bonbah » etsy

If you go down to the woods today…

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:00:50 +0000

you’ll see lots of teddy bears wearing sweet party hats under a pretty bunting banner! If I have anything to say about it anyway!

More new party decorations are popping up in my etsy and folksy shops. The Teddy Bear Tea Party (or Picnic, you choose) invitations have been going strong for a while, so I am slowly developing the matching range of decorations. So far we have hats and bunting banners and soon paper balls, place cards and pinwheels will be coming along too…

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And don’t forget to check out the new spooky decorations that are also popping up…

Boo! It’s almost Halloween

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:31:20 +0000

Halloween isn’t the most celebrated event in the UK, but it’s probably my favourite holiday thanks to many childhood years spent in the US. It had the same feeling as bonfire night – the magic of staying up late, glowing candles, decorations and activities unique to that day, meeting up with friends and family – with the added joy of dressing up. In the US, Halloween costumes can be anything, you don’t have to be a skeleton or a witch, a ghost or a zombie. You can of course be any of those things but the variety is unlimited. I once dressed up as a shower. I remember our teachers dressing up, bus drivers, shop clerks. It was like everyone was at the same fancy dress party. And of course there were lots of sweets…

Since moving back to the UK, I still keep loading up on bowls of sweets and carving pumpkins. Not sure if we’ve ever had a trick or treater but it makes me happy! My son, who was almost born on Halloween, had a spooky first birthday costume party (and from that came the growing range of spooky invitations and decorations). In honour of this great day, I’ve got a treat (no trick) for everyone ordering 2 or more packs of my printed personalised invitations. 5 free spooky cupcake toppers so you can make your little ones, or yourselves, a little Halloween treat.

throw a prehistoric bash

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:11:28 +0000

I’ve been working on selling children’s party decorations for a while, I had sold a couple of digital packs of print your own versions, but recently I’ve had people asking for made ones. Hooray, nothing is more fun than cutting and sticking all night long! So here’s the first collection, the full dinosaur bash suite:

Dino-mite! Starting to come together

admin — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:37:12 +0000

There are so many things I’d like to develop and offer in my Etsy/Folksy shop that I often have difficulty focusing and have ended up feeling like it’s all spread a bit thin. It’s normally through customer requests that I start developing things a bit more logically. I’ve recently had some requests for printed decorations that I don’t currently carry. It’s given me the push to move away from just offering pdf versions of things to keeping part of the fun (cutting and pasting, yeay!) for me. So first up is the Dinosaur suite of stationery and decorations:

There are cupcake toppers too, but they still need to be photographed. Next up pinwheels, bunting banners and party blowers. Then on to all the other party suites and hopefully still time to get Christmas going.

SUMMER SALE

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:19:21 +0000

I’m having a late summer sale on personalised invitations, thank you cards and announcements. Click the image and take a look.

UK Inspiration: Lil3Birdy & Naughty Dog

admin — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:09:43 +0000

A couple of talented UK based surface designers to get me back into the swing of things.

1. Lil3Birdy (London) beautiful, intricate designs with birds & geometric patterns.

Bird Gift Tags, Illustrated Art Designs, Turquoise Blue Grey

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Cute Bird & Flower Gift Tags, Illustrated Art Designs, Blue Green Pink

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Owl Gift Tags, Ink Drawing Designs, Brown Black White

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2. Naughty Dog (Hartlepool) really lovely cushions with line drawings of dogs, shoes, butterflies…

Appliqued Dog Cushion

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Shoe Cushion

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Dog Cushion

new birthday invitations

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:55:25 +0000

I’ve finally listed a couple of new children’s birthday party invitations: a spooky theme and a teddy bear tea party. The spooky one was designed for my son’s first birthday party and the other for his friend’s but they’re both now on Folksy.

spooky birthday invitation

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teddy bear tea party

UK Inspiration Caroline Cowen & Robin and Mould

admin — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:50:53 +0000

Finally some time to find some more UK based inspiration. Another random search on Etsy brings up some lovely silver jewelry and beautiful hand screenprinted home textiles.

1. Caroline Cowen (from Hertfordshire) – beautiful handmade jewelry in quirky, pretty designs.

sterling silver and cold enamel retro flower necklace

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gerbera daisy earrings

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sterling silver and purple felt bow necklace

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2.Robin and Mould (from Devises, Wiltshire) – beautiful handmade and hand screenprinted home textiles.

hand screen printed sleepy dog in teal

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hand screenprinted owl toy in yellow

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hand screen printed dream big cushion in teal

UK Inspiration – Summersville & Ruth Robinson Ceramics

admin — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:05:31 +0000

I’ve been doing Folksy Friday for a while now and I really like Folksy and what it is growing into. I’ve also started getting involved with UK Handmade which is very exciting and very inspiring. There’s nothing more motivating that meeting and building relationships with people with like interests. Especially when you’re a work-from-home mum like me. Sometimes it can feel a bit like I inhabit my own little universe. Etsy UK seems to be stepping up a bit of late which is great as although I love Etsy and have for ages, recently I’ve been feeling like it’s a bit too US based. There are alot of very talented artists, designers and craftspeople in the UK, but the public opinion of ‘craft’ definitely needs changing. There are still a lot of old-fashioned WI style things around (and I probably have an outdated vision of the WI!) if you’re looking but there are also many hand-crafted products that could match and outdo any commercially made product for ingenuity, craftsmanship and uniqueness. Looking back, for the most part I have been focusing on UK makers, but going forward I’m going to make a stronger effort to find inspiration from the UK.

So here are a couple of wonderful designers I had never heard of but found by doing a couple of random searches on Etsy:

1: Summersville (from Suffolk): Beautiful screenprinted prints, notebooks & fabric

totem – hand screenprinted fabricsdfaf

scandi hand screenprinted fabric

twist hand screenprinted fabric

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2: Ruth Robinson Ceramics (from Cheshire): Gorgeous ceramic buttons and hairclips

Handmade blue porcelain owl hairclips

Handmade green porcelain buttons

Handmade grey porcelain buttons

little steps

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:32:55 +0000

I’m not the most patient person so it’s been quite hard telling myself that building up a business from scratch is not going to happen overnight. The biggest problem being that when I set up as a freelance graphic designer, it did literally happen overnight. There were a few dry spots, but for the most part since the day I left my permanent job I was pretty much set for work. I never really had to do any marketing or self-promotion, pretty much all my clients came through word of mouth, ex-colleagues etc.

But this is something new, something more creative, something more flexible, something that not many people know I can do. Most importantly something that will exist with and around my family. There will still be late nights and short deadlines but these will have to happen around playground visits and the (actually quite loud) pitter patter of little feet. I’ve been doing a few stationery designs here and there when I have time, but everything has been feeling a bit all over the place. So over the past couple of days I’ve been having a good think about what I will create, who would be interested and what it will hopefully mean to them. I’ve had a few good chats with a very good friend who is in pretty much the same place as me and that has left me feeling very inspired. Yesterday my head was buzzing with all the things I want to do, but I was feeling pretty tired. I told myself if it was earlier than 9.30pm then I’d start creating something. It was 9.24pm so two hours later and I’d finished my first little steps:

I dragged out my favourite thing, my sewing machine. As much as I love my Mac and all my pencils and paper, there’s something much more satisfying about my sewing machine. I know I don’t use it how you’re really supposed to. I probably sew more paper than cloth, my lines are never straight, my tension is all over the place, I’m more of a sketch sewer than a fine artist, but the results end up feeling really ‘me’. So the little steps I started last night are the beginning of a new ‘little bulldog’ shop banner. A couple need redoing, in fact I’ll probably redo all of them, but it’s a start and it’s a huge step away from the client-led retail designer I’ve been for the past few years. It feels right, so we’ll see.