Shoes!

When I am not at Storeyshop HQ cutting cards and other paper goodies (and drinking lots of tea), I'm quite often freelancing on various different arty jobs (where I also drink lots of tea but have to make cups for other people too). One of my recent favourite jobs was working on Company magazine's 'High Street Edit'. A gorgeous, chunky magazine (on lovely matt stock for the paper geeks out there) devoted entirely to shopping! Perfect. The Autumn/Winter issue is out now and here are a few of the pages I designed. Shoe heaven.

I Want Wednesday!

Woo hoo, the sun is blazing into the office today and I have just heard about a possible exciting project too so I am happy. Let's hope I can reveal more soon! I have been having a little Wednesday browse of handmade goodies too. My top shop for this week is MrPS.

My perfect combination of tea, food, cafes, Britain, fry-ups, bingo and simple design in the shape of tea towels, posters, mugs and shopping totes! All handmade and based in Manchester, MrPS products have been featured in British Vogue and French Elle among others. I like!












Lovely jubbly! The cafe ideas remind me of my beloved Picadilly Cafe in London. It is no longer, sadly, but I have very happy memories of lunches there with the art girls when I worked as a designer in London. Lunches would vary but we would always have mugs of tea and bread and butter all round. Why does it taste so good when you have it in a cafe?! One of the staff used to be constantly talking on the phone too. I mean, constantly. He'd be talking when you went in and I'm sure it was the same conversion when you left an hour later. In fact, in all my time there, I'm not sure that I ever saw him without that phone in one hand and his butter knife in the other.

Storeyshop Has A New Look

I have been designing new branding for Storeyshop so have added a new banner here and on my Etsy shop. Well, I say designing but I decided the branding should be created by hand really seeing as I love handmade and everything Storeyshop sells is lovingly hand crafted. I am still playing around with ideas but let me know what you think!

Here is a sneak preview of some of the new Storeyshop items which will be available soon. This is a little wooden jewellery box covered with magazine type. The plan is to design my own coverings but this was my first attempt to see how it might work and how long each would take. I like how it turned out. Think this one might be a birthday present (must not keep it, must not keep it) but there is a new crossword version in the pipeline too inspired by my love of puzzles and the giant suduko canvas in our bathroom!

We Make Christmas!

We Make Christmas is soon approaching so I am busy making. Here's an invite.. Everyone very welcome. See you there!

Twins!

I love making cards for twins! I have made a few double personalised orders now with one card for each twin that match but aren't completely identical. I am looking forward to making more too. Here are the latest sets..






I am back designing the magazine for the next couple of weeks so Storeyshop will be a bit quieter in terms of new listings. I am still around though making a few card orders and packing up bags and monkeys. It is a nice break to get off the computer for an hour or so to hand-cut a card or wrap up a Storeyshop item and wander down to the post office.

'We Make Christmas' craft fair is coming up soon too in London. More details about that soon!

Neon Monkeys!

I have another sock monkey production line on the go! They are all lined up along the back of the sofa in various stages of development. I'm stocking up for We Make. The newest monkeys in the range are neon and are looking fab. I do have a bit of a thing for neon!





The design job I mentioned a couple of blogs ago is now 'on hold' which is a shame but, nevermind. All the better to concentrate on Storeyshop and learning web design. I kept saying I wasn't going to hold my breath about that job too. It's funny how you get a feeling about these things..

Back Up North

My latest freelance stint in London went well. I got back home really late on friday and then Dave and I headed off to the Lake District early on saturday for a bank holiday camping trip. Neither of us had any mobile phone signal at all so trying to find our friends who had come up from Reading was all done with paper notes attached to cars. Much more fun! It's lucky Dave's Ibex 4x4 is very recognisable!

We had a great time. The weather was lovely and sunny just really windy! Our tent held up at night (some poor people's didn't!) but it was very noisy and we didn't get much sleep. I was grumbling about hating camping at one point in the night when the wind was literally lifting the edges of the groundsheet up, I was freezing cold and had to brave it outside to go to the toilet. In the morning though, with bacon cooking on the little camping stove, I loved camping again!









Right, I must go and finish off my card orders. I made 5 yesterday and I have 2 more to make today along with a monkey who needs packing up and sending to the U.S. Then it's more monkeys and bags to start making ready for We Make and the shop.

Ta ra

Older

I had a fab birthday! I managed to celebrate for 4 days, ate lots of nice food, saw my friends and family and got lots of nice presents. I like being 27 so far! This week I'm working in London again on Cosmopolitan magazine. It's good. I'm enjoying being back in the city but am also looking forward to getting back to Storeyshop. Beca has started printing her own fabric and it looks so nice! She has made me some to make little bags out of, looking forward to creating those!

The posters are going up around London for 'We Make'. Beca is hand-printing paper bags and business cards and I am thinking up new card designs. Woo hoo, not long now!

Fight Club

Oooh crikey I haven't written anything on here for ages. I've been so busy. I have been working in Newcastle on a fighting magazine (there's a quiet spell again..!) for the last couple of weeks. It's a nice variation to women's magazines actually and it's good to work with blokes for a change. It's the opposite to the magazine I work on in London quite a lot, where there's so many women, the toilets on our floor are all 'ladies'.

This job is bit of a trek from our house in the sticks so I'm getting up at the crack of dawn and not getting home until quite late but I'm getting used to it. I'm getting to see a bit more of Newcastle and find my way around too. I have found an amazing big super-modern M&S (I'm a Marks geek and have already bought way too many basics and knicker and vest sets!) and a Primark (managed to resist the cheapness so far though).

I'm looking forward to getting on with Storeyshop more in the next couple of weeks. The stock is selling out! We need to get making. I have lots of ideas so need some time to crack on with it all. Beca is making lino-cut stamps and printing blocks so look out for gorgeous cards and notelets, all completely hand-printed, very soon. They look fab!

Just heard about an Etsy craft fair in London in June soon too so that sounds exciting and a good thing to think about. I like the idea of people being able to actually see and touch all the products. It will be fun to meet all these UK Etsy people we have been talking to! Good excuse for a trip back to the big smoke to see my friends too..

Better get back to designing. Will blog again soon and add some photos etc. I have been buying some nice things on Etsy lately (all in the name of research, honest) so I'll get them on here too.

Ta ra

Oh yeah, other big news is that we have bought two urls www.storeyshop.com and www.storeyshop.co.uk Very exciting! Both link to our Etsy shop at the moment but the plan is to learn how to make a fab new website. Will have to get reading the Dreamweaver bible!

Back In The City

I'm in London today. It's a gorgeous sunny day and I'm in the office working on the magazine. It's a quiet spell so I thought I'd update my blog. I came down Monday morning and finished off a sock monkey on the journey. I'm sure the train guard walked past an exra few times trying to work out what I was doing.

Here's a photo of him all finished sitting comfortably for the rest of the journey!



This week has been really busy but good fun and a nice change to working on my lonesome at home. It has been a bit of a break for my scalpel fingers but I have still been getting orders and making them after work and during lunch hours. I have just made a card for someone's aunt who is about to turn 100. How cool is that?!



More cards to make after work tonight and then I'm back on the train heading home. I'm glad. London was always a bit too hectic for me and, now that I'm used to the rural countryside, it's even more so. A couple more crammed tube and train journeys and then back to the fields.

Here are some photos of the Chinese New Year lights on Oxford Street..





Ta ra

51 sales!

Good news.. I set a target for the end of January for Storeyshop to hit 50 sales and we've already done it! At the end of last year I thought 50 sales would be a bit optimistic but it seems not. Yay!

Good timing too as I have just been shopping. Hehe. I went into Newcastle today to go and see a man about some possible magazine freelance design up here which went really well (I hope) so then, seeing as I was near the shops and all....

Tomorrow is card-making central. I have so many to do, the orders are rolling in! I sold 2 monkeys today too which means out of our entire office full, they are now only 7 left. They all fit on one tidy shelf. I'll have to make more!

Well we made it out for a walk yesterday in the end. Here are some photos even though they're a bit rubbish. Check out the sheep running away from me!