Happy New Year!

Happy new year!  This is a good time to start a fresh and treat yourself with money you may have been lucky enough to receive over Christmas:

There is a sale in my Etsy and Folksy shops from today until 19th January 2015. So you have two weeks to use this coupon code at the checkout to get 15% off all my items including the ones that are already discounted and custom orders!

New year always bring new years resolutions. Even though I don't set out specific resolutions I still tend to look back at last year and hope to do a bit more this year. 2014 was great, but there are a lot of things I would of liked to of done and haven't :{ So i made a simple motto for 2015 "do it today!" because tomorrow can't be bothered, lol.

I had a look at this list of new years resolutions to help animals but generally I think if you write down what you want to do with the year and keep looking at it over the next 12 months you should get some things accomplished!

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to makes some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself". - Neil Gaiman

Christmas Cards

I've been looking back through my Christmas card designs, seems I never stray too far from penguins and polar bears. Good job they never go out of fashion?! I think my 2014 designs are a lot more sophisticated ;) 2009 and 2011 cards were on sale at local events before I opened my shop, but gave me my first taste of selling my own work.

I still have some of the holy cards for purchase message me :) Otherwise see either of my online shops for my most recent designs.

Colours

I've been reading a few craft and small business books lately- trying to get a more cohesive image of the Catkin Boutique. Craft Show and Sell gave me a few useful hints, like choosing some 'brand colours'. A few colours always stand out to me and Yellow is one of them, this suits a lot of my items too like the cockatiel and parrot designs. I also like pink and bright turquoise...

 I also want to come up with a little slogan, as a few books mention. 'Cute, quirky and beautiful' is my tag line of my shop currently - but a lot of shops would describe there work like that. I thought about my sweet shop style bags and was inspired by a customers tweet "Chose myself a little treat from Catkin_Boutique" ;

A sweet treat from the Catkin Boutique! It sort of rhymes :)

Made in Bristol

I have my work in the made in Bristol pop up shop 'Paper Scissors Stone' and I'm working the odd shift their too. At the moment I just have my jewellery stocked there but I'm going to make some more different items in the next few weeks too.

What used to be a changing room is no the Kingdom of Jess Quinn! Lot's of lovely art and handmade plushie creatures.

Working there is really difficult as I'm tempted to buy things.. and I have caved with this adorable cactus print by Pigeon - this will look great on my wall with my Andy Warhol prints of the same colours! As you may remember I have a bit of thing with Cacti at the mo...and smiley face on inanimate objects is always a win.