Work in progress

I've been busy on the laptop ordering supplies for a new range of craft kits. I'm really excited about these ones, and can't wait to share them with you. Here's a little sneaky peek, but you're going to

have to wait for the launch for the full show and tell :-)

Yay, New Website

Well, it's taken a while, but I now have an all singing, all dancing website over on www.fibrespace.co.uk. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and hopefully everything works. My daughter has just been testing it out. Now the site is up and running this page can change back to a blog where I can write a little about what's going on behind the scenes, as well as sharing our families crafty projects, (we have the sewing bug at the minute).

And because I feel every posts needs a picture to jolly it up here's a little logo I designed. I'm having it made into stickers to jazz up my parcels. The flower is taken from a card making kit which is in the pipeline. I seem to be embracing pink all of a sudden :-)

Giveaway Time

There's only one day left to enter the giveaway I'm having over on Facebook 

http://www.facebook.com/fibrespaceuk

These felt flowers are perfect for sewing or gluing, they could add a little something to cards, gift tags, bags or hats. Just leave a comment on Facebook telling me what you would do with them and I'll pick 5 winners tomorrow.

The Face of Fibrespace

A belated Happy New Year to you all, I hope you had a good Christmas. The run up to Christmas here at Fibrespace was a bit manic. As well as having my best Christmas for wholesale orders it was my first Christmas at Not On The High Street, which definitely surpassed all my expectations. I managed to get all the orders out with one day to spare before the kids broke up from school, so it was a mad dash into town to finish all the last minute shopping.

After a much needed rest I'm now back to work, designing and putting together lots of new kits in preparation for the Spring Fair in February. I'm really excited about the new designs, as well as more kits in tins I'm also bringing out some new ranges, which I will be sharing on here shortly.

As my kits are quite small I want to design a pop up banner for the trade show so passers by can easily see what it is we sell. As my kits are suitable from age 7+ and mostly geared towards girls I thought my 10 year old daughter would make the perfect face of Fibrespace. So when we had a rare glimpse of blue sky and good natural light this morning I requested that she put on her Sunday best and let her pick one of my new kits to have a go at whilst I clicked away. She loved it, and she's such a neat sewer (neater than her Mum), she's already planning which kit she wants to make next.

The Living North Essence of Christmas

http://yorkshire.livingnorthfair.com/

I haven't done any retail fairs for a few years now, but I was contacted about having a stand at this one at York and thought I might give it a go. Fingers crossed I will have enough stock (even if I have to forgo sleep for a few days).

Photographs

I'm never 100% happy with my photographs, so whilst taking pics of my latest kits I had another play around with the composition and styling. As part of my C&G felt making course last year I filled a few sketch books with work based on vintage. This was a good move because it meant I could spend time perusing my favourite shop in Harrogate, Space and pretend I was working :-)

One of my purchases was a vintage wallpaper sample book, it has some beautiful designs in it (but quite a few shocking ones which I'm sure resulted in lots of headaches). After my course finished I thought I might frame some of the samples and group them together on one of our walls, unfortunately my husband did not share my enthusiasm, so they were tucked away in the studio gathering dust, until the other day when I had a ping moment and thought they would be perfect as backdrops for my photo shoots.

I was so pleased with the results that I am now re doing all the other kits as well. Unfortunately this is taking some time as the sun hasn't been coming out to play to often this week, but I'm getting there. You can see the before (very pink) and after photographs in my store.

I know a lot of people struggle to take good quality photos of their products, and whilst I'm no expert I have spent years trying to improve, so thought I would share some of my techniques.

 In the past I have used a pop up lighting box for taking product shots, which is great if you want products only with a white background, but quite awkward if you are using props, so I set up the sunny corner of my studio instead. It's hard to believe but the sun was a little too bright the other day and was casting harsh shadows so I sellotaped some white tissue paper to the window and it worked a treat.

To prop up the finished brooches I had to be quite creative. The mice, for example have pins going through their feet, which act as little stands (I just photoshopped them out afterwards). The sheep and birds were more tricky as their legs don't support them so I rigged up a frame (very Heath Robinson), which you can see in the photograph above, and hung them from pieces of cotton, again, all evidence was removed in photoshop.

Before, with pins.

After, pins removed and image brightened.

Before with thread visible.

After, thread and stand base removed.

I have only recently purchased photoshop, and whilst I would love to have bought the all singing and dancing version, my budget wouldn't stretch that far, and I'm not sure our computer would have coped either, so I bought the elements 10 version, which is much cheaper and more or less does everything I need it too.
 

Busy, busy, busy...

Oh my goodness, it's been a while since I posted on here. Over summer I have been busy working on some new kit designs in readiness for Christmas. I finally finished the instructions last week so they are now good to go and have already gone out to some of the shops I supply. I'm just waiting for a break in the rain so I can get some decent photographs taken then they will be going in the Not On The High Street store as well.

Yesterday I had a idea for a new range of kits, I always get really excited when I have new ideas so I'm going to be working on some prototypes over the next few weeks. They are a bit of a departure from the kits in tins, but they should sit nicely along side my current range.

I'm also working on the design for a counter top box to hold my kits, which I will send out with all wholesale orders of 100 kits or more. So you can see it's all go here in Harrogate and with the festive season looming up it's going to get even busier.

One of my best seller brooches at this time of year are the robin brooches. I'm not making any brooches to sell online myself as I just don't have the time, but the charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research are selling them along with my dog kits, if you're interested they are available on their online shop, http://leukaemialymphomaresearch.org.uk/shop/women