east was a good choice by Dave!






















A white butterfly kept fluttering around while we were having a picnic on the beach and settled on my shoe. I love butterflies! She's in the top left of the grassy photo above too.




This photo is a bit blurry as I took it from the car as we were driving on to the island but the horses galloping through the sea was very cool!

I missed 'I Want Wednesday' this week so next week I will be posting a special 'I Want' collection and the theme will be 'baby goodies' in celebration of one of my best friend's recent announcements that they are expecting the pitter patter of tiny feet in early December. Woo hoo!!

Happy Bank Holiday weekend!

Happy Birthday Dave's Parents!

It is Dave's parents' birthday today. They have their birthday on the same day which I always think is very romantic. Happy Birthday to them! We gave them tickets for Jools Holland when he tours in Newcastle in December.





I have to admit this was their birthday card from last year. We bought them one this year. It's quite a novelty buying one these days! It's a lovely sunny day again today and I have just finished off a new style rainbow monkey and listed him in Storeyshop.








This afternoon is going to be spent making more templates for the laser cutting man. I am going to get some 'I love you more than...' cards laser cut as an alternative to my hand-cut ones (which will still be very much available). The laser cut cards can then be stocked in shops more easily and hopefully featured in another magazine or two. I must tidy the office too, there is cardboard everywhere!

More Custom Cards

I am having a quick break from sewing monkeys and uploading some new photos of this week's personalised card orders. Here are some of my favourites. I like the random images some customers ask for like 'pointy shoes' (see Alex's card). I have also just finished a card with a BMX bike on it. I packed that card order up and forgot to take a photo of it but I've decided I like bikes even though they are tricky to cut. They might be appearing on more cards soon! I like knife and fork images too. Probably due to my love of food :)

Happy Birthday Niamh!

Today is a big Happy 8th Birthday to my neice, Niamh. She's a few hundred miles away in East Sussex but we are looking forward to a trip down to see all the family in early March. Happy Birthday Niamh from me, Dave and Seb the 17 year old chinchilla. Hi Freya and Harvey too!

Happy Birthday Harvey!

It is my little nephew Harvey's birthday today! He's a great big 4 years old! Here's his card in Thomas The Tank inspired colours..

Super Cards

A new range of hand-cut Storeyshop cards are now available to order. Partly thanks to Dave's Gran and partly to a custom request from my latest customer, I am proud to unvail the Super Card!

I think I mentioned the three-layer Super Gran card which I made for Dave's, er, Gran, a while back but it has since inspired more three-layer delights such as the recent Super Andy card and now the 'Happy Birthday Dad' card for a stuctural engineer featuring some famous architecture on the second layer.












Available to order now from Storeyshop. Get thinking of your design ideas for your personalised Super Cards now!

Right I better get back to my designing. I got the job to design the two business identities and I am starting the new magazine next week hopefully. It will be a busy weekend too as I am taking Dave away for his birthday.. I hope the weather brightens up!

Ta ra

Card Central

I can't believe it's friday already. This week has gone so fast. I have been scalpelling for England with the card orders! I have lost track of how many I have made and there's still plenty more to do, not that I'm complaining! My fingers are getting quite sore now though and I'm racking up the scalpel cuts. I think I'm going to have to start buying plasters en mass along with scalpel blades.

Here are some of the latest creations..










I have hopefully arranged some freelance design work on a magazine up north which is good news. I do like the a trip down to London to work for the odd week here and there but it will nice to come home in the evenings after work and it also means I can keep up with Storeyshop better.

I definitely need a break from card cutting so I'm quite looking forward to a week on the Mac next week freelancing down at Company magazine. I get to catch up with all the girls there too. I miss the daily catch ups and banter (and the cafe round the corner for mushrooms on toast!)

I really hope the weather improves for the weekend. It's been snowing, hailing, raining and generally grey for the last couple of days. Monday was lovely and sunny when I went over to Newcastle for my meeting and it made me want to go back and explore the town more. One day of my weekend will be DIY on the bathroom I think but the other day I'd like to go out somewhere. There's so many places up here that I haven't been yet!

Ta ra

Oh, and my target for sales by the end of January nearly made the 60 mark let alone 50! This 'setting targets' thing works :)

More cards!

Afternoon,
I'm going card crazy! I think I have made 9 so far this week. I'm really enjoying making them but I'm feeling like doing a spot of sewing as a change for this afternoon. I have two pink monkeys on the go and, once they are finished, I'm going to attempt some different animals!

Here are my new Valentines Day cards..



And here are some recent birthday card orders..





Ta ra

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 to everyone and I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

I'm back at home after a hectic few weeks working in London then heading to Sussex to my family for Christmas then back up north for Christmas II with Dave's family and then to Ireland to stay with friends for New Year! A fab time was had by all and I have lots of photos which I will put up when I get my camera lead back (I left it at my parents by mistake, grrr!)

The highlights were seeing my friends and family again, eating lots of nice food, getting and giving (hopefully) lots of nice presents and swimming in the Irish sea on New Years Day! Have a look at the 'Zimmer Swimmers' link on the right for video proof!

Now I'm back to the card making and monkey stuffing. I have a steady stream of orders to keep me busy until I spend next week back in London working on the cardboard animation project again which I'm looking forward to! It's snowing today which is all very nice but I really hope it doesn't affect my trains to and from London...

Ta ra

Here's a few cards I have made recently but haven't been able to reveal in case people saw them who shouldn't!