Snapdragon's garden

New chicken - new giveaway (bit bigger than intended)

Last week I re-designed the chicken herb cushion.

Made it a bit more complex, made it fit into the rest of the range a bit better.

I'm very pleased with the result, but it took a few false starts to get there and I have been left with a few chickeny bits and pieces.  One in particular is too nice to consign to the scrap bin . . .

So I thought that I would give it away - originally I thought I would just pop it up on Facebook as usual, but then I thought it would look better in a mount.

I couldn't find a mount the right size . . . but I did find a rather nice chunky wooden frame . . .

At which point I thought it shouldn't be a "first come first served" Facebook thing, but something on here that gives everyone a chance.

So, comment on this post - give me a positive thought as we head into winter (Hurricane Katia is presently blowing a hoolie outside) - and on Wednesday I shall chose a random commenter to receive the picture.

 

End Malaria - out now

I'm a business book junkie - I think it is incredibly important for business owners to think and learn about and properly engage with their businesses.  Probably particularly important for makers like myself.
Today a book has been published by the Domino Project which combines (amongst others) 2 of my favourite provocative writers - Michael Bungay Stanier (Do More Great Work) and Seth Godin.

that would be a good enough reason to buy it.  When you learn that at least £12 from each book goes to fight malaria - well really you should be buying a few and passing them about.

That is what I am doing and I am giving away 2 copies here - comment and let me know what makes your business great and at the end of today I'll randomly pick two people.

You can find out more about the book here and here

Giveaway

I thought that I should do a business based giveaway to celebrate the 10 years.

Recently I bought a copy of Kari Chapin's The Handmade Marketplace - a beautifully produced breezy romp through selling crafts locally and online.  It is full of great advice for anyone with a craft based business, so I thought that I would give a copy away here.

To enter the giveaway just leave a comment saying what you make with a link to your website, blog, twitter account whatever you like or if you don't have one yet just leave a comment.

I shall run it till Monday so that its nice and speedy.

How do you wear it?

As you may know, I am planning a catalogue.  One of the things that I want the catalogue to do is to tell the story of Snapdragon.  And part of that story is you - the readers, commenters, passers on of this blog.
So, last week I was thinking about how to do that and was also fretting about how to photograph badges when there are so many of them and suddenly I had an idea.  I could get you to do the photographing. And in return you would get a free badge.

Here is the deal.

1. you chose a badge design from the list below and email me with details of your choice and address.

2. I send the badge off to you free, gratis and for nothing.

3. you photograph it using a digital camera - you can wear it, you can pin it on a bag, a dog, a child, a teddy - I'm not bothered as long as it is legal and printable.

4. you e-mail your photo to me and I pass them onto Kate, the graphic designer, who will pick, crop, discard them as she wishes and they may be used in my catalogue/website/blog.  I am hoping to have 2 pages of photomontage of bloggers' images.

What do you think?

My e-mail is snapdragonjane@googlemail.com.

The badges are

Button Badges -
cake, caravan, chicken, flower, heart, house, ladybird, snail, star, toadstool, meadow
Square badges -
cake, caravan, chicken, dog, flower, heart, jam, ladybird, space hopper, toadstool, poppy, fennel.

The deadline will be a fortnight to allow readers from outside the UK to take part - feel free to pass on the offer to friends etc. but please don't sign up if you won't do the photo.
There will be 100 badges on offer.

Offer is open to all - even people who won badges in the recent give-away.