Summer Round Up

August was a really busy month here at Embroidered Originals. We had the three weeks at the West End Craft Fair during the Edinburgh Festival, and I'm delighted to say it turned out to be our best ever. Even more delighted as this appeared to be the case with almost every other exhibitor I spoke to. The weather had a hand in it - hardly any rain and lots of wall to wall sunshine. Couldn't ask for more.

That of course kept us working hard to maintain stock levels and also keep up with the orders coming in from our stockists, not to mention the website. Phew.

Talking of which I discovered a steep rise in online orders on the last weekend of the Fair, and after some detective work traced it to a little piece about us which had appeared in the Daily Record ( unknown to me). Thanks to a few kind words by Scottish comedian Craig Hill we received as many orders in half an hour that Saturday afternoon as we normally do in a week!

After all that you'd think we deserved a holiday but not this year. The day after we packed up in Edinburgh a convoy of builder's vehicles arrived and work started on our long planned extension to make a large kitchen/ diner. Exciting.

So far we've managed to continue working in the house without any disruption although it will change in a week or two when they start to tear down the connecting wall.....

I did manage to grab a small treat now and again though.

And we had a fantastic family get together last weekend with four generations all together for a few days.

More news soon with a the possibility of some VERY EXCITING NEWS FOR EMBROIDERED ORIGINALS. - I'll keep you posted. 

Meanwhile, coffee over it's back to work. Bye for now.

Drawing to a close

If I've been absent from here recently it's because things have been pretty manic here. It's Edinburgh Festival time again and we've had our usual pitch in the West End Craft Fair for the past three weeks.

Bob makes the trek through to the city every day while I provide back up at home, making stock for the next day and handling the orders coming in from the website and our stockists.

It's been quite an amazing year for the craft fair really - not sure why but sales have been well up almost every day on last year. The settled weather probably has a lot to do with it and there seems to have been more visitors too, all adding up to a very successful event. 

So it's drawing to a close now. Two more days and then our little chalet gets packed up again till next year, and we collapse in a heap.

Hot and sticky

That's how it feels tonight. I'm putting off going to bed as our room is in the eaves of the cottage and it's like a blast furnace up there tonight.

So anyway, it's been a while....

Various things have kept me away from blogging, some good others not so good. But here we are again. 

Today was a celebration of a certain person's birthday. Youngest member of the Mitchell family is now thirty - can't believe it...

Happy birthday Nick. Looking the part on the red carpet at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Youngest member of the Mysak family continues to delight us all...

Mmmm, tasty.

It's just a couple of weeks now until the start of the West End Fair at the Edinburgh Festival. How can it have come round again so quickly? We should be getting the finger out and building up lots of stock but the fabulous weather has made us lazy. We'll get there in the end, we always do.

A couple of cards for a customer who wanted to celebrate his new granddaughter and also not forget her older sister who missed out when she was born. I thought they made a good pair.

So that's it for this hot and sticky night. Sweet dreams.

Changes ahead

March and April have come and gone since I last wrote anything here. A blur of wind, rain and chills.
But forget all that, we are off to sunnier climes very soon.
One of these beautiful old houses looking out over the sea at Antibes on the French Riviera is going to be our home for a week, along with our extended family, including the youngest member who is already getting into the part with his sun hat and cool shades. It's been less than a year since we were there last year but I can't wait. Love it.

And then when we come home we have a lot of interesting work challenges ahead as major changes are going to made to our little cottage in the form of some serious building work - the kind where some people would consider moving out for a few months while the builders move in. Except we won't just be living amongst it, we'll be trying to work in the midst of it too.
More about that later.

Not too long to go until Gardening Scotland rolls round again too. That's our first big event of the year - it seems such a long time since Christmas.

Covering Scotland

I'm quite proud of this. I was intending to update the list of stockists on our website, which meant laboriously typing out each name and address - and there are rather a lot now - when I thought I could maybe make a map showing where they all are.
Google's great. One quick question how I could do it, and there it was. Very easy.
Not only do I have all the shops, galleries and garden centres which stock our cards on the map but you can click on them to see their address, opening hours, website etc. Very clever Google.
This pic is just a screen shot. If you want the interactive map just click here
http://www.embroideredoriginals.co.uk/stockists-in-scotland-c-175.html?zenid=982e988877a55c53175171367ef1c021
Have a go and see if there is a stockist near you. ( Sorry if you are in England, no shops there yet. On the other hand if you are in San Francisco, Toronto or Vancouver then you're in luck! Contact me for details!)

I've Been Updating THe Website!!!

Hooray - I've finally found a spare hour or two to put our new card designs on to the website. There are LOADS of them - Scottish birthday, Engagement, Mother's Day, Wedding and more to come.

Here are just some....

Post Valentine's Day

Good morning from sunny Fife. Phew! That's all I can say. Since the beginning of the year we've been drowning in a sea of tartan hearts - tiny ones, middle sized, long ones, fat ones - most, thankfully, cut out for us by our laser cutter and all destined to grace the front of our Valentine cards.
We wore out one ink jet printer and used up all our red fabric paint.
Scottish Valentine cards found their way to US Canada Australia Finland Ireland to name but a few and my late nights stretched to a record breaking 3.45am.
But that's it for another year. I hope we managed to add to the romantic Scots and expats' valentine experience!
As for us - a posh meal(at home), nice bottle of wine, decadent pud, box of chocs and a set of bellows comprised our Valentine's evening. Whoa - what? Bellows? Don't ask....
So now our sights are set on Mother's Day. It's early this year, March 10th so better get on.

Adding some Summer colour

It has been amazingly Spring like the past day or two - so much so that as soon as the Christmas tree came down I replaced it with a big vase of tulips. Wishful thinking maybe.
So I thought I'd share a bit of summer in the beautiful floral designs produced by Laura Mysak, my talented daughter.
You can see a whole collection of her work here
http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lauram

Happy New Year

With the very best of wishes for a happy and healthy 2013 to you all from all here at Embroidered Originals.
We are enjoying a few days of happy family down time with a visit from a special little honorary Scot in his Mitchell tartan kilt.
A bracing walk along the beach yesterday to see the last sunset of the old year from the pier at Lower Largo, after a basket of chips and a pint in the Crusoe Hotel.