What A Lovely way To Waste a Day!

Today I have mostly be procrastinating... I didn't feel like working so I gave myself permission to have a morning off and spent the last few hours playing with my paper stash!

I'm really pleased with the results and can feel some new ideas forming in my noggin! These paper bow are really fragile as the paper is very old but they are very beautiful... I wish I could find a way to make them less fragile so I could make them into hair slides!

I am thinking of putting them in box frames and making some cards too... I have so many ideas!  I think they woud make beautiful first anniversary gifts!

Shop Improvements... surviving the July slump!

I am on a mission to improve my shop 1 listing at a time! Looking back on my photos I have realised how much I have come on over the last year as a photographer and as a result some of my listings look a bit sad and drab compared to my newer ones. Also I have learned more about using better more appropriate props and composition.

Before

After

A few months back I bought a light tent (a small investment but such a great little thing!) and a copy of The Crafter's Guide to Taking Great Photos and am working thru my listings one at a time starting with my best sellers, then on to wedding cake toppers and once they are done then everything else! I am trying to photograph, edit and list one thing a day with new shiney photos and so far it is working, it's now the first thing I do every morning after my coffee (if the light is good enough!)

It's a tedious process going back thru over 100 listings but doing one or two a day means it doesn't feel like such a huge chore and it's worth it and my shop is starting to shape up nicely and I think my better images mean more views and treasuries too! Plus I feel my products are better represented now so my customers can see exactly what they are getting!

Why Didn't I Think of This Sooner?

The answer is... I did!

When I first started making owls I thought "I must offer these as wedding cake toppers" and then I just didn't because I am slightly rubbish! Lots of people do buy pairs of owls for their weddings but most do it by special request.

 

Around 2 years on I have finally managed to get my butt in gear and start photographing owls in pairs for cake toppers. I have been making them as special pairs all week. Rather than just throwing 2 random owls together my idea is to offer these as a made to order item so each pair will be made specially for each other just like my wedding cake topper love birds. I'll be offering them as big and mini owls pairs, so far I have on big and mini snowys and some barn owls.

I spent a very busy couple of days making 3 pairs to start off with and over the next few weeks I hope to be able to offer all my owls as wedding pairs. I'll be felting hard and taking advantage of the mid summer lull to get ahead with stock levels for the holiday season and working on new designs (hopefully)

As Part of Christmas in July we are offering a discount code CIJ15 for 15% off your order from our Etsy shop. Offer runs until July 31st and coupon code must be used at checkout to qualify as a special bonus you can also use this code at Inkmeup too and if you buy from both shops we will refund any postage overpaid so that all items are shipped together.

This is a great time to get ahead and start your Christmas shopping early as many sellers are having clearouts and sales right now. Lots of my favourite sellers in the UK Cake and Chat Team have sales too... I'm so tempted!

Drumroll Please!!!

And the competition winners are:

1st Prize Owl and Owl Baby Katrina from Mrs Leaney's Vintage China Hire

2nd Prize Owl Baby Helen from Hypsela  and  FFFlowers on Etsy

Winners have been contacted and their birdies will be flying to the as soon as possible. In case you didn't win but still really really wanted a birdies I have a little discount code for you, because we had 1200 sales to celebrate all blog readers can get 12% off using the discount code 1200SALES at my Etsy shop

 

I'm off to get to work on the next 1200 birdies... so watch this space we'll be having another giveaway as soon as we hit another big number!!! Thanks to everyone who took part in the competition and has supported me in my lunatic plan to take over the world with lots of teeny birds!

1200 Sales Giveaway

GIVEAWAY TIME... YAY!

We passed the 1200 Etsy sales mark and I am feeling "well chuffed" as we say in Yorkshire... in fact I so happy that I thought I might spread it about with a lovely Father's Day giveaway. I spent a day with my Dad and Grandad yesterday so I couldn't put the competition up. Dad found these scarecrows and leapt out of the car for a sneaky photo!

I have decided to pick 2 lucky winners to celebrate 1200 sales.
1st Prize... In honor of Father's Day a large feltmeupdesigns owl and a fluffy owl baby of your choice and a nice bag of goodies too*
2nd Prize... an owl baby or mini owl of your choice and some goodies

To enter simply first leave a comment on this blog post telling me what your favourite item in my Etsy shop is ... that simple!

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! (but if you only want to enter once just leave a comment on the blog)

I do read all your comments and they are moderated for naughty words so they might not 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!

The competition will close on Saturday 23rd June and the winner will be picked by random number generator (aka John, my lovely boyfriend!)

*does not include the BIG barn owls, don't get cheeky now

Big Birdies at The Felt Menagerie

I've been pretty quiet in the blogosphere lately, I've been keeping my head down and working hard and haven't had the energy to blog so I thought we were well over due an update since the last one I posted was in April. The last 2 months have pretty much been about weddings, wedding cake toppers and generally going mental making them (yellow and grey are the current bestsellers!) but I have managed to fit some fun time in for myself as well and made 2 big barn owls.

I made the first one as an experiment and love her sweet little face but I wasn't totally happy with her tail and wings so I set out making another one. The 2nd owl has a much fluffier bum and looks a bit like he is wearing very frilly knickers! They look so cute as a pair!

The owls stand at around 7.5 inches tall and each took more than a week to complete... although I wasn't working on them continuously because this feltmaker has a very short attention span! I had so much fun making big owls I am planning on making a bunch more next on the list is either a snowy owl or a scops... I haven't quite decided!

Also I have been watching lots of nature programs and think I really need to make some more life sized realistic babies to go with the adult birds as the babies grow very fast and are almost the same size as the adults but really really fluffy!

One barn owl is up for sale already in my shop here at etsy and the other shall be up for sale soon.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/96540997/needlefelted-barn-owl-life-sized

On another note I am currently languishing at 1197 etsy sales so pretty soon I'll be passing the 1200 mark... and you all know what that means... yes... we'll be having a giveaway! Yay!