Whistle-Stop Weekend!

I'm back at Storeyshop HQ after a brilliant action-packed, long weekend down south. Hadn't been down for a few months so it was great to go back and see family and friends in London and Sussex. It made a nice change to be away from the computer for a few days too.

The weather was very kind to us... Sunday was lovely and sunny! It's miserable and dark today though and feels like proper winter. Maybe Sunday was the last 'no coat' and 'no socks' day of this year? Sniff.

Really busy catching up with orders this week and it's a short one as I have an exciting day planned on Friday which involves heading down to London again. I can't reveal what it's for yet but should be fun. Still haven't unpacked from the weekend and we came back, yet again, laden with stuff my parents had 'sorted out' for me to take to my own house! I better get tidying after I have taken todays orders to the Post Office.

No exciting photos from the weekend but here's a new custom monkey order, from last week, who I liked so much that I have bought more socks and made him available to buy from Storeyshop. And also some photos of when Seb met Monkey.

New Storeyshop Card Orders

When I have time and remember to, I like to take a quick photo of my personalised cards before I package them up and post them to each customer. The photographs aren't always the greatest as the light can be rubbish when I need to quickly snap a card and they often end up sitting on my memory card neglected for a while but they are nice records to have. Definitely more fun than just keeping accounts! I've had a sort out this morning and here are some orders from the last few months...

















A couple more card orders to make and post this morning and then I have a website to design. Not my own unfortunately but this one should be a nice design project. I am designing the different elements and general layout in InDesign and someone else is doing the technical website build. Perfect for me and hopefully a good way of seeing how the different elements are used together. A mini step closer to learning a bit more of the technical side of things one day!

Bank Holiday Treasury

Happy Bank Holiday Monday! I have managed to get an Etsy treasury this morning and, inspired by the lovely green baby booties from my previous post, have filled it with all things olive. You can find it here. Happy browsing! The items are all in my 'Favourites on Etsy' panel down on the right hand side of this blog too so can still be clicked straight through to when the treasury expires in a few days. Let's hope the gorgeous green finds make the front page of Etsy!




We are off to Dave's parents' for lunch in a bit so just a quick post today but back with more shopping finds, wedding updates, photos and also details of my up-coming interview for TryHandmade.com soon!

A Storeyshop Little Bag Sale!

Because it's Friday and because everyone loves a sale! Head on over to Storeyshop where my last few little bags have been reduced. They are great as beauty bags and would make nice gifts too. I am planning to concentrate on cards and monkeys for now so selling off my last few little bags. I might open a separate shop for this kind of thing in the future but they may be unavailable for a while once they are sold...









Happy Friday and I hope you all have a fab weekend!

Etsy Front Page!

Woo hoo! I made a new treasury a couple of days ago and have just found out it was featured on Etsy's front page! There weren't any of my own items in it but I always think it's a bit wrong to include your own. The items were all fab anyway and I hope the lovely makers have had sales from it. The treasury is about to expire but you can still find it here on Craft Cult, my new favourite website! (If anyone with an Etsy shop hasn't found this brilliant website yet, you should. You can see if you are featured in gift guides, have made it to Etsy's front page and find out which of your items have new hearts quickly and easily.)




Apologies for missing my weekly 'I Want Wednesday' spot yesterday. I am waiting to hear back from the shop I would like to feature. If I don't hear back today, I'll find another lovely shop/item to feature very soon.

Happy Thursday!

Storeyshop Grand Prize Draw!

Woo hoo, it's officially May. May is my favourite month of the year, it means summer is well on the way also my birthday! Friday 1st May was also the day of Storeyshop Grand Prize Draw. The ceremony has just taken place and the winner is Big Blue Bed! Congratulations to Alix who wins a personalised, hand-cut card.




Thank you to everyone who left comments and clicked to follow Storeyshop. I will be doing more giveaways soon. For now though, if any of you would like to order a personalised card, mention this giveaway to get free postage!

Have a lovely weekend everyone. Enjoy bank holiday Monday too if you have one! I hope it's sunny. We have gardening to do and our new vintage deckchairs to get some use out of. It's not very rock and roll but there's also a knitting exhibition at The Alnwick Garden. We've been meaning to go and have a look around the gardens for ages so we might do that if the sun's out tomorrow.

Ta ra!

Storeyshop Twitters

Okay, so I have done it. I have signed up and I have twittered. I'm not sure what to do now. I have found a few people to follow from Company magazine, where I used to work, and clicked to follow Phillip Schofield (and a few other celebrities who get their PA's to twitter for them now again). Is that it? Is it just lots and lots of twitters? No photos or anything else at all? Maybe I just haven't embraced it fully but I think I might be bored of it already.

My twitter name is Storeyshop. When I first tried to register, Storeyshop was taken and I got all stroppy. Then I tried resetting the password for that username in case it was me and I'd just forgotten. It was. How bad is that, that I can't even remember? I think I nabbed it in the very early days just in case the name got taken. Anyway, it will be me twittering and it won't be all boring Storeyshop promoting so please follow me!

Today I have made and posted 5 card orders and made a few new cards which will be coming soon. Dave has taken the laptop to work today which has Photoshop on so no photo editing until tomorrow but that's probably for the best. I have a painful neck which I think is from sitting at the computer too long. Probably all the online scrolling through shopping pages! I should probably have a break from typing now too so I will leave you with a couple of new 'I love you more than...' cards I made a few days ago.







Have a lovely evening everyone and remember, there's still time to enter my free giveaway for a personalised Storeyshop card of your choosing! Read down to Mondays post for more details. All you have to do is follow this blog, join my Facebook group or comment on the prize draw post. I'll be doing the very grand prize draw tomorrow afternoon!

I Love eBay Vintage

Today has a been a boring but satisfying day of accounts. Yawn. I had got a bit, erm, behind so it was very overdue. I am up to date now though, woo hoo! I still have to sort out my receipts and my freelance design accounts but I'm getting there.

To make up for my dull day of spreadsheets (and to celebrate getting them sorted) I have been on eBay. Again. I am a little bit addicted to searching for home and garden products near my house. I have just won these fab vintage deckchairs so looking forward to picking those up this weekend. And for some more sun so we can use them.




The last eBay pick up was right out in the sticks and was for this vintage mirror which was the bargain of the century. I love it. It now has pride of place on the floral wallpaper, over the wood burning stove, in the lounge. It cost the princely sum of £2.20!



Who need Kirstie Allsopp's help to do up your house? I used to like her but she's so patronising on that new handmade home programme. We know we can just pick what we like to decorate our homes. You don't need to keep telling us!

On the subject of bargain hunting, here's my new 'I Love You More Than eBay' card which is for sale now in Storeyshop.



Right, dinner and off to the pub tonight I think. Have a lovely weekend!

Shopping, Sun and Hallways

Oops, my daily blogging has slipped a bit again. Nevermind. I had a weekend off and spent my blog time yesterday sitting in the garden. The weather is so nice and we don't get that very often so thought I'd make the most of it!

We had a very nice weekend. I braved the shopping mall on Saturday which is quite rare as I usually use the perk of working from home to sneak there on a nice, quiet weekday if I need to. It actually wasn't that bad, though. I was shopping for a present for my soon-to-be 11 year old niece, Freya. It was strange wandering around trying to pick a present. I kept finding something nice and then thinking 'Oh no, what if it's really un-cool?'. Maybe, I am now the old, unfashionable Aunt? I hope I have done ok with my picks. I better not say what I got, just in case she looks at this.

I must admit, I did treat myself to a few things too. A few nice tops, a necklace and a beach bag. I hadn't been shopping in quite a while so it was nice to not know what was going to be in any of the shops. When I used to work in central London, I used to nip in a shop or two most lunch times so would always know what was around. It got a bit boring (and expensive!) It's my birthday next month so I am going to try and save all my purchases to wear over my birthday weekend and trip down south. We'll see how I do.

Apart from my shopping trip, we went for a bike ride, chilled out in the garden, did some boring cleaning, went to the pub, ate nice food and put some photos up in the hallway. I have had the photos in the lounge in various stages of development for ages so it's nice to finally get them up. I'm still on the look out for more vintage and metal frames to add but here's how it's looking...




Most of the frames are oldies which I have altered in some way, I painted a couple, covered a few and added new wall hanging hooks on the back of some. Cheap and unique! It's a bit of a far cry from the interior magazines but maybe once we sort the floor out and cover the dodgy, hand-me-down nest of tables you can see on the stairs it will start looking alright.

Today I have been making new cards. I'm trying out the 'I love you more than...' cards in different colours and with some new subjects. There was a forum post on Etsy earlier today asking everyone's favourite foods. It was inspiration for a lady who makes felt play food but it was interesting reading for me too. A few of those ideas will be appearing on cards soon!

The Incident

Before I stopped work on Wednesday to have dinner and watch The Apprentice (Ben should have gone in my opinion), I wrote a long To Do list of things I wanted to achieve the next day (yesterday). I decided it was going to be The Most Productive Thursday Ever. I even woke up yesterday morning remembering the mission and got up early ready to start. And then I spilt tea on the laptop.

I have had a fear for years that I would do it one day, and it happens on Most Productive Thursday Ever! The laptop shut itself down as soon as I had grabbed some tissues to throw onto the keyboard. I powered it off, took all the leads out and sat it upside down on my lap while I called Dave. It's Dave's laptop.

After some blow drying, some pieces of kitchen paper tucked between the keys and a day sitting upside down on the sofa, Dave took the laptop apart and cleaned it with some sterile distilled water we found in the first aid box which went out of date in 1997. Luckily, the tea had only gone over one corner of the keyboard and we just found a few drips under the keyboard. They were on a flat silver part (you can tell how technical I am) and not on any circuit boards or components. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she worked when we powered her back up and she is still working now!

I went straight upstairs to back up all the things I had spent the day worrying I might lose, onto the PC. Phew. Must back up more often too. Everyone reading this -do a backup today!

Well, apart from the tea on laptop incident and some time Google-ing 'what do I do if I spill tea on my laptop', I used the day fairly productively after all. I made 9 new generic cards in nice bright colours to brighten up the shop and designed some new 'I Love You More Than...' cards which will be coming soon!

A Belated Happy Easter!

I'm back at my desk after a relaxing Easter break in the sun! By the sounds of it, we were definitely in the right part of the country for the sunny weather and we made the most of it. I feel so much better for having been outside lots and got some exercise at last! We went for a trip to the Northumbrian coast which is always really nice and we also sampled Morpeth, just outside Newcastle. That was nice for a wander-around too. I had spotted a craft centre near Morpeth on the map so we left the A1 when we spotted the brown sign but then found there weren't any more signs so we couldn't find it. I'll have to add that to my list of art places around here to explore one of these days. We did, however, find some charity shops! Yay. I do love a good charity shop. What else? Erm, we went for a bike ride, we did a few bits around the house, we ate lots of nice food, we had a lovely Easter Sunday lunch at Dave's parents. All very chilled. Here are some photos...

I Love Shopping!

I've been finding new pretties on Etsy and managed to get another treasury to show some off! I realised when I looked at my favourites that I must have a thing for red and yellow...



It's the Easter holiday weekend. Bank holidays just aren't the same when you work for yourself though. I actually think Dave and I might work and save our 'bank holidays' for my birthday or when we go down south at the end of May. It will hopefully be nicer weather and better traffic! I might have a sorting out my work area and craft supplies day tomorrow as an easy Friday. I need to get some inspirational things on the walls of the office as it's all very beige. I have been waiting until we decorate but that may be some time judging by our DIY speed and budget at the moment.

I'm hungry so must go and get some dinner on. I'll leave you with some of my recent personalised cards.

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!

My New Favourite Storeyshop Monkey

It's Friday! Not quite sure how that came around so fast again but I am looking forward to the weekend. I think we are going to go and investigate the Ouseburn Valley area of Newcastle where the Art Works Galleries are. They contacted me recently about stocking my cards so I'd like to see what it's like and I have heard it is well worth a visit. Other than that, I think it will be a weekend of sorting out the garden if it's nice weather and eBaying. I have had another wardrobe sort out so can hopefully make a few pennies (and some space for new finds!)

This is my new favourite monkey of all time that I mentioned in my last post. Check him out! So far I haven't been able to get any more of these socks either so it's looking like he's going to be very limited edition...











I won't mind at all if he stays around sitting on the shelf in the office but if you want to buy him you can find him in Storeyshop now.

Have a lovely weekend!

I Want Wednesday

This week is going so fast again. I have been thinking it is Tuesday all day but, no, I Want Wednesday is back! My 'I want' for today are these illustrations by Yuuco; 'You make me so happy', 'Une deux trois' and 'I'm always with you'. I love them. There are lots more fab illustrations in her shop too, Blue Bon Bon.














Happy First Day of April! I have cut and posted more personalised cards today and also recieved the laser cut samples. I need to send nicer card for them to cut from, but the design looks really good and you can still see that the designs are hand-drawn which I am pleased about. Next step is sending more card designs and card to Bob the laser cutter and they will soon be available to buy. Woo hoo!