50 Uses for a Tea Towel part 1

 So over the next 30 days while my Kickstarter is running I'm going to try and discover/share 50 uses for a tea towel as it's day one lets start with a few to get the ball rolling.

1. Pin it to the wall, it's pretty enough

 2: Use it to wrap a wine bottle, come one we all know what's in those wine bags anyway and this is much prettier!

 3: Use a tea towel to wrap a gift, maybe a foodie gift, maybe not but this way the wrapping is a gift too and it's not gonna be thrown out like paper wrapping so it's better for the environment, and cuter!
Add a homemade tag and pretty ribbon and it's a perfect little parcel!

4: If you really must you could always use it to dry your dishes!

Remember you can support the Kickstarter here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/feltmeupdesigns/feltmeupdesigns-rainbow-doodle-birds-printed-tea-t

You don't need to pledge but please share to help me reach my goal.

More Uses for a Tea Towel tomorrow!

Thanks
Mel

Kickstarter Doodle Birds Tea Towel Project

So I launched my Kickstarter last night and we are already at 63% funded which is amazing after just 24 hours. I'm raising funds to turn my doodle birds design into a fabulous tea towel. Read all about the project and listen to me waffle on about it here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/feltmeupdesigns/feltmeupdesigns-rainbow-doodle-birds-printed-tea-t

If you aren't familiar with Kickstarter have a gander at their site and see how fab it is! Basically Kickstarter is a crowd funding site. A way in which normal folks like me can raise funding for creative projects which otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford. So I'm going to use my funds to produce a run of at least 100 lovely tea towels!

It works like this, you check out a project and if you like it you pledge funds towards it which are collected by Kickstarter once the project is over, in return for your pledge you get rewards which each project creator makes themselves ... if the project isn't fully funded, the creator of the project (me) get zero funds, you don't get charged and I cry for a bit. If it does get funded I jump up and down like a crazy person, have some pink wine, your funds get sent to me and I make pretty stuff! Get it? Got it? Good!

I have some awesome rewards that you won't be able to get anywhere else, prints, stickers, original artwork, felty birds and tea towels of course. So have a gander and if you can't pledge please share... any help is appreciated.

Big thanks to everyone who entered, especially our 3 winners Emily Hunt, Lisamarie Mclaughlin and Odd Sox. Kevin the psychic christmas tree selected Odd Sox to win the owl, Hasslehoff the bamboozled reindeer chose Lisamarie to win the robin goodies, and Eric the scruffy raven chose Emily Hunt to win the cat.

 Thank you so much everyone who entered the giveaway, I've loved reading your comments (and I read every single one!)

 

 If you haven't won then fret not, felt birdies can be purchased from http://www.feltmeupdesigns.com/shop.php , printed Inkmeup Designs goodies can be found here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/inkmeup?ref=em I'm working my little fingers off to get all the orders out in time for Christmas but do check delivery times if you aren't UK based as some deadlines have passed already!

 

5000 Facebook fans giveaway!!!

 Giveaway alert! I'm just a few fans away from 5000 so it's time for a giveaway! To enter just comment on this blog post or like this post on facebook and comment for the prize you'd like to win... "cat" "robin" or "owl" you don't have to share but sharing is caring and you get an extra entry for doing so (but you'll need to tell me as social media has a habit of hiding stuffs!) There will be 3 winners, randomly selected on December 7th at midday when the competition closes.

The prizes:
1. Robin goodies including a mini wreath, tiny robin bauble, notebook, print and card.

2. A lovely snowy owl, 4 snowy owl prints and a barn owl notebook

3. A smelly cat, cat note book and Inky cat print.

 

For bonus entries (you don't have to do this stuff but every one you do is an extra entry)
1. Leave a comment on the giveaway blog post here:
http://feltmeupdesigns.blogspot.co.uk/
2. tweet the following message "I want to win @feltmeupdesigns giveaway! #5000feltfans http://feltmeupdesigns.blogspot.co.uk/"
3. Share on facebook and let me know on this post in a comment that you shared

The legal stuff: This giveaway is in no way affiliated with facebook, nope, not one bit. Comments will only be counted from the original post, winners will randomly selected no takesy backsys, be nice, don't run with scissors and always wear clean under wear.

Tiny Robins... Feltmeupdesigns.com Exclusive

So if you've been paying attention you may have noticed my new and shiny website, feltmeupdesigns.com. Well the website is finally and properly live, the webshop has almost got my full range in and I finally managed to get to grips with the shipping options thingie! (yep it was just me being dumb! Thanks Yola you really helped out there with your forums!)

Now that my webshop is up and running I want to offer my felty fans some perks... after all the point of having my own webshop was so I could offer my customers the best service possible! So I have added a couple of exclusive products to the website that you won't find any where else.

Firstly there are the tiny and super tiny robins they are super cute and only available from Feltmeupdesigns.com at a special price of £4.50 and £7.50 until the end of September when I shall add them to my Etsy and folksy shops (If we have any left!) at their regular price of £5 and £8.

Then there are the Tweets... I have offered Tweets for years but this is the first time you can customise your tweets! You can choose your body colour from the shop and then use the handy dandy drop down menus to select heart colour and leg colour for a totally customisable Tweet!  I will be adding more colour variations as timee goes by but if you want something you can't see there I will take custom orders so just message me and I'll be happy to discuss colours.

The other nifty thing that webshop shoppers benefit from is flat rate shipping, on other sites you pay and extra fee of 50p shipping per bird but on the webshop (as my way of saying thankee and giving a wee discount) you only pay a flat rate based on where you are in the world... yep... no extra fees! How good is that?

I'm pretty certain the website will keep getting tweaked every 5 mins because I'm a perfectionist (have OCD) and it'll never be finished but I am getting closer... thanks everyone who spell checked and clicked all the links to make sure it works... You're awesome!

Wesite Building for Goblins (and bemused felt makers)

Hey Mel, where have you been? Oh hey random voice in my head, I'm so glad you asked me, I've been busy building a website. So you lucky folks will get some lovely posts about my experience doing just that over the next couple of weeks.

There are things in this life at which I consider my self good, baking, felt making, eating cake, and then there are things which I consider myself not good at. Right at the top of the list is webdesign! HTML what? SEO who? So when I set out to make a website I had a look around and sought out advice.

In the great forest of advice I found Kim Lawler's site and the advice she gives is great, straight forward and delivered in a conversational tone. Her post on 10 Questions to ask yourself before a website redesign was incredibly useful as a starting point. I used her questions to brainstorm and it helped me create a wishlist of what I'd want in my perfect website if budget, time, skill and attention span were unlimited and from this wishlist I built a massive mind map (which is the only way I can really do adminy tasks) with everything I wanted my website to have.

I then started thinking about hosting and where I wanted my website to be, Feltmeupdesigns.com became available so I grabbed it like a greedy kid with a sticky lollipop. I briefly flirted with the idea of a wordpress site because they look soooooooo good when done properly... but lets face it with a budget of virtually nuffin and an attention span of a... wait what was that... well, I wasn't going to go down that path without doing some serious research and honestly... ooo look some buttons!

 I chose Yola because they were already hosting my existing website and I kinda like the drag and drop widgets and reasonably goblin proof and intuitive system they have. The big friendly buttons appeal to me too. I upgraded my package from Bronze to Silver so I could use more templates, get some support if needed and add a shop and my own custom URL (URL who?) Then there was another decision to be made about the shop it's self, there were lots of options open to me, I went with Ecwid because Yola has a partnership with them and you can just drop a shop widget on to a page.

Ecwid isn't intuitive or easy to use, it has these big friendly buttons and looks like it should be but try sorting out your shipping without reading 3 tutorials, an instruction manual and a lot of screaming and you're lost, or I was. My advice here is breathe and reboot, you find yourself on the verge of chucking your computer out the window step away... I did... I had a glass of wine and got talked down of the ledge by a pal, got a good nights sleep and came back to scream at it again the next day... I'm still not there but I'm closer and by the time the website goes live I will be there. (if the goblins ever stop sitting on the keyboard)

And the winners are...

Wowser!

This competition had an overwhelming response with over 400 entries... you've knocked my socks off people!

The winners are:

1st Prize - £26 voucher for my shop

Gail Bennett... who wants a Bempton the Puffin!

2nd Prize - £18 voucher for my shop
Shelly who wants a turquoise and white bird to match the wedding cake toppers I made 5 years ago!

If you didn't win there is no need to be sad, as a consolation I am offering a 20% discount couponcode at my etsy store enter code HAPPYBDAYMEL  On checkout in the coupon code box to redeem, code runs till the end of July so you have lots of time to bag a bargain!

The coupon code also works on my Inkmeup shop (minimum purchase of £5 please do not use on the sale items thanks!) and on The Snob Goblin shop too