Boxing day Sale

Well folks we hope you had a very very merry Christmas and took it reasonable easy on the Sherry! I had a lovely day filled with fabulous pressies (new Rob Ryan Book) lots of food (belly pork slow roasted in honey) and some yummy wine (pink of course)

Somewhere in the gap between opening pressies and eating Christmas dinner I got a little bored and decided to set up my boxing day sale. I am clearing the decks for a brand new year so pop along to the shop to check out my sale section where selected tweets have been reduced by a whopping 40% and blog followers can get an extra 10% off with the code DISCOUNT10 as a belated Christmas present from me!

I know I am a little bit behind with my blogging so I'll be catching up in the New Year, it's been a hectic december but I hoping to be able to relax a bit and start working on new designs and an exciting new collaboration... ssshhhh it's a secret! *:D

Right now I am off to spend some Christmas money in the sales and get to work on those new year resolotions ... see you soon!

Drumroll Please... Competition Winners Are....

1st Prize A Hoot... big owl goes to SunnySweetpea who would help me celebrate by drinking my vodka with me!

2nd Prize Choice of baby owl goes to Anna over at The House of Mouse who is going to help me celebrate with chocolate... mmm chocolate!

3rd Prize Baby Robin goes to Dina Fragola who will help me celebrate with cake!!!

All winners have been contacted and the all have lovely shops too so pay them a visit and check them out! yay... well done to the winners and thankyou to everyone who entered. I am going to frantically wrap parcels for the post office now but as a special christmas present to my blog followers you can get 10% off at Inkmeup and Feltmeup using the coupon code DISCOUNT10 at checkout and if you buy from both shops I shall combine and refund you some postage as well.

Last Shipping Dates for Christmas are as follows... and they are creeping closer at an alarming rate! So don't miss out! xx

Mon 5th December South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia and New Zealand
Fri 9th December Eastern Europe, USA and Canada
Mon 12th December Western Europe
Wed 14th December UK

Don't miss out!

1000 sales grand giveaway...

When I first opened my shop in February 2008 I could never have imagined that I would have made over 1000 birdies (and bunnies and monsters and monkeys OH MY!) but here we are a few years down the line and not only have I managed to turn my silly hobby into a business but I have hit 1000 sales! This means that with gallery orders, wedding cake toppers (2 birds a piece!) and craft fair sales I have made well over 1000 birdies!

This calls for a celebration... for me that means breaking out the special vanilla vodka which I have been saving but for you guys, my lovely fans, followers and friends, that means (you guessed it) a GIVEAWAY!!! Yay... and just in time for Christmas too so you shall get a lovely present in the post so I'll be strapping on my big white beard and playing santa!

I have decided to pick 3 lucky winners because my lovely facebook followers decided they would like more chances to win rather than one huge prize stash.

1st Prize... a hoot of your choice and a nice bag of Inkmeup goodies too
2nd Prize... an owl baby of your choice and some goodies
3rd Prize... a baby robin and some ickle goodies!

To enter simply first leave a comment on my blog telling me what your favourite item in my shop is and how you would celebrate 1000 sales with me!

For extra entries then if you can leave a Twitter comment mentioning this blog post with link @feltmeupdesigns or become a fan at facebook ... and if you want an extra chance you can become an Inkmeup facebook fan too... If you do all 3 you get 3 bonus entries. Just make sure you come back here and tell me in a separate comment that you have twittered and facebooked, if you are already a facebook fan just let me know to get your extra entry!

The winners will be picked at random using a random number generator... I do read all your comments and they are moderated for naughty words so they won't appear immediately. Winner will be contacted within 3 days of close of competition so don't forget to leave me a way to contact you a facebook, etsy or twitter username will do... don't leave an email unless it is in the form of myname(at)hotmaildotcom... this is so spam bots don't get your email address and spam you!

Competition will close on the 2nd december so I can get all prizes posted out to arrive in time for Christmas! Here's to the next 1000... cheers!

Birds Of A Feather Exhibition 7th - 20th November

  The lovely peeps at Eatme Artspace have very kindly loaned me and a couple of pals, Iona Calvert and Sara Adams, use of their small, but perfectly formed, gallery space for a couple of weeks! So we are having a little exhibition entitled "Birds of a Feather". All the work will be bird themed and it's just in time for Christmas too so you can start your shopping early and grab some unique hand crafted gifts!

Eatme Artspace is tucked away behind Stephen Joseph Theatre on Hanover Road in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. It's just opposite Eatme cafe (damn fine coffee and the best fish finger butties and banoffee pie ever!) and has just opened as a gallery space.

We're setting up on Monday and cramming the space with as much birdie loveliness as we possibly can, there will be prints, ceramics and of course a whole pile of tweets and hoots and feltmeupdesignsgoodies, as well as greetings cards and whatever else we can sneak in there to make it all look super fabulous!

 
I have been working madly to get some of my prints framed and mounted so they look like proper art and we'll have a good display. Iona and Sara have been printing and pottering (that's ceramics to me and you) like mad things too... there'll be pictures of their work on the blog soon.

We open  properly on Tuesday and will be open at least 11-3 every day except Sunday, I'll be there with a pile of felt probably making robins so pop along and say hi if you are in the area! We're hoping to have a preview but watch this space for details.

I dream of tiny Robins part 2

My giant order for Cambridge Contemporary Crafts is all parcelled up and ready to go, I still have a few tiny robins to make but am going a little robin crazy so am sending the bulk out now and the rest later after a short break from robins to prep for a little exhibition in November.

I couldn't resist laying them all out on the table to see what they looked like en masse, they look like a tiny army of robins!

And they look super cute in their individual little packaging!!!

I can't believe I made this many tiny robins!

I dream of Tiny Robins!

I recently started supplying Cambridge Contemporary Crafts with my birds and was delighted when they asked me to do a large order for their Christmas exhibition. How large? Well have a gander at all this lot!

I have pretty much been in tiny robin mode since... although I did take a break to complete the owl portion of the order... this lot all need to be sewn into little christmas wreaths... and I still have a few more to make! Phew!

 It's a lot of robins... there will be 60 of these tiny ones eventually, some will be going two by two into some 4" wreaths and some will be perching by them selves in a little twiggy wreath for one!

 I am starting to feel a little robined out I must admit... I can't wait to get back to making some new designs so I can stop dreaming about these little guys!

Felt Robins Now At Andrea Willis Designs

 I live in the lovely seaside town of Scarborough, it's a beautiful little town and has lots of lovely little shops tucked away down side streets. One of my favourite places is Hanover Road, just behind the theatre and that is where the very talented and very hard working Andrea Willis has her shop.

 

Andrea is one of the busiest people I know! She works very hard and her little shop is like an Aladdin's cave of lovely craftiness. Handmade cards, drawings, notebooks, lovely ribbons and buttons, every surface is covered with loveliness! Plus she now stocks my Robins! 

 

 I found Andrea's gorgeous shop the same day I discovered my favourite cafe, Eatme Cafe. At that time she was in a teeny tiny shop just opposite it, she's now moved to a bigger shop a little further down the road and the tiny shop has turned in to the Eatme Artspace, a teeny gallery which Andrea also helps run along with the Eatme boys and where on the 7th November for 2 weeks you'll be able to find me and some buddies having a little exhibition called Birds of a Feather... It's very exciting but we'll leave that for another blog post!

 So if you are ever in Scarborough, make sure you pop around the back of Stephen Joseph theatre, just opposite the station and visit Andrea's shop... make sure to say that Mel sent you!!!
 

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The Felt Invasion

I feel sad lately... maybe it's the night drawing in and getting colder... maybe it's my pitiful bank balance... who knows. I do have a sure fire cure for  the blues tho, when I feel sad I turn to the feltanomicon to cheer me up! I have been making some new designs recently, just playing and having fun with it all and my fevered brain came up with brain squids!

They are super cute little one eyed aliens that sit on your head and suck you brains out! I think they are great fun, it very hard to feel sad when you are wearing one of these all I have to do is catch my reflection in a mirror and I'm giggling!

Old Thu face, the dark god Cthulhu Feltathulhu is back for halloween again too and I am planning my Christmas lines too... lets hope that the sales follow soon!

New Shop and a big old Givaway

Oh yes I did it! Not content with having 3 etsy shops I decided I needed a 4th for my new range of Inkmeup designs! And what better way to celebrate then to have a giveaway... yay! So what's the prize? Well you can win your choice of brooch from my new shop and I'll even throw in a bunch of goodies from the original Inkmeup print shop Including a lavender bag and notebook and a bunch of mini prints for good measure so it's a prize fund worth more than £30. So head on over to Inkmeup's Blog for details on how to enter!

Don't worry we will be having a Feltmeupdesigns giveaway very soon... running 2 at the same time might make my brain explode!

Silly Sale Half Price Tweets for a Limited Time

Sale time... I think I want to clear some space for all my new designs and reinvigorate my shop a little bit so for one week only all spotty tweets and lovebird tweets will be half price... that's just £6.25 to you my friend!!!

Visit the shop to pick up a bargain... and of course when we reach 900 sales we'll be planning a giveaway!

Harrogate Wool Weekend

I'm back folks! I had a whale of a time in Harrogate and have so much blog fodder that there will probably be several blogs over the next week or too about my fair experience! As you know me and my mother decided to share a stall at the Harrogate Show Ground British Wool Weekend event. We packed far too much stuff into the car and set off early Friday morning to get to the fair and set up!

We took our time getting there as Mum had just been to enrole for her degree course starting soon and was a little bit shell shocked from it all (she'll be studying fine art at Scarborough College) and got there after lunchtime and set up. The stall looked fab and we were very happy with our display, it was lovely and bright and jolly and we thought it stood out in the dingy hall! We tucked everything away for the night and headed off to stay at my Grandad's house for the night.

The next morning we were filled with enthusiasm after some early sales and lots of squeeeeees and positive comments but after the initial rush things died down and we started to wonder where all the people were! We got our needles out and started demonstrating and lots of people asked us where they could buy the needles and equipment to do it themselves! Looking around we realised that it was more a supplies fair then a gifty kind of fair... had we made kits to sell we would have sold loads!

By mid afternoon the fair was so quiet that it was mostly just stall holders wondering around and chatting so we got a coffee and discussed tactics for Sunday, we decided that we had to make every customer count, everyone who looked at our stall needed to leave with a postcard with a discount code on it or at least with a business card tucked in their pocket and a good experience to make them remember us! We practised on the few customers who were left for the rest of the day... one of us demonstrating while the other chatted away. (here's where all those years of dead end retail jobs came in handy!)

Sunday was better and a bit busier... people seemed to be staying much longer and walking around several times, we had one lovely lady and her daughter come back 3 times and eventually buy one of my mum's pictures. We gave out at least 100 cards and leaflets and kept up our chatting with customers all day... we talked to some lovely people who really wanted to buy things but couldn't think of a good enough reason and made sure they took our cards and knew about our online shops and had discount codes tucked in their pockets!

Financially the fair wasn't so great for us in the end but we made some good contacts in some of the other stall holders and had a lot of mother daughter quality time together which was nice! I'm not sure I would do it again but I might try other venues in the future... I think it was just the wrong venue for us. I'm looking forward to seeing if there is any comeback from all the leaflets we gave out too... we hope people will remember us when they start buying their Christmas presents! 

We both learned alot this weekend and now know what we will do if we get an opportunity to do a fair again... a good time was had by all!