Club Clothing

I've been kept busy recently with quite a few orders for custom t-shirts. A few orders have been for birthday parties (and a hen night), a few one-offs and also some club clothing. The latest order I've been working on is for a club I actually go to myself: Sweat & Steel an offshoot of the martial arts school I attend. Classes consist of kettlebell/conditioning excercises and so they were after performance fitness type clothing rather than just bog standard t-shirts. The range we decided on consists of a mix of moisture wicking advanced fabric training tops and t-shirts and hooded tops. You can see some mock-ups of the range below:






I also set up a shop for the club on it's facebook page using the same application I use for my own (payvment) this app allows you to sell direct through your facebook page. The shopping cart payment is powered securly through paypal so facebook itself doesn't get access to anyone's payment details and customers don't even need a paypal account as they can pay using debit/credit cards as a paypal guest. To see the shops click on the "shop now" icon to the left under the profile picture on facebook.

Also payvment have recently launched a new service they see as being a potential contender to the ebay crown, anyone with a facebook shop can now opt for their items to be available in a global Shopping Mall marketplace. It works similar to ebay so items come up in search according to their relevance and again all payment is through paypal. It will be interesting to see if this gets us any more buyers and facebook visitors!

In the meantime if you have any enquiries about getting custom items of clothing/merchandise made up just contact me. I specialise in small to medium orders (of one-offs up) and you're not just limited to t-shirts, in the past I've done bags, aprons, hoodies, hats, laptop covers, phone covers, fashion & sports tops, wallets etc so if you've anything in mind just ask!

Personalised scribbling

So December was a busy month with a lots of people buying items for Christmas, I ended up spending most of it getting items made for custom orders and to replace sold stock, so much so that I didn't get my own Christmas shopping done till the 23rd! For quite a bit of the month my workspace resembled a crayon factory as my packs of personalised crayons were popular gifts and just about my biggest seller of the month. I'm actually quite glad for the end of the Christmas rush so I can stop dreaming about coloured wax letters!

So we're a little of the way into January and I'm excited about getting new stock photographed and up online, also about a few new lines I'm working on so stay tuned!

Map of sales so far

I thought it would be interesting to try and chart where my jewellery and t-shirts were ending up so I've created a world map showing my sales from February this year to date. Some people have been repeat buyers so I've only included one marker for them also I've only done one marker per place (I've had a few sales to different people in the same towns. You can see the resultant map below, or for more detail click here to see it on the Wayfairing site.



I'm hoping to try keep the map up to date as I make more sales, here's hoping it fills up quickly! I think you can follow/track other peoples maps too so let me know if you make one of your own and I'll follow you!

Folksy Friday finds...

Letterpress printing is one of those things that one day I'd love the chance to do. Traditionally it's where a negative is made of the image you want to print (like a block or movable type-the loose metal letters you used to find in newspaper printers), the negative is inked and then pressed into the paper to produce a print. Because of the pressing motion letterpress printing is usually indented to various degrees, which you can see in some of the examples below. This is probably what I like so much about it, it has a tactile quality, and also due to the inking and press process no two can be produced exactly the same - mass production but not.

Letterpress printing can be used for everything that more modern printing is used for and is commonly used for high quality wedding invites. Now more modern processes have been devised it isn't as common as it once was as it's more labour intensive and more reliant on non-automated processes. There are some lovely printshops out there doing amazing work - but more about them in a future post! Right now here's some letterpress finds from the UK handmade marketplace Folksy to kick off my "Folksy Fridays".






From left to right the people featured above are AarkvarkOnSea, Biplane Press & Design, Lapwing Printworks, The Home Press and Print for The Love of Wood. Click on the pictures to visit the items or on the names to visit the shops.

Three Folksy finds!

Since setting up my shop on the uk based handmade marketplace Folksy last month I've discovered a whole collection of talented crafty peole and developed quite a long wishlist of things I'd like to buy! So far I've restricted myself to three things that I saw and fell in love with...

My first purchase was this wee soap set from Bits N Bobs, they're so realistic! I had to justify this to myself as something I could buy and give as a gift to someone so I'm waiting for some birthdays to come round (hopefully not of anyone who reads my blog!). This seller also makes a really cute haribo style soap set and sent me a wee sample soap with my order which smells amazing!

The second thing I bought was this lovely necklace from Crafty Little Mia who makes a variety of things including button based jewellery, illustrations, fine silver jewellery as well as her own fabric designs. The necklace I bought has a wee button pendant on it made from fine silver clay which is a material you can mould and once fired, finished and polished has a higher silver content than sterling (around 99%). I love this necklace and it's going to get lots of wear!

Lastly, just today I bought this postcard set, it's from an illustrator called Elli Moody who I discovered though the Folksy forum. There was a thread on the forum with people recommending shops that they loved, I clicked and found this one and the chicken postcards just jumped out at me. I love the style of illustration used throughout the items in this shop and almost wish I was moving house so I could use her new address cards!


I think this is the one downside of setting my shop up - just finding so many things I want to buy and having to rein myself in constantly!