Folksy Five #1

I'm launching a new, hopefully regular, feature - "Folksy Five". There are so many wonderful shops on Folksy and I love discovering new sellers, so I thought I'd share some of my favourites with you. I'm doing five at once to allow me to feature quite a few Folksy shops, so there's not much space but I have done a mini interview with each seller to hopefully make this post more interesting than simply a list of shops.

Welcome to the first Folksy Five.



Your name: Lynda Drummond

Shop name: The Glass Boutique

Describe the items you make in 3 words: Lovingly handmade

How long have you been selling on Folksy: 10 months

On average, how many items do you make in a week: I tend to make a little bit every day and am sure like everyone else wish there were a few more hours in the day to get things finished.

What are your favourite items from your shop: 

Your name: Leanne

Shop name: Ello Design

Describe the items you make in 3 words: Colourful, clean and cheerful

How long have you been selling on Folksy: Just over a year

What advertising do you do that brings the most visitors to your shop: I've found most of my visitors come from the Folksy forums and Facebook - i'm on these most of the time, so update/post quite often, which probably helps!

What are your favourite items from your shop: 

Your name: Catherine and Ed

Shop name: Bread and Jam

Describe the items you make in 3 words: Block printed basics

How long have you been selling on Folksy: A couple of weeks

Do you have a day job: We currently work as freelance commercial interior designers by day. We have worked for ourselves for the past 12 years, but not always together. We decided that it was time to combine our creativity. So by night we are now Bread and Jam and loving every minute of it. It's early days for Bread and Jam but we have high hopes and big ambition.

What are your favourite items from your shop: 

Your name: Cat Brown

Shop name: Cat's Ceramic's

Describe the items you make in 3 words: Unique Handmade Ceramics

How long have you been selling on Folksy: A little more than a year

Do you sell your items anywhere other than Folksy: I stock a few shops and galleries around the UK including Great Dixter and The Green Tree Gallery in Borde Hill.

What are your favourite items from your shop: 

Your name: Bea and Phil Roach

Shop name: When The Music's Over

Describe the items you make in 3 words: Upcycled Vintage Records

How long have you been selling on Folksy: 18 months

Do you sell your items anywhere other than Folksy: We also sell on Etsy and to a shop in Tokyo, Japan.

What are your favourite items from your shop: 

So there you go, a diverse collection of new Folksy shops to browse. Do pop along and say hi or favourite an item in their shop. 

I also asked each of the five shops which was their favourite item in the say it shop:

Rhodes map notebook chosen by When The Music's Over

Phoenix mini notecards chosen by Bread and Jam

Munich music notebook chosen by Cat's Ceramics

Paris two heart love card chosen by Ello Design

All the cards in the say it shop! Chosen by The Glass Boutique

Folksy Friday: fluffy bunnies

So, I was going to do a woolly jumper type theme to remind me of snuggling up to keep warm in the winter (I'm not really a summer person, so whilst it is nice to have a little bit of sunshine and I don't mind the not getting wet part, I have to say I miss my jumpers!). But, this will have to wait for another day. Because I have found such cute little critters that are guaranteed to make you smile :-)

All items are available to buy on Folksy - just click on a picture to head through to the maker's Folksy shop.

Bunny zip tag Merry Berry and the Little Panda

Bunny The Hunny Bunny Company

Oatmeal felt bunny Loopy la-la

Needle felted bunny That Fuzzy Feeling

Amigurumi Bunny Pink Amaryllis

Crochet Bunny Handmade for you by Elaine

Plush rabbit Stupid Potato

Lavender rabbit Pouch

CraftFest 9 - 16th June

I am joining in with CraftFest in June - a virtual craft extravaganza. It's like a HUGE craft fair, but you get to shop from the comfort of your own home. There are over 150 'stalls' signed up. One of my aims for this week is to start adding items to my virtual stall. At each stall you can browse items, find out a little about them, and if you're interested in finding out more or purchasing something you are directed to the seller's shop. The say it stall will be linked to the say it folksy shop.

You can take a sneak peak of my stall here -say it CraftFest stall - but remember that it's not completely full of goodies yet, so you will have to check back during CraftFest (9 - 16th June). There's also a little slideshow of the pics below.

I've been having a look around to see who else will be having a stall at the event. There are a few familiar names, but also lots of new shops for me to browse :-) Here are a few of my favourites I've spotted so far:

Spiral Fountain Jewellery

Jennyrosemann

The Old Button

Gems of Hope

The Wax Worx

Lorraine Dowdle

Open house success

On Saturday I turned our house into a shop and invited local friends to come and view what I make. I tempted them in with some homemade flapjack and our house was full to bursting :-)

I'm so pleased that people turned up and were keen to come and have a look at what I do. It was great to be able to discuss designs with them and offer to personalise the items so they could have just what they were looking for.

Thank you to everyone who came and made it such a success. I can recommend doing an open house event, particularly if you know quite a few people locally who don't have the internet so can't browse your shop online.

I shall definitely think about doing another one, maybe later in the year once I've got my Christmas cards made up.

Get 3 cards for £6

I feel a bit bad that I had to put my prices up recently. Not by much, but with the increased postage costs and the soon to be released new Folksy fees structure, I couldn't help but pass on some of the costs to my customers.

BUT...
I have some good news for you. If you buy three cards in one order you can get them for the old price :-) They used to be £2 each, so using this special offer you can get three cards for £6. You can choose any three cards; even the higher priced ones are included, so you could save up to £2.25. There, you see, I am nice after all!

I'm famous!

Ok, so I'm not exactly famous. But I have been featured in two more lovely interviews :-) I'm so pleased that people like the things I make and want to feature me. Thank you very much to Traceyann and Wendy for some excellent questions and for taking the time to write a post about my little shop.

First up is a feature on a super blog - Handmade Harbour. Wendy regularly interviews designer makers about their work, alongside some really interesting blog posts, many containing business tips. My favourite question was 'what do you think your biggest challenges are?' - that really made me think hard! 

Traceyann from Artisan Silver won my giveaway a few weeks back. And she very kindly offered to put an interview with me on her lovely blog. Traceyann makes some fun silver jewellery and it's worth checking out her shop, I love her cute owl design.

Do click through to read each interview, they both have different questions so you get to find out a bit more about me and about say it. I'd love to know what you think! And if there's something you'd like to know about say it that hasn't been mentioned yet, why not ask it in the comments below and I'll try and answer it for you. 

Folksy Friday: I used to be...

Friday again already? This week is going way too quickly. I think I'm all put out by the bank holiday. I loved having a longer weekend, but I'm not so sure about fitting all my work into a 4 day week!

I've been very busy making cards as my stock was pretty low. And I've got a few new designs which you'll see in the shop soon :-) But I did find just enough time to have a look on Folksy for some excellent items for this week's Folksy Friday. There are some very clever makers this week and some excellent ideas. It's all about recycling, and changing the purpose of an item. Click on the pictures for more information.

I used to be a bottle, now I'm a....

Dish Fused and Re-used

Spoon rest Aviya Glass

I used to be a record, now I'm a...

Cake stand Cissyface Vintage

Bowl Rescued Rags

Bookend When The Music's Over

Brooch Krissy's Vinyl

I used to be a book, now I'm a...

Photo holder The Bird & The Button

Clock Fizzy Popov

I used to be a map, now I'm a...

Envelope Swirlyarts

Notebook Say it

I used to be a pencil, now I'm a...

Necklace Zincwhite

Ring Ruby Bijou Jewellery