Snapdragon's garden

A puzzle for you

Next Thursday a photographer and stylist from a national magazine are coming to photograph the house.

It will be the first time that the house, rather than the garden, has been photographed and it has made me realise how many things we put off finishing.

2 years ago I bought these zinc stencils for Euan - a rather typical example of my present giving as I had fallen in love with them and couldn't justify just buying them for ME.

Since the big space has been finished we have been intending to put them up on a wall above the dresser but haven't been able to decide what to spell out

for there isn't a full alphabet

and I am very bad at anagrams and crosswords

So I thought I would throw it open to you -

We have B C E H I J K L M N P Q R S U V W X Y Z AND &

As you can see I am quite happy to use the & as an A and to upend the P to make a d  Needs must.  But we only have one of each and I want to use the stencils as the lettering rather than stencil the wall.

What words do you think we should make?

A packet of Alphabet postcards to the one we use!

 

And we are home

Last night - after an amazing 3 days at the Top Drawer Trade show, and an equally amazing meal at Moro (my annual Top Drawer treat) - Euan and I loaded the wheelie cases onto the Caledonian Sleeper and trundled our way home.

During the show I had been able to email orders to Valerie and I have now come home to an enormous pile of prepped notebooks, cushions and particularly egg cosies all courtesy of Isobel.

Our new postcards went down particularly well - so much so that it looks like I will be having to think of reprinting certain designs.

This patchwork caravan was particularly admired . . .

What was wonderful was that there was a real buzz about the show - when you read the papers it can all seem doom and gloom for retail, but talking to independent shops that stock Snapdragon things they had almost all had a good 2011 and were optimistic about the coming year. I think that people care more now where they shop and that is helping independent retailers.

I didn't take my camera to the show - I had enough problems fitting all the samples into our wheelie cases - but there were lots of wonderful things to see and a great many people from twitter, facebook and blogs that came to say Hi.

 

And we are off . . . .

Well nearly.

Tonight I get the sleeper down to London for the Top Drawer Trade Show at Earls Court.  I have packed all my product ranges into a wheelie case and tomorrow morning I shall unpack it all and stick it to the walls of my stand (G49 if you are visiting).

Though the actual sample making and packing up has been a horrible rush this year - 4 days between the schools going back and leaving for the show! - we began thinking about how we wanted to do things for this show back in June.

I was very keen to divide our products into 3 ranges - all very recognisable as "Snapdragon" but strong in their own right. 

So we have become much more focussed, and with the help of some new packaging, now have 3 very different looks - our meadow range which is monochrome, really works of art, completely unique; our "party girl" which is pink and purple, sugar and spice and full of cakes, hearts, flowers and all things girly; and finally our classic range which is where we started, mainly clear blues and greens with rainbow brights in campervans, animals, caravans and all things that make life joyful.

Laying it all out on the table this morning while packing it into my tight squeeze of a suitcase I knew we have done the right thing.  I am so proud of how it has come together for it has been a real team effort both here in the workshop (Isobel was in this morning to finish sewing samples) and in our wider network of Kate the graphic designer and Nick the printer, both of whom have pulled the stops out for some ridiculous deadlines.

Hopefully all the visitors to Top Drawer will be just as keen . . .

Back in the saddle . . .

Today the schools went back and we all came back to work.

I have been doing the odd bit of work over the holidays - some retail orders, some organising and proofing printing, that kind of thing but there hasn't been much of a flow and it is brilliant to have a full workshop again.  I have missed the team.

However we are having to hit the ground running - on Friday I head down to London to set up for the Top Drawer Trade Show at Earl's Court.

It's the only Trade show we do now and its a chance to show off our new designs, meet up with stockists, and tell the story of what we do face to face.

Every year the same thing happens - sometime in October I begin to think of what needs to be done for the show, I maybe do some sketching, I make up a couple of prototypes . . . and then the Christmas rush starts and all our energy is taken up with just keeping up.

and suddenly I am spat out the other end of festivities and have to finalise designs, work out the year's pricing and sort out packaging/order forms and getting everything down to London all within a week.

In a week that is already buzzing with post Christmas orders . . . .

Thank goodness I only have to make 1 of each design.

The photographs here are of some new postcard designs which we are launching at the show, but which should be up on the website by the end of the week.

 

A slip

One of the things I love most about our home is a small bluebell wood running down to a burn at the bottom of the field.

It is where we spent 90% of our time when we came to view the house. It is the most idyllic place I know.

This morning Euan and I went to check what damage the week's gales had done - we expected fallen trees, but this is what we found

a landslip has taken 70% of the wood away,

fences and trees are now piled up higgledy piggledy in the burn which has risen from a trickle to a 3 feet deep torrent.

Never have I been more glad that the house is at the top of the hill.

It will regenerate, even a couple of days after the devastation you can see bluebell bulbs poking through the mounds of mud, perhaps it is an opportunity to plant rather than leave it to alder, we shall see.

We shall wait and see.

And relaaaaaxxxxxxx

Yesterday we got all the outstanding Christmas orders out the door -

This is the camera shy Valerie heading out the door with the last of yesterday's mail sacks - she and Donna packed  and dispatched an unbelievable 185 orders yesterday.

Which means that today and tomorrow can be dedicated to re-doing any orders that are reported lost, tidying up the workshop and planning for next year.

Most urgently I need to finalise designs for some new postcards which go to print on 4th January.

Here is a sneaky peak at a couple of new meadow ones.

It also means that I am back to working normal hours and that our family Christmas can start.  Last night we began to clear the house of all its accumulated junk and got the first of the Christmas decorations out.

The vintage paper fans are from Acorn and Will and the paper Christmas trees by Pearl and Earl.

I love the way that they are nostalgic yet not at all cluttery.

On a personal level, it is wonderful to have whole evenings stretching ahead - next year I need more help - and to be able to spend time cooking and reading and snuggling up with my family!

I am feeling very much like Dixie - prone to curl up and doze at any opportunity

Charity

Like most small businesses we get many more charity requests than we could possibly respond to.  We decided a couple of years ago to concentrate on properly supporting 1 local and 1 national/international charity.  This year and 2012 they are Art Link Central and Shelterbox.

We do - of course - do a bit more; usually for people who have some connection to Snapdragon; as part of the team, as customers, as blog readers and tweeters.  We, not surprisingly favour them over the "Dear Sir or Madam" requests.

A couple of years ago - when we were open for the Open Studios scheme we were visited by Betty and India; charming young women from Dundee who had travelled down especially.  In October Betty contacted me to say that she was organising a Ladies Night as part of her fund raising efforts towards a trip she is making to the Himalayas next year to help build greenhouses, and could she buy some mirrors to sell.

We sent her up a box of things on sale or return and I heard earlier in the week that she had sold them ALL! 

The cheque which arrived in payment for them today will be going as part of our Christmas donation to Shelterbox.  We heard this week that the 2 boxes that Snapdragon customers provided earlier in the year went to Somalia.

Today is our last order date for Pre-Christmas delivery

After posting yesterday about trying to keep our order dates as late as possible I was really amazed at how orders continued to pour in - quite a different pattern from last year.

I began to get worried that we would end up posting orders out at the last possible minute.

I began to get worried about weather forecasts and rumours of vomiting bugs sweeping the area.

I don't really like the stress of hoping that people get their orders delivered on Christmas Eve.

I don't really like getting phonecalls from people who have just remembered that they need their order for 15th and can I speed it all up a bit.

So we have decided to blink and to make today our last order date before Christmas

Just making the decision has made me feel a lot more in control - and now I shall go and concentrate on getting the 560 orders we have waiting made, packed and out the door in an efficient and happy manner!

Hope you all have a fantastic day.

Wait till you see the whites of their eyes

This week is a bit nerve racking.

 as we wait to see whether orders begin to tail off naturally or whether we need to bring the portcullis down on our orders and change our last order date.

I am working 12-14 hour days at the moment, I appear to be chained to my sewing machine.

We decided as a family that grasping the opportunity of all these Christmas orders, and being able to grow the business next year, was worth me being out of it for a couple of weeks.  I am hoping to squirrel away enough cash to expand the workshop and give Valerie a proper dispatch table. It's a big ambition, for building work isn't cheap, and means fitting in as many orders as possible before Friday.

So we are watching and waiting . . . we know how much we can make and pack and dispatch.

We are watching and waiting . . . all eyes on the email inbox. . . . .

Mindstore

About 8 years ago, a friend told me of a course that she had been on called the Mindstore course - she described it as a kind of positivity, life balancing, goal setting kind of course, run by the Scottish motivational speaker Jack Black.

I was impressed with how it had affected the way she was living her life, but typically did nothing and it was only a couple of years later when I became ill with an auto immune disorder, and was in need of a bit of positivity, that I remembered about it and bought Jack's book.

I find it difficult to desribe the whole Mindstore thing - and I must say that sometimes when I do so people look as though I am a bit loopy - but it basically involves creating an imaginary architectural framework  - a "house on the right bank" which makes meditation, goal setting, stress management creativity and so on easy.

I can honestly say that it changed my life - I believe that being positive is something that you need to work at and over the past 6 years, despite health issues that have been constant and at times frightening, I have become much more positive, more focused, more energetic, more creative and ambitious than I was before - something that I believe stems from the 10 minutes a day that I spend pootling about in my Mindstore house. (I am aware that makes it sound like an internal Sims)

Recently though I have felt that I'm only dipping my toes in, that I haven't begun to really explore the possibilities - so I was delighted to hear that there is a Mindstore course in Glasgow on 3rd March - I booked up immediately and am so looking forward to it.

One thing that I think is brilliant too is that Jack gives free Mindstore courses to school children in Glasgow - I'm hoping that Stirlingshire will take up his offer to do some there too as I think that our teens would benefit so much.  Even if they only learned how to focus before exams, how to block negativity, it would be so valuable