With Valentine’s Day creeping up on us fast I thought that I should do some card designs, but I’m just not into the whole sentimental thing that comes with Valentine’s day, it seems forced, contrived and unrepresentative of relationships as I know them. Although the history of the festival is quite interesting and starts to make the whole thing make a bit more sense, maybe. Apparently it’s not just a day of nonsense made up by Hallmark, who knew?

Anyway, enough of the Valentine’s bashing – it’s a day to take a bit of time out to appreciate the number one man or women in your life and that is an awesome thing! So I started to look around for inspiration that resonated with me a bit more and guess where I found it? In 80s hair rock, yacht rock, metal and power ballads! Of course. I have a playlist on my iPod full of this kind of stuff (oh, who am I kidding, I have several playlists) from ACDC to Starship, via Bon Jovi and Kiss I have a huge soft spot for this musical cheese.

The lyrics are fun and optimistic and just what I was looking for. So I set about combining them with some 80s design magic – some Miami Vice Pastels, some CocaCola lipstick pop and some gothic metal typefaces!

So here are the first three designs:

Kiss – I Was Made For Lovin’ You

Starship – Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

Warrant – Cherry Pie

All three of the cards are available in my online shop and come with matching envelopes. I will be adding to this collection in the coming weeks and doing some prints of these as well that would make lovely gifts for your super special someone.

Over the last year I’ve done a lot and learned a lot. But how do I get all that into a blog post that doesn’t feel like making you sit through a dull slide show of my life? Like this I hope (but I’m going to follow this up with some more in depth posts about certain points):

January: The month I quit my job.   FACE YOUR FEARS

At the end of 2010 I found myself in a financial and personal position to take a huge risk and break out on my own. But after 8 years working full time as a graphic designer in a job I loved taking that step was scary. What if it didn’t work out? What if no one bought my stuff? What if I couldn’t find any work? What was I doing?! I needed to face my fears if I was going to make this a success. But how? Three things worked for me:
• Planning – I did as much reading, research and thinking as possible before making the leap
• Acceptance – things were going to go wrong, no doubt about it. But were they really disasters?
• Flexibility – I made sure that I could change what I was doing or how I was doing it quickly and easily.

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February: The month I had a holiday.   RELAX YOUR MIND

Going on holiday straight away probably doesn’t seem like the best move but I knew that once I got stuck in I wouldn’t want such an extended break. Three weeks in New Zealand visiting friends and family was a fantastic chance to really switch off and relax – something I’m not great at doing. I have a busy brain, it rarely shuts up and that can be a cause of stress, especially when you work from home. Over the years I’ve found a few things that work and this year I’ve found a few more:
• Exercise: It’s simply not possible to worry about your new product line or why that client never got back to you when you are on a long run or sweating through spin class.
• Note it down: I carry a notebook and sketchbook with me everywhere. Getting things out of your head and onto paper frees up space for thinking about nothing. Bliss.
• Spit it out: I find talking to people about what is going through my head really helps. My boyfriend calls it wittering and to be honest it usually is, but hearing things aloud means that you can tell the good stuff from the nonsense as if speaking it gives you some perspective. Just try and vary who you rabbit on at!

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In March my sister Kim, who runs Knockout, and I did our first craft fair. It was a disaster, but since then we’ve learned a few things about how to give the fair, and you, the best chance. It’s important to choose the right fair for you, this involves research. Who else will be attending? Are all the items hand made? Where is the fair? Does it have a good reputation? Secondly consider the promotion of the event, what are the organisers doing? Adverts in local papers, posters and banners around the local area, social media and leaflet drops are all great ways of advertising, but the more creative the better. You should also promote the fair yourself, use your networks, both online and in real life and think about how you can make your stall as attractive and customer friendly as possible. (I’ll expand on these points in a future post)

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This is possibly the most important lesson I learned this year, there is only so long that you can muddle through without some simple systems in place to deal with the huge amount of paperwork that even the smallest business creates. I read Making Ideas Happen which has some great tips but how you choose to organise your paperwork is entirely up to you. Being organised isn’t just a business thing though, when you have lots going on in your life it being constantly muddled adds stress where it’s not needed. Pinpoint the areas that need work and create a system to deal with it, whether it’s storing your receipts or planning your weekly meals. A little bit of organisation can be fun. Honest. (I’ll expand on these points in a future post)

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In early spring the call went out around my town that there was going to be a music festival in May (Music In The Park) and the organisers needed help. I offered my services to design the printed promotional material and I am so glad I did. I got to meet lots of great people, had great fun and even got some work out of it. We’re currently organising the 2012 festival which will be even bigger and better. Making a difference doesn’t have to be quite so involved, it can be as simple as saying hello to your neighbours. Or think beyond your local area, organisations like Good For Nothing need people to give their time, energy and creative minds to help solve global problems. Get involved, give something back, it makes you feel all warm and cuddly inside.

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By June I had picked up quite a bit of work and was nicely busy, but working totally on my own was a very new thing for me. There was no one to turn to ask their thoughts, no one to run decisions by and no one to carry the responsibility with me. I felt this most acutely when making business decisions, what was my hourly rate? How much bearing did the time it took me to do a job have on the cost? Should I quote for 2 ideas or 3? Can I invoice this? Should I say yes to that contract? With my busy brain I could go round and round in circles with this for ages but I quickly learned that you need to make a decision. Almost any decision is better than no decision. Trust your instincts and do what feels right. You’ll lose more clients and money by dithering over decisions and if it turns out to be wrong you can chalk it up as a lesson learnt.

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I made a decision to supplement my income by doing some agency freelancing. This was work I knew and I would miss it if I never did it again so it made sense, especially while I was building up my other income streams. This kind of freelancing requires people sills – dropping into different agencies for short or long term contracts requires the ability to get on with people quickly and easily. Luckily I can hit the ground running without too much briefing and pick things up quickly so can concentrate on these softer skills. The best thing I’ve found is to make sure you leave your ego at home, no one is going to warm to some crazed design manic with a personal agenda arriving in their studio, so play nicely, add value and be helpful.

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I opened an online shop on Etsy in late 2010 and had been gradually filling it up with
prints and cards over the course of the year. By August I had about 25 products listed and my sales really started to tick over. In July I got a mention for my Formula 1 prints on Sidepodcast (a big motorsport blog) which sent sales of those prints into overdrive. So I set about getting more promotion for my products. Press releases were picked up by papers and a few more blogs and although Etsy isn’t  an answer in itself being more active on the site seemed to help. With Kim I went to networking events and promoted my shop heavily on my site, twitter and facebook. It took me a while to get over the self-conscious feelings that self promotion can create, why would anyone care what I’m doing? Won’t this just annoy people? But if you don’t tell people how will they know about them? There is no point creating all these wonderful products and not sell any of them because you were a bit shy. (I’ll expand on these points in a future post)

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The most exciting bit of learning this year is that despite all the research, planning and preparation (and I do quite a lot) sometimes you just can’t predict what’s going to happen. For instance, I created a poster for the Rugby World Cup. After the relative success of the motorsport prints I thought it might do OK. I wasn’t prepared for how well it did. My link was retweeted by several famous rugby players and so I started to do some promotion around it as well and soon I was shipping the posters all around the world as well as sending dozens of email versions everyday. It wasn’t really part of the master plan but it was working and some of the things that were on my plan weren’t working, so I tore the plan up and decided to see where this route took me. Just because things weren’t going the way I thought they would didn’t mean they weren’t right.

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Having never really worked in retail I only had a vague understanding of how far in advance of big occasions the wheels start turning. It turns out that even in October I was already well behind on Christmas. I spent the month furiously making Christmas cards, prints and gifts and then went straight into promoting them on various blogs and through my networks. It was relentless and I should have planned better. So for 2012 I have scheduled in each of the big celebrations, from Valentines day through the Jubilee to next Christmas, making sure I note dates that I want to start and finish designing, how long production is going to take, when I’ll start to take wholesale orders and when and where I will be promoting everything. It’s probably a bit overkill but maybe that’s a lesson for next year. With these big blocks in place I’m hoping I can be more flexible and spontaneous with anything that falls outside them. (I’ll expand on these points in a future post)

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By November I was selling my prints, cards and gifts in 2 high street shops and both opportunities came – to a greater or lesser degree – through my networks, one virtual, one real life. I try hard to nurture relationships, to return calls, reply to emails, meet up whenever possible, to keep the conversation going. I’m not always great at it, but I try to stick to some basic rules:
• Be real: Forget businesslike nonsense speak. I hate it, I’m sure clients hate it and it gets in the way of relationships. I speak in my own voice, with my own opinions and sense of humour - unashamedly so!
• Be generous: I like to overdeliver, to do a little extra. Be unexpected and create goodwill. I’ve ordered things from Etsy and Folksy and been blown away by the care taken in wrapping and the additional gifts and discount codes people include. I will remember them when it comes to buying again.
• Think of others: Be kind, forward on a funny link, recommend them for a job, cut them some slack. It’s nice to be nice, but this is actually the hardest one of the three!

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So this brings us to the last of the 12 months and to Christmas which gives us all a chance for a little break and to take stock. It’s very easy to get so caught up in what you are doing that you don’t take the time to stop and look around, as Ferris said “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you might miss it” I’ve used the Christmas break to take stock of what I’ve done and learnt this year – partly due to writing this post and partly due the tax return that needs doing (eeekkkk!) – and it’s made me really aware that sometimes you need to stop and celebrate when things go right for you, enjoy the little successes in life. Pat yourself on the back and use that as a foundation to build the next load of amazingness!

Merry Christmas and a very very happy New Year to each and everyone of you! In the coming days and weeks I’ll be posting a few posts that lead on from this discussing some of the lessons I’ve learnt in more detail. Follow me on twitter and like my facebook page to be the first to know about these!

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What a year 2011 has been! Having quit my full time job in January it has been a year of discovery, new things and extreme learning curves. I will write a review of the year closer to New Year’s Eve but I would like to take a little time out now to wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Plus I’d like to thank all those I’ve worked with, all who have bought my prints and products, everyone who left me comments and feedback, voted for me in various competitions, attended our craft fairs and been generally wonderful. Thanks to all my Twitter followers, Facebook likers and blog readers. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice, encouragement and support and most of all thank you to my wonderful friends and family for believing in me, listening to me go on about what I was doing and putting up with me when things didn’t go quite right – I couldn’t have done it without you!

Sounds like a Oscar acceptance speech I know.

So here’s to kicking back and relaxing over Christmas, eating and drinking too much, watching lots of movies and falling asleep on the sofa at 2 in the afternoon. Then let’s get geared up for an even better 2012! I have plans afoot.

Sam

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So in the final instalments of this series I’ll be showing you the Makes & Bakes in situ. I’ve spent the day putting everything up and making the house look festive, I love doing this and make a big fuss about it every year. I’ll be tinkering with it and adding things (hence this is part 1) – I can’t help it, but by Christmas Eve it will be perfect.

All my little pom poms ready to go on the tree!

Red pom pom hanging on the tree

Little forest of  origami trees!

Gingam ribbons tied to the end of branches.

This beautiful willow star (made by Christine Brewster)  has pride of place on the mantlepiece strung with fairy lights and a big Dorset button ornament hanging in the middle.

Origami stars hung as a garland above the mantlepiece.

Mum made these gorgeous little decorations! Thanks Mum.

And my favourite budding artist 3 years old (very nearly) Lizzie Liebmann made this beauty  for the tree!

And I got this lovely little chap from the Craft Tonic Christmas Decoration Exchange!

And here is the tree in all it’s glory – I’ll post some updates later in the week when I add the next round

A Christmas classic this one!

These dinky little sweets make great gifts or save them all for yourself and scoff the lot while wrapping the presents! You can colour them to match your decorations or even dunk them in melted chocolate, mmmmmm chocolate.

You will need:

Icing sugar

Egg – just the white of 1 large egg

Peppermint essence

Red food colour

Glacier mints, candy canes or edible glitter to serve

A fridge

I love papercraft, being able to take a simple piece of paper and quickly and easily turn it into something beautiful is really special. I’ve got two easy decorations that you can make in various sizes, both make great stand alone decorations or you can make smaller versions and string them together to create gorgeous garlands. How festive!

You will need:

Card and paper in your chosen colours, this doesn’t need to be thick of fancy, normal printer paper is perfect, but these would also be great with patterned paper or paper you have printed or drawn on

Scissors

Circle stamp or large hole punch

Sticky tape or double sided tape

Wool and ribbon

Get making:

3D paper stars

Make a square from your A4 sheets of paper

Fold the square into a triangle. Draw lines on the paper as shown above and cut along the lines, being careful not to cut all the way to the folded edge.

Once you have made your cuts, unfold the triangle and fold the two centre sections, curling them over each other and secure with tape.

Turn the paper over and take the next layer that you cut and secure in the same way.

Keep doing this until you have folded all the sections.

The single version of this makes a lovely decorations but if you make 6 and join them together in the middle it makes a gorgeous 3D star.

Spinning Ball Garland

Cut a load of circles using your stamp (or freehand ) if you are using 2 colours cut equal amounts of each.

Fold each circle in half and stick together in pairs of the same colour.

Stick these pairs together in alternating colours.

Pull the two ends round to meet and secure together forming a ball! Beautiful.

String lots of the balls together on to wool or twine and hang as a garland!

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Christmas Make & Bake 6 and if you haven’t already take a look at Christmas Make & Bake 1: Peppermint Bark, Christmas Make & Bake 2: Woollen Wonders, Christmas Make & Bake 3: Rudolph Biscuits and Christmas Make & Bake 4: Santa’s Hot Chocolate

Merry Christmas!

Sam

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Also known as an acceptable way to start drinking before 11 am.

We are now halfway through this special Christmas Make & Bake series so I thought we ought to start on the drink! This simple but tasty hot chocolate recipe can be tailored to your taste and is perfect for the whole family (obviously without the booze if you are giving it to kiddy winks) It’s Santa’s favourite drink – he gave me the recipe himself – so if you leave it out on Christmas Eve he has promised to put an extra special pressie in your stocking! True story.

You will need:

Milk (enough for a cup or glass for each person you are making hot chocolate for)

Cocoa power or drinking chocolate (drinking chocolate will make a much sweeter drink so if you don’t fancy that you’re better off using cocoa powder)

Chocolate chips (enough for a handful each)

Candy Canes (you’ll need 1 for each person you are catering for and between 2 and 6 that you have broken up.)

Booze (I used Baileys but you could use whisky or brandy whatever takes your fancy really – think of it like a liqueur coffee)

A saucepan

Cups for everyone

A hob

Get making:

These gorgeous little biscuits with their bright red noses are just perfect for Christmas. Make them on Christmas Eve to leave out for Father Christmas and Rudolph of course! If you can resist eating them yourself that is.

You will need:

115 gr butter – leave it out of the fridge for a while to soften it up

125 gr sugar

1 egg

100gr chopped nuts

Vanilla essence

pinch of salt

Jam

Get making:

Cream the butter and sugar together. If you have a whizzy machine then use that, it’s flipping hard work otherwise. Keep mixing until the butter is pale and fluffy.

Add the egg yolk and a few drops of vanilla essence to the butter mixture and mix well.

Weight and sift the flour and mix it into the butter mixture until it makes a smooth dough. It will seems like there isn’t enough moisture to make the dough but keep mixing and get your hands in there if needed!

Once you have a nice dough pop it in the fridge for an hour or so and get the oven up to about 180°C

Fill a bowl with the egg white and another with the nuts and some sugar. Take the dough from the fridge and divide it into small balls. Dunk these balls in the egg white and then roll in the nut mixture.

Put the nutty balls onto a greased baking tray.

Pop a thumbprint into the top of each little ball and put them into the oven for 10 minutes or until slightly golden.

The holes in the tops may have filled into during the baking so use a wooden spoon handle to push them back down, fill each hole with jam and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes until golden brown and well baked.

Leave the biscuits to cool and dust with icing sugar to serve.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Christmas Make & Bake 4 and if you haven’t already take a look at Christmas Make & Bake 1: Peppermint Bark and Christmas Make & Bake 2: Woollen Wonders

Merry Christmas!

Sam

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I can’t knit, or crochet, but I love the soft warm texture that wool has and think it makes the perfect material for Christmas decorations so over the years I’ve perfected a few stupidly simple items that I make year after year in various colours.

You’ll need:

Wool in colours to match your decorations this year (I have a different colour every year)

Cardboard (cereal boxes are perfect)

Sticks (lollypop sticks are ideal but can be any, even ones from your garden)

Plastic rings (smooth curtain rings are great, you can use wooden ones as well)

Paint (this is optional)

Sticky tape

Get Making:

1. Pom Poms

You probably made these at school, but don’t let that put you off, these are beauties. Lots of white ones on the tree look like snowballs and in bright modern colours they made a real statement. Also they are unbreakable which is always good!

Cut two rings out of your cereal box. I’ve kept mine nice and small, this makes quick pom poms, but do bigger ones for a more impressive look! Then take your wool, cut a long length and double it up twice so you have a yarn than is 4 strands thick. You can use a single colour, mix your colours together (here I’m using 2 different reds) or change colours part way through – it’s worth experimenting and seeing what you get, it’s half the fun!

Start wrapping your wool around your cardboard rings, kept it tight and make sure you wrap evenly – keep going till you have covered the cardboard and have a lot of wool on the rings – usually about 4 or 5 layers depending on the thickness of your wool. If you are making a big pom pom this bit can take forever so I’d get comfy on the sofa and pop on a Christmas movie

You should end up with something like this – the smaller the gap in the middle the puffier your pom pom will be!

Now grab your sharpest pair of scissors and trim around the edge.

Tie the pom pom together between the cardboard rings, you can use more wool to do this, thick ribbon or twine, whatever matches your scheme best! Once it’s all tied nice and tightly remove the cardboard, you might be lucky enough to get it off by pulling but I’ve never been able to so cut the disk and tape back together for the next one! Then give the pom pom a little haircut to make sure he’s nice and even.

2. Ojo de Dios

These super simple decorations are a magical symbol that originated in Mexico thought to have the power of seeing and knowing and the four points represent the four elements. I just think they are pretty.

Grab your sticks (you might want to paint them, I like the bare wood so am leaving them) and tie together with the coloured wool you’d like to be in the centre of your design.

By weaving your wool across the front of two sticks and then back behind one your create a diamond shaped pattern.

Once you’ve got to the end of one colour just tie on the next one and keep weaving (you can see the pattern of weaving  better in this shot)

You can change colours as often as you like, but stop weaving a little way from the end so it doesn’t all start sliding off. Tie a hanging loop with more wool or ribbon. Lovely!

3. Dorset buttons

These are based on a old craft from, unsurprisingly, Dorset where animal bone rings were covered in thread and the centres were weaved into intricate patterns to create buttons. These larger versions make lovely decorations and you can weave them tightly or keep them loose to create different textures. The plastic rings are easy to get hold of from craft shops, but I got a huge bag from ebay for next to nothing!

Cover your plastic ring in wool using a blanket stitch – create a loop in the middle and bring the wool up through the middle. I’ve doubled up the wool here as I’m going for a chunky look with my thick wool but you can use a single strand to create a more refined decoration.

Keep going until you’ve totally covered the ring, keeping the stitches tight and pack them back up round the ring to squeeze as many as you can on. Put a couple more stitches over the loose end to keep it tight.

This is the tricky bit. First turn the stitches covering the ring inwards so the seam is hidden, leaving a smooth outer. Then taking the loose end of your thread create spokes across the middle of the circle, it might take a few goes and you’ll need to pull the thread back through the gaps to pull them tight, keep fiddling and pushing them into place and you should get there in the end. Now you can start weaving, in front of two spokes and back behind one. (two steps forward, one step back!)

You will start to create this kind of pattern on one side and a more filled in look on the reverse. You can weave as tightly or loosely as you like and you don’t need to fill the whole middle.

This is the look from the reverse – it’s worth keeping an eye on this side as it has quite a different look. Once you are happy tie off your ends and attach a loop of wool or ribbon.

So thats all three of the woollen wonders – you can see how thinner wool makes a more delicate Dorset button decoration in this image.

There’ll be more pictures on Sunday and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Christmas Make & Bake 3 and if you haven’t already take a look at Christmas Make & Bake 1: Peppermint Bark

Merry Christmas!

Sam

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I first discovered this recipe a few years and have made it every year since, adapting it slightly each time. I usually make about 3 batches over Christmas to give as gifts and to have around the house (in fact if you are lucky – or unlucky – enough to know me then it’s pretty certain that you’ll end up with some of this under your tree this year!)

The peppermint and white chocolate are a great combo and the crunch from the candy canes, cereal and especially the popping candy add a wonderful bit of Christmas sparkle!

You’ll need:

400gr of white chocolate

Candy canes (I used about 6 but it’s worth getting more)

Rice Krispies only needs to be a small box

Peppermint extract (I’ll be using this later on in the week as well)

Popping candy

A non-stick baking tray

A fridge

Get making:

Set yourself up with a bain marie and melt the white chocolate

Add a few drops of peppermint extract to the melted chocolate

Grab six of your candy canes

And bash them into smithereens using a rolling pin (putting them in a food bag is a good idea so you don’t end up with sticky, minty bits all over your kitchen)

Open your bag of rice krispies and grab a couple of big handfuls

and stir them into your melted chocolate

Spread the melted chocolate out thinly onto a non-stick baking tray and sprinkle with the bashed up candy canes

Here the fun bit! Open up your popping candy (it’s OK to try some, you need to be sure it’s working!) and sprinkle that over the chocolate and candy canes.

Now bung the whole lot in the fridge, pour yourself a glass of something festive and wait 30 minutes or so till the chocolate is set hard.

Once the chocolate is chilled you can break it out of the tray – it should break into irregular shaped shards.

Ta da! The finished peppermint bark. Leave this on a table and I guarantee it will be gone in a flash

To give as a gift, layer brown paper and cellophane inside a gift box and tie with gingham ribbon or ric rac.

Merry Christmas!
Sam

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Check back tomorrow for another Christmas Make or Bake!