Family in Morcambe

We went to Morecambe again recently and this time I remembered to take my camera. Only a couple of photo's this time though after the mammoth picture fest of the past two days! We also took my sister and her boyfriend too :)

Everyone made it to the middle of the maze!

The boys are doing it properly - I think the girls cheated!

New Sams (scrapstore!)

Our local scrapstore has just moved premises and has opened in a brand new purpose designed building. I hadn't realised it had opened again until Alex emailed me and asked if I had been yet. No I hadn't, so it's her fault we went really! Of course i took my camera so I could document it for you. I didn't take many pictures as although the lady who runs it said I could, I kept getting looks from the some of the staff (who are new) and from some of the customers too!

It looks really fabulous and is bright, nice and chock full of stuff - they can get a lot more out in this space! What I love is that there are more shelves for the rolls of fabric and they are now sorted by colour :)

And of course I couldn't go all that way without getting a few little bits now could I? Oh and while I remember - a trolley full has gone up to £15 but baskets are still the same price at £5. Both are still an absolute bargain!

Of course I got some fabulous fabric! I already have some pieces of the Dandelion clocks fabric (including a different colourway) but I can never resist a piece when I see it! The bottom fabric is gorgeous and feels like a Liberty fabric (based on the few pieces I have touched) but I'm not sure. I had to have it though, Liberty or not!

The girls love Lazy Town so when I spotted these promotional bits and bobs from Asda (UK supermarket owned now by Walmart) I had to have them.

These pieces of card have been printed slightly off but will be perfect for my mini matchbook notebooks as I can cut around the dodgy bits.

The best bit though was these two Sandersons books. The top one is just wallpaper and the bottom one has wallpaper and fabric in it. Feast your eyes on these beauties.

So not bad for a fiver eh?

The slides from my talk about social media

I'm only including the ones that are relevant for social media - not the ones that contained details about me or any of the screenshots I took for demonstration purposes. There are lots of slides - be warned!

And below is a slide talking about how I personally use social media to help my craft business.

Obviously these are only rough outlines and I actually spoke about each site and how it can be used effectively in more detail (not including Facebook as I don't use it much!) I'm not going to include my notes but if you do have any questions then let me know in the comments and I will get back to you. Not for a few days though as I am stepping away from the computer for a bit to catch my breath. Never fear though as there are posts scheduled for you :)

And I must say a big thank you to my husband, Matt for doing all the hard work of putting the slide together for me. It would have just been me talking otherwise - thanks Matt :)

Links to help you promote your business using social/online media

Here are the list of sites I promised you all at the presentation last night - even if you weren't there then you might find these links helpful for using social media to promote :) The actual slides of my presentation should be up tomorrow!

Craft Juice http://www.craftjuice.com/

Crafts Forum http://www.craftsforum.co.uk/

My blog http://www.swirlyarts.blogspot.com/

My Website http://www.swir.ly/

Cuteable http://cuteable.com/

Etsy http://www.etsy.com/

Folksy http://www.folksy.com/

Flickr http://www.flickr.com/

Cuteable group on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/cuteable/

Craft Juice Tutorial http://swirlyarts.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-use-craft-juice-tutorial.html

Me on Twitter http://twitter.com/swirlyarts

Me on Formspring http://www.formspring.me/Swirlyarts

Haptree - great for lots of advice about tweaking and improving your online presence. http://haptreeandme.blogspot.com/

Rachel Lucie - a great tutorial for how to grab an Etsy Treasury. http://rachelluciejewellerydesigns.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-make-etsy-treasury.html

Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts

Kirsten also sent me this link to how to use google analytics effectively. Here is a link to google analytics too!

If I said I would look something up and link to it and it's not included here then let me know in the comments - these are the only notes I made! And this last link isn't social media but it was requested.

UK Scrapstore Directory http://www.childrensscrapstore.co.uk/Uk%20Directory%20of%20Scrapstore.htm

Busy!

Matt is helping me to write a presentation that I am giving tonight in Leeds - yep it is 2pm and I am still writing it!! It's called Using Social Media to Promote your Craft Business. So I won't be writing a proper post on here today or even possibly tomorrow - it will be online links for the people I am giving the talk to tonight. I may even pop snippets of the talk up if you think it might be interesting.

Rare occurance!

Yep is really is the lesser spotted Lynsey doing ironing.

Matt was quick and managed to get a photo!

P.S. It's a bag that Tara made for Nana S for her birthday and I am just sealing the fabric pen :) So no actual clothes were involved!

My Creative Space

My creative space today mainly consists of watching this little lot dry!

I will fold it later and put it nicely in a pile ready to have it's edges pinked but I won't be doing that today as my wrists are still very sore from punching out hundreds of gift tag shapes from paper and card yesterday! I will also try and glue some of the aforementioned tags together :) I may also sort some more fabric to be washed but I don't really want to push things!

Go and see what proper crafty people are up to today over at Kootoyoo's.

Handmade Spark interview

If you read Cuteable (or my Twitter) you will know that I have been interviewed by Tim from Handmade Spark about Cuteable. It was a fun interview to do!

I'm continuing with the massive sort out of the craft room/moving everything up to the craft room and I *think* that all crafty stuff is now out of the front room - blimey!! I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with some actual crafting to show :)

Ever wanted to ask me a question??

Well now you can as I have set up a Formspring account!

You can ask questions as 'you' (let me know in the comments if you have an account with Formsrping so I can ask you questions back) or you can ask anonymously! So if there is a burning question you have been dying to ask then feel free :) I may even answer rude questions if they aren't that rude!!

Pincushion Swap part 1

I entered a pincushion swap organised by Claire the other week and my swap parcel arrived on Saturday :) I was partnered with Lisa and I love the goodies I got.

First up is this very cute mouse pincushion - the girls have already tried to claim it but I said no! He is quite small and so is the perfect size for living in my sewing box :)

Lisa likes quilting (check out some fab work on her blog) and so she has passed this pattern onto me. I don't really like patterns (I find most of them tricky to follow) and have never made a 'proper' quilt before but this pattern looks like it might be fairly easy to follow. I also like that it is scrap friendly :)

Some yummy ribbon that will come in very handy - check out the cute frogs!

A set of alphabet stamps. I have some already that I use quite a lot and these ones are different so will get used lots too :)

And I needn't say more really need I? Those girl ones in the middle are going to be saved for something special.

Thanks Lisa and thanks Claire for organising it! I have sent my return parcel to Lisa but I sent it a day late and now it will be caught up in flights delayed by the volcano - it is on it's way Lisa I promise. I'll show off what I sent when I know it has arrived.

Remember the chickens?

The ones from my creative space on Thursday? I got most of them done :)

I couldn't finish them all - I need to keep some in my sewing box for when I go to my friends for cups of tea and chats. Can't have idle hands now can I? :)

Colourful

We like colour in this house and our trip to the post office the other day was no exception. I wish I had asked the girls to move the pushchairs so you could see the colourful tights and shoes but you will just have to imagine purple, green, white, pink and yellow tights with pink and silver shoes.


And of course I had to get in with the action :)

Vote for me!

Yep it's another of those 'please vote for me' blog posts - look away now if you don't like them! I am a member of the Crafting In Colour team and every month they have a themed challenge - this month it was pastels. You can make something special for it or use something that is already in your Etsy shop - I chose the latter.

I entered one of my egg box sewing kits - in pastel colours naturally! You can vote for me here - I'm number 9 :D

Creative Space

My creative space today is all about my sewing box.

I sorted it out and tidied it up while I was at my mums (I even hoovered the bits of fluff and thread out of it!)

I counted and I have 3 chicken doorstops that need zips sewing in and 11 chicken pincushions which need filling with rice and sewing up (3 of those need eyes too) So no prizes for guessing what I will be doing today :)

Go and check out what other creative spacers are doing over at Kootoyoo.