*Peeks round corner*

I'm still here! Sewing up countless chickens but still here :)

I have been featured in this lovely article in the Yorkshire Post about a group I belong to on Facebook. And you can't really see it here but in the group photo there is a flash of orange in the middle - that's me in my skirt :) I'm mentioned as the only person living in Lancashire - the rest are in Yorkshire but I snuck over the border :)

I'm also very excited for tonight as it's the 50th anniversary Dr Who episode :) *waves fangirl hands* It's also exciting as it is 19 years ago today that I got together with Matt! Seems a long time since I was 16!!

That's all for now :)

And the winner is.......

........Twiggy :) Well done - I think I have your email address so will be in touch to send you your tickets to Country Living!

Thanks for entering everyone!

Win Country Living tickets

I have two sets of two tickets for Country Living Harrogate (28th November - 1st December*) to give away!

And because it's nearly the weekend I am giving away a set of Robin gift tags with each pair of tickets! You can either enter here or on my Facebook page (or both and I will count you twice!)

I will draw two winners (one from here and one from Facebook) on Sunday 10th November. Good luck!

*These tickets can't be used on Saturday 30th November - the other three days are fine though.

New chickens!

I've been very busy with Country Living prep (yeah Lynsey we know!) and I haven't added anything new to my online shops since before the summer - eeek! So for those of you who can't make it to Country Living in Harrogate, here are some chickens that you can buy now from my Folksy shop.

As you can see they are all Liberty fabric chickens and they will be available in small numbers until after Country Living when there may be more to buy. It all depends on how sick and tired I am of making chickens by then! There are more in the shop but I didn't want to bombard you with pictures here. I'll be back later in the week with an opportunity to win some tickets to Country Living!

Happy Halloween!

From the dead/zombie/scary bride and her skeleton friend!

Have fun!

Revamped set of shelves

Following on from my card stand last week here is my new (to me) piece of furniture for Country Living.

Not too bad you say - yeah well look at the close up photographs below :)

It was a very well loved shop fitting! So after a good wash it was ready to be transformed!

Here it is half way through. I decided on washi tape as it's very easy to use (Anya helped out) and if it went wrong then it peels off very easily too. Also washi tape is brightly coloured which is always a bonus in my mind! The next photos are of the finished item which I am very pleased with.

Ta Da! What do you think? I'm really pleased with the transformation and very pleased that I could turn something that was unloved into something useful and pretty :)

P.S. I get my washi tape from here and here - the latter is run by a two friends of mine who are lovely :)

New card stand

I found a wonderful shop last week that supplies second hand shop fittings for sale - a dream to look round and I know where to look when I get my book shop/cafe/craft shop*

So back in the real world I actually went to buy two old stock trolleys (the kind you see with 3 sides in the supermarket/large shops that hold, well, stock!) I figured that as I only have 15mins/half an hour to unload all of my stock/furniture when I go to Country Living, anything that would speed up the process would be good. However, they are very large (duh!) and very heavy so I need to pull all of my jigsaw acumen/inherited Searle packing skills together to get them into Taz along with my large cupboard!

While I was there I also found a couple of pieces of furniture that will look good on my stall - one is undergoing a transformation (more on that later) and one is the card stand you see below.

Ignore the terrible photographs please! This card stand started out life as a book stand for a school book corner and we used to have one exactly like it when I went to school :) It doesn't stand up on it's own and will be going on the wall of my stand.

And here is my artistic director deciding on how to arrange my cards to make sure they look their best - we decided that less is more :) Anya has been super helpful this week and is really enjoying helping me revamp the other piece of furniture I got at the shop fitters :)


*dreaming!

Folksy shop front

If you have a Folksy shop you may have noticed that some peoples shop fronts are changing. I'd known about the changes for a while but hadn't got round to changing my own until I researched a Cuteable post and saw just how fabulous the new shop fronts looked!

I saved a photo of my old Folksy shop front before I replaced it with the new but then I stupidly managed to delete it and all of my deletes from this computer are hard deletes rather than sending to the rubbish bin. Ooopps! So the picture above is an old image of my Folksy shop from 2012 (thank goodness for blogs eh?) but you get the general idea!

And above is my new shop layout which I am really pleased with. I think the new banner helps a lot but I love the fact that you can now add links to all of your social media and the fact that it is nice and bright and white with added colour from me! There are a couple of niggles but I'm going to fill out the feedback form and let them know about it :) You can check it out in person here too!

Do you have a Folksy shop? Have you changed your shop front yet? What do you think of the changes?

New stickers....

....for packaging!

When I am at fairs I can explain to people why my chickens are flat packed (saves the customer money on postage if it's a gift and on the actual cost of the item) but when my chicken doorstops are in stockists, the owner of the shop/gallery doesn't want to have to follow every potential customer around the shop explaining my products! Hence the stickers :)

I have to say thanks to Matt for these as he managed to sort them all out so that they would print the right size for me in about 10 minutes the other day. It would have taken me about 4 hours and countless swear words!

Sophie and The Snozzcumber

So this week has been book week at school and what is the point of a book week if you don't get to dress up as book characters! Tara immediately decided that she wanted to go as a Snozzcumber which is the icky-poo vegetable that the BFG is forced to eat as there is nothing else to eat where he lives. I did a quick google search (other search engines are available!) but I couldn't find a picture of anyone dressed up as a Snozzcumber (some birthday cakes and food ideas but no costumes!) Luckily after a 'help me' shout out on Facebook the lovely, lovely Sarah from Ditsy Bird came to my rescue and drew out some ideas :) Did I mention she is lovely?

Mine looks nothing like this but I took some ideas from it!

It's basically a tube with a drawstring at the top but hey it works and Tara is very pleased with it! She will have to take it off at playtime though as she can only do a shuffle run in it!

Anya decided to go as Sophie from The BFG (thank goodness she changed her mind from going as the Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) This was an easy costume - long sleeved white top underneath a nightie type dress (charity shop many years ago) some old glasses (frames only) of mine and a blanket that was made by my sister :)

And here they are together :) Matt came up with the idea for the next few photographs and I have to say it was a brilliant idea :) I introduce Sophie trying a bite of the Snozzcumber for the first time and her reaction to eating it!

Funny girls :)