More marketeering...

Well hello December!

Last weekend's Got Craft? was great and we met some lovely lovely people as always - possibly my favourite bit of doing markets. We loved Charlotte Farmer's and Justine Ellis' gorgeous items. The venue was stunning but the nearness of the bar was far too tempting as we spent far too much on their delicious hot chocolate, coffee and beer for C! Although we did win the Christmas Cake raffle!! I never win anything so was amazed and as we're hosting this year we couldn't be happier - thanks buttercupcakes. We were hopeless as ever at taking photos - it seemed to get dark before we knew it and then nothing came out. Bah. But I've spotted quite a few posts where you can get a feel for the market and the beautiful interior (it was in a converted tram shed) here and here if you fancy a gander. Big thanks Andrea and Robert for all your hardwork.

This weekend we're off to another festive market although this time in our neck of the woods and outside so we currently have all our fingers and toes crossed for dry weather. It's choc-a-block this year and as they've also added a flea market to run alongside it I think you can't fail to find a present or two. So if you're out west...

Got craft?

We have and we're off to the first ever Got Craft? Christmas Market in London town this weekend. If you're around it's looking to be a grand old time complete with a wrapping station from Papermash, DIY crafts with Crafty Pint, a tea and cake station, music and not to mention a full bar as it all takes place in the beautiful Tooting Tram and Social! Personally I'm hoping they'll have some mulled wine on the go for my one beverage - fingers crossed.

Plus the first 30 people through the door can get their hands on a goody bag chock full of loveliness from all the stall holders - worth an early start surely?

Here's a taster of some of the festive goodies we've been working on for our stall...

Whispering Pines

It seems the weeks are positively flying by these days - I blame the shorter days! But we've also been busy bees what with moving our studio out of the house, working on wholesale orders for some lovely new stockists and some fabulous old ones, designing new things for some Christmas markets and last, but not least at all, growing a not-so-wee baby bump!

Today we finally remembered to take some photos whilst we worked and the sun was shining so here is a sneaky peek at our, somewhat overly wood pannelled, new studio. We absolutely love it and all it's extra space but have grand plans for painting all that orange wood sometime SOON! We also took a few shots of our latest festive offerings which are soon to be packaged up and shipped off for the Got Craft? Christmas Market swag bags. It'll be our second London market this year and we can't wait as it sounds chock full of loveliness but more about that soon...

Remember Renegade?

We had a great time at Renegade a couple of weeks ago so we thought we'd better get around to posting a photo of our stall. We were both really excited but a little nervous about the whole thing it being our first market in London and all. Despite all this set up went fairly smoothly and our new designed-and-built-the-day-before shelves (thanks Dad!) went up without a hitch. That was until we realised we had left all the float money at our friend's house so I left to pick it up and somehow went all the way there and back and still managed to forget to bring it back with me! I blame the lack of sleep during the week before the market.

Once we were up and running we had a chance to have a little look around and met some really lovely folks, sadly we were a bit slack on the photography front but some of our favourites were Kate Sutton, Zosienka & Rosie and Hazel Stark to name but a few. We also loved having a few familiar bloggers stop by for a chat - the lovely Kerry from Seventy Tree and Virginia from Roddy and Ginger. It was great to meet you.

C was most unimpressed with my photography efforts and his dodgy expressions so has asked me to add an apology on his behalf!

We're still here...

Oh yes. It has been a wee while but we are still here beavering away and sadly neglecting our dear old blog. Why is it you're either too busy to have time or else have nothing to write about! Or at least that's how it is for me. And now we've signed up for this shindig next month it's all hands on deck, well sewing machine and printing table...

If you're about do come and visit us (or even come have a stall if it takes your fancy as I think there are a few left).

The fox has landed!

I just wanted to post quickly to say we've finally managed to update our wee etsy shop with some new stock and there's more to come. It seems to take me an age to shoot, sort, resize and upload images not to mention writing something vaguely witty (I wish!!) to describe it all. The rest will be up for sale later after my Monday sewing club - tonight I think I shall turn my hand to a much needed apron for Ru as the skirt I was attempting for myself has not gone anywhere near to plan so far! Darn it.

You should probably put your bandit hat on now...

We had a crazy week last week getting ready for the St Catherine's Artisan Market in Frome. As ever we left everything until the last possible moment and were then frantically printing and sewing until the small hours every night for a week. Ah well. I do find a looming deadline gives me the motivation and creative kick up the proverbial I need sometimes. We even managed to squeeze in some more new things just in time too. This is our new foxy addition and once the final tweaks are done he'll be gracing our etsy shop on cushions, softies and hopefully a bag or two...

Another peacock anyone...

This is the gig poster we did last week and features yet another of our current bird of the month - the mighty fine peacock! We were quite pleased with how it turned out given that it was our first foray into paper printing (albeit for some card attempts at Christmas). After a spate of trial and errors C concluded 4 coins created the optimum off-contact screen height. Hurrah.

Something new...

We've got some new things on the way and thought we'd post a sneaky peek here. It's still in the tweaking stages as C can be a tad finickity and I'm a bit of a perfectionist - not a good combo - and we're completely lost trying to work out colourways we agree on! We decided to make some things up to give us an idea how they'd look and thought we'd rope in our little live-in model to assist.

We're also busy bees working on a gig poster for a friend so prints on paper maybe heading to our shop sometime in the future if all goes well. Fingers crossed - it's all about the off-contact apparently!

One year on...

We've just spotted our little etsy shop has been open for a whole year today! We never thought we'd still be open and selling this far down the line when we started. We just took the plunge and hoped for the best. We're bowled over by the response we've had so... thank you to those who've followed us, blogged about us and bought from us!

Interviewees...

We've been such busy bees around the house lately that our poor old blog has been neglected once again. Spring always seems to make me want to nest! So we finally started to paint the front of the house - remember this - and after a few days of umming and ahhing over the final colour we now love it. Thank god as it took a fair bit of elbow grease and much cussing from C. In the meantime we've managed to find time to be interviewed by one of our lovely lovely stockists, Plaisir, as part of their Shop Talk series! They asked us to provide a photo of ourselves cue much gurning and furrowing of brows by C and fake laughter by me - we thought we'd share an outtake gem with you here - lucky you!

We should add that as well as our interview there are also some really interesting ones with the incredibly talented Alison Hardcastle and Kate McLelland.

Spot the dog...

Oh my! I was so unbelievably excited when we were asked to send one of our little sleepy dogs over to Australia to possibly be featured in Inside Out a couple of months ago - but until I saw it in print I still thought we'd probably been cut out of the shot or something. But no... here we are in print! Woo hoo. And all in one of our favourite magazines and as I've said I have a bit of a passion for those - this is one I shall be hanging on to for sure! Thanks so much to Lara for asking us and styling such a lovely spread...

Bargain hunting...

As I previously mentioned C and I bought a 1950s (ish) cabinet on a whim the other day so I thought I'd do a wee show and tell here...

Plus today the sun was out and boy has it seemed like ages since I last saw it so I whipped the camera out and got snap happy. The prints are new aquistions - the lovely Dapper Bird print is by Kate Hindley from her great etsy shop and the other by Hazel Nicholls from here is one we've wanted for ages and ages so I treated C for Valentine's Day. I was pleased with myself as it works so well on two levels - 1. the man loves his biscuits and 2. it's a helpful tip!

(Please excuse the mess in the corner and the recently broken chair - we've yet to fully complete the reorganisation process!)

Out of hand...

So we've been a bit busy again with some lovely new stockists and more orders from existing stockists, more on that soon, but today we decided to have a bit of a clear out of the studio. We bought a 1950s cabinet on an ebay whim the other day and now have to find a home for it! It was one of those this-will-be-perfect-if/when-we-ever-get-a-shop-come-studio type of decisions with only 5 mintues to go. Still I love it and am now wondering what to fill it with. Perhaps some of these...

I have to confess I have a bit of a magazine hoarding problem. I must have almost every copy of Elle Dec from 1997 onwards (and now from about 1993 too as I adopted another collection from a friend - much to Cs horror!) also most copies of Living Etc and a whole bunch of World of Interiors from the 1990s. Like I said, it's a problem! Which means everytime we want to move furntiure around we first have to deal with the magazines and as for moving house I daren't speak of it ever again!

I have to add the stack in the bottom photo is 4' high - I measured!

Colours and yet more colours...

We're still thinking lots about colours and have been finding inspiration everywhere but coming to any kind of decision is proving far more difficult than we'd first thought (although to be fair deciding on anything is not my forte as C will happily tell anyone who'll listen). It was 5 weeks before we officially registered Ru with a name and I once got £10 off a pair of shoes just because they wanted me out of the darn shop! Anyway just thought I'd post some images which have been inspiring me colourwise this week...

from design*sponge

from rathernice

from design*sponge

from rathernice

from today I love

from bloesem

Colour me happy...

Here's a little peek of some ink mixing today. We're trying to expand our palette but we keep going round in circles - arf arf! We're beginning to feel a bit defined by our mustard and teal combo, not that we don't still love it, just need to shake it up for Spring... watch this space.