Snapdragon's garden

We have moved - please help me spread the word!

It is all change here at Snapdragon.

We have a new website

www.snapdragononline.co.uk

and a new blog

http://www.snapdragononline.co.uk/news/blog/

Please come and say hello and as an added incentive there is 15% off all orders until midnight tonight with the code NEWSITE

Our challenge this year is to let as many people as possible find out about what we do - for I am very, very proud of what we do.  This summer the textile side of the business will be 10 years old - I want this year to be the year that we really fly! So please help me spread the word.

Biscuits

Over the past few months my daughters have been keeping Tunnocks Caramel biscuit wrappers for me.

so that I can finish the transformation of some chairs

which I am decoupaging with wrappers and a lot of Mod Podge

I am really pleased with how they are turning out and have now sent them off to eat lots of tea cakes for the next pair of chairs . . .

On the subject of biscuits I found out that talented Scottish designer Nikki McWilliams has had her biscuit cushions ripped off by the wholesaler RJB Stone.

These are Nikki's

and you can see the rip offs HERE - (as well as in lots of other shops where price matters more than quality).

So if you are looking for biscuity soft furnishings make sure you buy the real ones from Nikki or from some of the reputable shops that sell her cushions like Boxwood

Sale now on

In preparation for the launch of our new website next week, we are clearing out discontinued ranges and samples in a website sale

There are lots of bargains but things are selling out fast

http://snapdragongarden.co.uk/acatalog/SALE.html

The fog has lifted

Tomorrow I head off down to London where I have a stand at the Trade Show Top Drawer in Earls Court.  This is my opportunity to display what we do to thousands of potential buyers - gift shop and gallery owners, department store buyers, museum and heritage purchasing departments.

For the past few months I have been mithering on, boring friends and family about my worries over where wholesale fits into the whole business.

I kept working on the trade show stand but, if I am honest, my soul wasn't really in it.

Last year we didn't really chase wholesale orders.  The price of our wool, velvet, linen and lavender all went up again and again as world commodity prices soared; we made decisions to change our packaging to biodegradable corn starch instead of the cheaper cellophane and to get our badge and mirror components made in Europe rather than China.

Each of these meant just an extra few pence on an item, but one after the other they mounted up and eroded our profit margin.  Over the year we had to withdraw several ranges from our wholesale catalogue as we were actually making a loss on them. Then in the summer we had a clutch of our stockists go under, some leaving unpaid bills which had to be written off.  Cash flow in retail shops seemed to get tighter and tighter and I got fed up with Valerie spending hours chasing up overdue invoices.  I considered giving up wholesale completely and concentrating on the buoyant and blossoming retail side of the business.

But then I thought of the joy that I have in developing ranges for some of our stockists - the blackbird cushions for Edwards and Todd, the intricate rigging of our Cutty Sark range, the cosy chintzy things I make for Dove Cottage.

So the new samples mounted up on the table and this morning, as it looked like this outside, the fog in my head lifted and I suddenly saw exactly how the stand will look.

Which is just as well with 24 hours to go before the only Trade show we do. 

For at Snapdragon we excel at bespoke and short runs of individual things - we have built up a way of working that allows us to customise, tweak and innovate at very little extra cost.  In a world where everyone google searches before they buy this is a distinct advantage. And that is what I hope to convey on my stand.

So if you happen to be visiting Top Drawer do come and see me on stand R60.

A bit of natural medicine

As part of an auti immune condition that I have my hands often go completely white and numb.  This year it has been gradually getting worse and over the past few months I have had 6-8 hours a day when I can't feel any of my fingers (not ideal when you sew for a living!).

On Sunday I was weeding in the polytunnel and ended up with stung hands from all the tiny nettles in the salad beds.

stung hands but no numbness . . .

And my hands weren't numb on Monday or Tuesday either.

I woke up with numb fingers this morning which had spread to the rest of my hands by 9.30 - so I went in search of some nettles (not hard to find in our garden) and deliberately stung one of my hands.  Within quarter of an hour that hand was back to normal and within half an hour both were working fine.

Obviously I will have to keep experimenting - it may be co-incidence - but I thought that I would put it out there as so many people get the same thing and nettle stings are much, much better than numb hands. . .

Country Homes and Interiors

I am delighted that our home is featured in the magazine Country Homes and Interiors and very chuffed that all the photos capture what we have been trying to create - turning our house from a typical rural 1980s bungalow (all tiny rooms, low ceilings and aluminium windows) into something more airy and light filed.

Thank you very much to Vivienne Ayres and Polly Eltes who made it all very easy.

Here are the photos

walking dogs by Loch Lomond

The front of the house (we added a porch) and the hall with the Mary Chapin Carpenter quote which I hope that my daughters will live by

2 views of the kitchen - floor and worktop from Hargreaves Reclamation in Airth http://www.hargreavesreclaimedflooring.co.uk/

Our "big space" with the wonderful wood burning stove that was made for us by Steve Dowling - http://www.stevedowling.co.uk/dowlingstoves/index.html - I love his stoves so much that we have 3 of them.

The dining bit in the "big space" - we bought the drawers from the antique centre in Doune where they had been unsold for over 2 years - obviously fate . . .

The sunroom sofa with a granny blanket that was indeed crocheted by my Gran!

Ourbedroom (look at that beautifully ironed duvet cover) bathroom and my dressing table

The view from the garden over towards hills.

I love that they used one of the Sanderson linen magnets that are on our fridge to hold up that bit about what is "On our doorstep".

It felt a bit exposed welcoming people "into" our home but everyone has been very kind.  We were 6 years living in a much smaller space,  a space that I made worse by over stuffing it with furniture that I kept buying when I saw it - 6 years planning for when we would be able to afford to change the house into somewhere we love living.

 

 

 

Finished at last!

This week I have finally finished the camper van needlepoint cushion from Pearl and Earl that I started about 3 years ago.

In my defense I did lose it for 18 months of that period having "tidied" it away when we had a party and promptly forgot where I put it.

It is pretty typical of me though - I have a terrible habit of starting projects and then not finishing them.

Which is why I was delighted when Jacqui Pearce told me that she was bringing out a book of supersize needlepoint patterns -

projects in other words designs that are big on style but which shouldn't take years to make (unless you lose them)

I love this rainbow tea cosy and think I may convert it into a cushion

There are also lots of projects which could be easily made by children but which aren't at all twee.

I am thinking of asking my youngest to make me this eggy picture for the kitchen.

A new page for Snapdragon

I am not a natural business woman. My background is largely academic - my degree was in Art History, my post grad in Museums studies and I happily immersed myself in the rather rarefied world of museum galleries until I decided one morning that it just wasn't what I wanted to spend my life doing.

So I left work when pregnant with my younger daughter, retrained in horticulture and started to grow flowers, selling them from a vintage citroen h van in the drive and at local farmers markets.

(wet flowers)

The change in the climate and a period of dragging illness gradually ruled that out as a properly commercial business but by then I was embroidering things, selling them at fairs like Country Living.

We bought an airstream, I moved the business out of the kitchen and had a proper workspace.

I began to sell wholesale to shops - I took on a team of helpers, we built a wooden cabin in the field behind the house

A work space which - as you can see - we quickly outgrew.

It became obvious that unless I managed to clone myself then I would have to expand the non embroidery side of the business.

So we developed the printed side of the range - and I am so delighted with it.  Every single vehicle mug we make makes me smile.

But really - from month to month, year to year there has been no plan, no strategy just a kind of frantic pedalling.

Last week I found that Snapdragon has been accepted onto Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Pipeline

Which basically means that we have been identified as a business with exceptional growth potential, as a business which would repay some investment of time and expertise.

I am pretty overwhelmed that my little old kitchen table business seems to have grown up while I was busy with other things.

And so, here we are on a new page - a page that will be immensely exhilerating and challenging, a bit frightening and definitely in need of a plan.

Light

Lack of light is a great problem in Scotland at this time of year.

It was one of the main reasons that I gave up my job as an art gallery curator back in 2000 - my basement office had no windows and regular working lunches at my desk meant that it was perfectly possible to see no daylight during the week.  I decided that was not cut out to live my life as a mole.

So when we altered and extended the house here a couple of years ago, getting as much light as possible into the house was my main priority and we made a room off the main living space with 2 walls of windows

Somewhere to sit with a coffee and a book, gazing out into the garden and soaking up as much daylight as possible.

and just as importantly, somewhere to keep my scented leaf geraniums over the winter. 

It is amazing, it can be dark and dreich outside, but just brushing past the lemony leaves takes me right back to long summer days.

 

Back in the workshop.

We had a wonderful family holiday, spending half term exploring Venice

a whole week of walking, gazing, drinking and eating

A week of spending time together and being inspired.

and today I am back in the workshop, slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the sewing pile

but still making time to kick through the piles of leaves in the sunshine outside.

Packaging love

Some people may celebrate the growth of their business with new shoes and handbags or bottles of champagne but I'm afraid that what I get excited about is being able to afford new packaging.

Since last Christmas we have been wanting to change the way we wrap our mirrors - we always like to make our parcels look nice, and everything has always arrived with customers wrapped in tissue and paper.

However the number of people wanting us to wrap everything individually always increases around Christmas and with some orders having 20 mirrors in them it was very time consuming and confusing as they all had to be labelled too.

We also noticed that people, quite understandably, opened the wrapping when it arrived and we just knew that however neatly they put it back together it wouldn't be quite right.

So over the summer we designed these gift pouches - they fit a single mirror and are tied at the top with fine satin ribbon.  We can add a gift label if its needed. They can be opened and then put back together . . . we can label them easily (or check if we lose count!)

Earlier this week 12,000 of them arrived.

From next week all mirror orders will be going out in them.

www.snapdragongarden.co.uk

I hope you like them,

Jane x