Big Red Bag goes to Norfolk Show

On Tuesday this week I won the business card raffle, amazingly! and I won my Big Red Bag - more of this next time, but this is to show his first day out, up at the Norfolk Show yesterday. I think he enjoyed himself and thought he fitted in very well! He's packed and ready for another day there today, so here he is, and we must go:

Royal Norfolk Show

Plans are in place now for the Royal Norfolk Show next week. Not everything has gone quite according to plan, but being a flexible kind of girl I shall work with what I have. There's still lots to get ready, but the work looks great. I'm very pleased with some of the new designs, so let's hope the visitors will like my offerings.

There will be some special offers for the show (but they're still a secret) - and you can come and commission work too.

I'm hoping to go out and about with my camera - I always seem to take lots of photos of sheep!

Wedding penguins in action

I recently supplied some of my penguin wedding cards to a customer in Ireland, for a wedding in early June, where quirky was definitely considered good.
This is what she did to them, and I love it!
I love people to adapt, modify and write on the cards that I design - such great team work! And it's even better when they send me a picture of them.

You can see more of Mark's photography here

Drawing Trees

I decided that I needed time to myself away from the hustle and bustle of A level revision and business, so I booked myself onto a workshop to draw trees for a day - up near Acle in Norfolk. I had no idea what to expect, so just decided to enjoy, whatever.
It wasn't such a brilliant day in terms of weather, but we managed to get outside for a walk alongside some beautiful trees - mostly ash, and mostly magnificent - and we sat and sketched for a while. Then the rain came and we went back indoors.
Lunch was followed by some painting - poster paints, big brushes. Painting like I hadn't done for years, if ever really - very free and the results are not astounding, but it was such fun just pushing colour around the page - well, actually quite a few pages because I do have a tendency to work quickly.

And now it's back to the grindstone, because I don't think this is material for my greeting cards! But I do think I want to add more colour, so watch this space....

Scottie dogs

I've recently supplied some of my Scottie dog products to The Scottish Terrier Emergency Care Scheme and as I didn't know about them before thought I'd give them a mention on my blog. There seem to be lots of Scottie dog fans out there - I have friends who have recently moved out to France with their 3 and have since got a 4th one. We've had their Scotties to stay in the past, while they were away, and I have to say they are quite full of character and determination! The first thing Gordon did when he arrived for his weekend was to "mark his patch" by peeing up one of my boxes of greeting cards!! A bad start to our relationship, but we made friends later!
If you want to rehome a Scottie or have any Scottie dog queries, this would be a good place to start: www.stecs.net

I've got a movie clip of some puppies when they were just 36 hours old - if anyone can tell me what to do with the clip so that I can post it here, I'd be very grateful (at the moment it's 134MB and 1.15 minutes long - it's obviously way too big to be able to put on the web...)

In the mean time, here are a couple of photos:

Here's mum with the puppies at 36 hours old:




And these are 3 of the same puppies at 2 months:

And if you'd like to see some of my cards, giftbags and other gifts, have a look at my website and put Scottie dogs into the search box

Some new designs

I've had an excellent response to my advertising in The Lady which has been great. But it's brought it's own problems because many readers of the magazine don't use the internet, so I'm still having to produce printed catalogues - time consuming to keep up to date, and expensive. I really could do with help producing a decent mail order catalogue.... I need to do some more thinking here.

However, it is easy to put new greeting card designs up on the website which is just what I did yesterday. A few new designs came in from the printers yesterday morning including a few summery beach ones with seagulls and the popular little dogs, so they are now finished and up online. You can have a look here - I'd love to hear what you think, or if you have ideas for designs I should be doing. What am I not doing that you would like to see?

The Lady Magazine

The Lady Magazine has been in publication since 1885 - that's an amazing 124 years. It's current publisher and chief exec is Ben Budworth who is the great- grandson of the founder - that's amazing too, don't you think? A real family business.

In celebration of being almost 125, the magazine has had a make-over or a face lift - colour is in, amongst other things.

It's not a magazine that I've much looked at, I have to confess, although I do remember my mother and stepfather putting in adverts years ago when they had a little holiday cottage round the corner from them in Devon.

It's the place to look for all sorts of holidays or if you need a gardener or nanny - that's quite well known. But they are introducing additional headings for their classified columns such as fashion and home furnishings, arts crafts and gifts, entertainment. So that's where I will have an advert in the next issue - in the arts, crafts and gifts section.

And there are some interesting articles too - gardens, theatre, places to visit (even with some special offers), an article on taking care of your tax allowance.

And I might try their version of fish pie (it does look very similar to the recipe I use which my mum gave me - so who knows, she might have got the recipe from The Lady herself!). Fish pie is great in our house, simply because everyone enjoys it.

And I'm sure there must be many readers of the magazine who really love to send fabulous greeting cards...