Hello and Goodbye

Is there anyone left out there? It's been such a long time since I was posting on here.

I AM still in the land of the living - I just ran out of blogging steam as life in general and work in particular took over.

But SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS I CAN'T BEGIN TO TELL YOU!

Anyway, I think I'm now ready to share it again. But somehow this blog doesn't feel like the place to do it, and I'm going to consign it to the archives and start afresh.

If you want to come with me to my new blog which is all shiny and fresh, you can find it here.....

www.embroideredoriginals.wordpress.com

I hope you do!

There's coffee and cake waiting for you! x

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.

Season's Greetings

Hope it was a good Christmas for everyone. We're enjoying a lazy few days watching telly and catching up with family.
All the cards, fabric and paint have been tidied away until next week, but I'm already getting itchy fingers!
The rest of the family arrive on Saturday to spend New Year with us, including little Ewan complete with kilt in the Mitchell tartan which his Daddy has bought in honour of his first Hogmanay in Scotland!
Happy New Year when it comes - I hope it brings good times for all.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

Almost.
We finished up on Saturday with the street fair in Perth. As I said in my last post I was hoping for good weather - at this time of year it could have been anything from howling gale to 2 feet of snow. As it turned out it was OK, a bit damp underfoot but not too cold and it stayed dry most of the day.
We didn't expect the same record sales as two weeks ago but it was fine nonetheless. And I got a bit of Christmas shopping done too.
Since Saturday I've managed to keep up to date with website orders, and most have been dispatched within twenty four hours.
We've had a steady stream of top up orders of Christmas cards for our stockists this week and they should all be done by tomorrow.
Then we'll see.
A bit of tidying up and Christmas preparations can begin!

Last Fair of the Year

Next Saturday sees us back in Perth for the outdoor Christmas Craft Market. This will be the last event of 2012 for us although it's fair to say that we've cut back quite a lot on shows this year.
We've got orders to get ready for stockists around the country first of all this week and then it will be heads down to prepare stock for the weekend.
I hope the weather is as kind to us this Saturday as it was when we did the same market a couple of weeks ago. Very cold and crisp, but sunny and still - perfect Christmas street fair weather. The shoppers were out in force and we had a stunning day breaking the record for sales.
We sold out of these, so they're top of the list to make in the next few days.

Happy First of December

I can't quite believe we've got to this time of the year already. Last time I looked up it was still trying to be summer.
But here we are, our Christmas rush beginning to calm down and suddenly I can draw breath and think about things other than getting orders out and keeping stock levels up.
The website is still busy with orders which is great, but the shop orders are getting smaller as the Christmas card demand always tails off in December.
Last night was one of those sleepless ones where my brain was buzzing with ideas and projects which have been on the back burner for months. Everything from rearranging my workspace to planning new designs, new products even - not just cards. And I had to resist the temptation in the early hours to get up and start shifting furniture! I definitely wouldn't have been popular!
So I'm going to be a grown up and start by making a list - and tidying up I think should come top today.
This is my work table after yesterday's orders were dispatched.
And as it's that season here is Ewan and a little red breasted friend. Can you spot him?

Christmas is under way

Hello from the Christmas card factory!
It's all systems go now to make sure that our stockists throughout Scotland ( and the rest of the world) are fully set up with their Christmas card orders.
That means long days and nights drawing, cutting, printing, bonding, painting, folding, bagging, boxing and finally DISPATCHING! Phew.
We're on target though and soon we'll be able to take a breather - once all 200 or so shops, galleries and garden centres have opened their boxes and started selling.
We'll have repeat orders to do before Christmas, but there will be time to tidy up a bit, take stock and plan the new designs for 2013.
We galloped through September by having a week in the South of France, followed by a few days with family in Cambridge, followed by a few days in Glasgow at the Trade Fair, all of which was very enjoyable.

Fabulous Mediterranean colours

The boy is almost walking!

And I got round to adding a whole host of new Christmas designs to the website the other day which resulted in a flurry of orders from as far afield as Virginia,USA and Spain.

Hello stranger

Well really I'm the stranger, having been AWOL for months. Things have just got in the way of blogging, and I kind of enjoyed the silence for a while.
No promises I'll be back regularly...but I'll try.
So what has kept me away? Well I'd like to say it was because I was off on some world adventure, but the truth is life has been mostly so boringly predictable that I'd have to have
invented stuff to make this blog interesting!
This old work/life balance thing again.

We've been seeing a lot more of this little lad who's now 8 months old

and having his first taste of football

This was a family get together last week at Laura's house - both sets of grandparents and Uncle Nick with Rebecca

 And we had a week in Italy in the Spring. This is Portofino where we spent a day, with a picnic I hasten to add, as a bowl of soup in a cafe was 45euros!

and the stunning Lake Maggiore

OK so it's all pretty boring stuff, but that's no excuse to fall asleep!

And apart from that we've just been on the production line as usual.

It's July now so it's Christmas card time again.

Well I'm signing off again and heading for bed. Maybe I'll be back again sooner than last time!