back log cleared!

I haven't worked much over Christmas - in fact I have been positively revelling in relaxing and sleeping more than normal - we visited both our families over Christmas and ate, drank and made Merry, a lovely lovely Christmas all round!....I hope yours was great too? 
I have however, managed to meet my goal of finishing all the accounts before 2014! from a messy stack in the corner that gradually grew week after week during the Christmas rush...

 ...to a lovely neat & tidy pile all just needing to be filed  ::

 

huzzah!

A present for you!

Whilst we are shut for the holidays I thought it would be nice to offer each and every one of you a discount in my  shop*.  You can use the discount on anything in my shop - if you can add it to your shopping basket, you can have a discount on it!  (if you add handmade it will lengthen delivery times, just like normal)
There are tonnes of new items that I added over the past few days and all the old favourites too, the perfect time to stock up on all things felt-y :-)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

for the website click here
*discount only applicable on my website, please see website for all the details

Christmas Holidays

that's it - all our last minute parcels have been packed and are in the sacks waiting for Mr Postie to collect - I have extended all the delivery times in my shops (eBay, etsy, NotOnTheHighStreet) and the website has an announcement warning customers that we are now closed & will be back on January 6th 2014...I will still be in the workshop clearing the backlog of accounts for the next couple of days (which has in fact grown since I last showed the huge pile!!) come back and visit tomorrow because I have a little gift for you all :-)

the fabric is listed

 

for all of you who asked (and all of you who didn't!) - the new fabric is on the website now...the Woodland Critters is my favourite - that Fox is Handsome!....

...but then I also love Colour Me Retro - I am very fickle and can't make up my mind which one is the best for me...Becky has picked and favours this one:

they (and the other designs) have  all been added to the What's New section which is here

a table full of new...

 lots and lots of lovely deliveries have been arriving over the past few days

 lots of running low/ sold out items have been re-stocked

 and quite a few new things have crept in too !

 I have photographed and listed everything* and you can find it all on the website by clicking here

apart from the fabric, that'll be on there tomorrow, I forgot to take photos and when I remembered it was just to dark to do it!

Christmas Makes

 my last handmade orders were all sent out before the weekend....in plenty of time to add some Christmas Cuteness to quite a few more Christmas trees :-)  we're still in the workshop this week packing and sending out orders, I've placed some top up orders for sold out stocks and will get them added asap - we don't want any last minute craft panics for Christmas !!

easiest question EVER

shall I:
A.  Make a start on my long neglected weekly accounts? aaarrrgghh I have a paperwork mountain in my office!

or shall I:
B.  Have a coffee and a biscuity treat?

please excuse the yellowed photos - it's dark and the lights are on! ... I did think I could retake them tomorrow in the daylight but ahem the biscuit won't be here that long!...the paperwork may still be there in 2014 though ;-)

Christmas Posting Details

there's still plenty of time to get your crafting goodies before we close for two weeks over Christmas & New Year - if you are anything like me I'm sure you will have a lot of crafting time over the holidays...I can't wait to have nothing to do but sew sew sew!

black brads are back in stock

a couple of weeks ago my brad supplier very suddenly stopped making black brads - it wasn't a huge panic because I always hold a lot of them in stock, but what with Christmas orders and my mammoth kit orders to fulfill they very very quickly ran out!

I have found a new supplier for 4.5mm brads (that's them, in the photo up there)...they aren't exactly the same as the old ones, but they are really really similar - apart from the price - the new ones are A LOT cheaper!!
the old brads were £3.50 for 50 of them and now they are in the shop for £3.25 for 100 - what a result!

 AND I have another size/style too!! 5mm flat brads, a little bit bigger and flat instead of domed, and these are just £3.75 for 100!

 the only bad news is that they don't come pre-counted...and I sell tonnes of these and can't count them all...so we will sell them by weight, which means that the odd imperfect one may well slip into the bag - but at such a bargain price I think that that's ok, don't you?
brads are back on the website HERE

mammoth order #3 is finished!

 and the only thing bigger than the pile of boxes is the bags under our eyes!

 the last 400 snowmen kits were finished last night, that's them in the box up there

and they, and the many many other thousands of kits here will be topping up the shelves of John Lewis very soon indeed.

surrounded by snowmen

mammoth order number 3 is *nearly* finished!  I'm just waiting for the postman to come and collect todays parcels and then I will be back in the kit making room, with John, to finish it off!...just another 400 kits to make!!!

homemaker magazine + me!

my handmade Penguin, Reindeer and Christmas Pud decorations are in the current issue of Homemaker Magazine isn't it a lovely photo? 

it's all about the pom poms

it must be nearly Christmas 'cos there are pom poms everywhere I turn!
pom poms in kit making...pom poms in customer's parcels ...and pom poms as the snowmen's scarves on my newest handmade orders

I love pom poms :-)  

mammoth order # 2 :: update

snowman kits on the making table late last night, it doesn't matter how late it is or how tired you are pom poms can always cheer you up!!  ....we had a lie in this morning and got up at 7am instead of 6am, what a treat!  but the hard work has got the job finished in time, and left plenty of time this afternoon to get started on website orders and some sewing too :-)

excuse the finger in the photo - we were rather tired, plus there's no way we're unpacking them all just so we can retake the photo ;-)

mammoth kit order #2

phew-ee this week is flying by!  every spare moment has been filled with kit making - all of us have been doing homework and working extra hours to keep on top of it all, and one last push this weekend from John and I will see mammoth order # 2 finished (I hope!)

Becky has homework for mammoth order #3 ... yep, that's right! another massive order landed yesterday, it's the biggest yet, but we do have a little longer to finish it, thank goodness :-)

Order Dispatched

...and it was a BIG one!
Just look at it all - 21 boxes full of kits, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kits!
We are super chuffed with ourselves - managing a massive order alongside all our normal orders (of which there were many last week, thanks shoppers!)
All achieved through team work and A LOT of overtime ... now, on to the next big order!

a long weekend ....

...nope, not a luxurious, relaxing holiday but instead - a long weekend of kit making awaits!  John and I could do with a holiday - tomorrow will be day 6 of loooong working hours (6am-11pm! yikes!) and another John Lewis popped through the door today so there's no end to these long days yet!!!

The photo is not related to that at all - but when I was cutting these packs for an order today I thought the colours looked great together :-)

whose boxes?

lots and lots of lovely boxes - all sent out to one customer - I wonder if they are all for the same person or if this is lots of Christmas presents in one hit...or perhaps they aren't Christmas presents at all?? 

Whoever they are for, I enjoyed making them and hope they enjoy them too :-)

ta-dah!

I also did the handstitching on a pile of boxes - but they won't be machined together until tomorrow, so I can't show you them yet!  Not bad for a lazy day eh?
Oh and the tray I keep on showing you with sewing on it is from ikea
I have two and I highly recommend them :-)

the magic of Sundays

This time of year it's hard to stop working, well, actually, every time of the year I find it hard to stop working because I love it!! - but yesterday I started to feel a bit under the weather and decided I needed a Sunday Sofa day...and that I really need to avoid getting the lurgy that hit our little team a week ago.
So after a Saturday of Kit Packing ::

and box sewing ::

I have spent all of Sunday in my PJ's, with my fluffy socks on and the heating cranked up...with a tray of sewing to keep me occupied.  Perfect, and I'm feeling 100% again so I *think* it's worked!

STOP! it's freebie time! *

woah! the freebie this time round had 325 comments!
thanks to everyone who joined in ... Benny (my handsome table) got a lot of admiration - his friends can be found here if you need a Benny Table in your life too**....now, on to the business of picking a winner:

  the random number machine has been called into action and ta-dah! the winner is:

 comment # 87:
Sam Goodall said...
What an amazing give away, I love your shop, always fantastic service and beautifully packed.
Thankyou Sam G

 Well done Sam - please email your address to me ( sepoulton {at} btopenworld {dot} com ) and I'll try to get it to you for the weekend :-)
Thanks again everyone for joining in :-)
* sorry Claire, hope this song  (2mins 9 secs in) isn't in your head as long as the dinosaur one ;-)
** I had a 15% voucher which made him cheaper!! but he's definitely worth every hard earned penny :-)

weekend work

a slightly crazy weekend = tonnes of sewing + lots of other 'things' in the mix....soon, my blog friends, I wish to spill the beans...but not yet!!...in the meantime, please enter the freebie and enjoy :-)

freebie day :: November 2013

this month's freebie is simple.  One great big prize of Christmas Crafting Supplies will be won by one blog reader.  To enter please follow the rules at the bottom of this blog post.
The Prize ::

 over £100 worth of crafting goodies for you to get making...

 ...all wrapped and packed in style!

 there are 10 mini rolls in a Christmassy themed selection of colours

 a great big bag of buttons

 a bag of cute pom poms

 a bag full of ric racs

 3 cute dinky test tubes filled with tiny bells and teeny tiny buttons

 3 fat quarters of Christmassy Fabrics

 two Christmas sewing kits

 a DIY advent calender package (25 paper bags, a pack of mini pegs and a long length of ribbon)

 AND 6 mini spools each with a metre of lovely ribbons on them

 all proudly being displayed on my new table (he got delivered yesterday - but you don't win him, he's mine!!)

The rules:
leave one comment AND ONE COMMENT ONLY on this blog post. (if you make a mistake please delete the comment and start again!)
Each comment is assigned a number and the Random Number Generator will pick one number from all the entries and that number will be the winner.
The freebie will be closed to new comments from Noon on Thursday 7th November 2013 and the winner announced later the same day.  Please come back to see if you are the winner.
me and Benny (the table!) wish you luck ;-)

 

the freebie has now closed at comment # 325