Have I mentioned lately how much I love Shopify? As a shop owner, web designer and coder, they just keep geting more and more awesome. Two new features have been launched recently that should make things easier for some of you. First up, a mobile theme so you can browse my shop more easily on your phone. I’ll be fancying up the design a bit more when I have time, but it’s all working great. If you prefer to use the usual site design, just click the link at the bottom to swap.

And secondly, customer accounts. I have to say customer accounts was never high on my wish list as I much prefer to check out without an account wherever possible, but I do think it’s a great time saver for any regular buyers. It’s completely optional, so you can still checkout as a guest, but if you do shop regularly, you can create an account to speed up future purchases (your address details will be pre-filled) and to view your orders to see when they’re fulfilled and shipped.  I also plan to do some fun things for account holders in future including discounts, pre-orders and other surprises.

If you’d like a customer account, you’ll be offered the option to create one after you’ve checked out your next order – it’s for buyers only.

Let me know if you have any questions, or spot any problems. And if you’re thinking of setting up your own web shop I really can’t recommend Shopify enough. Feel free to email me if you’d like a trial store to play around with – you can play with it free of charge for as long as you like with no fees or obligations

Seems I underestimated you and at least one of my readers is crazy awesome enough to stay up all night to see my new blog banners! Thanks to Mike, you can all see them with no effort required. Which is your favourite?

In reality, my life is not as exciting as this. It would involve about 14 hours of me sitting in front of a laptop, maybe a couple of hours of me out in the rain (or sometimes even sun!) and the rest sleeping. Speaking of which, it’s really about time Claire organised another Day in the Life.

Right, I better go and put together a cool prize for Mike.

Tomorrow (Monday) is Free Shipping Day at Spoonflower. If you’re outside the US, this is a great opportunity to buy some awesome fabric and save on shipping costs. I would humbly suggest my own fabrics but there is so much other good stuff on there too.

As always with these kind of events, I’ve been spurred on to finish up the rest of my fabric design ideas so I can buy a swatch pack and get them all up for sale.With the kokeshi and spooky wooky designs from a few months ago, I’ve got 11 new fabrics to test!

My favourite is definitely the balloons, but I love the colours in my pushpin girl designs and the Le Buns pattern took hours to get right – it’s a bit complicated. And finally, the Blythe dress from the other day had me making some teeny weeny prints – I started with Panda & Bunny but I might do some more before Monday. Tiny things are cute!

Old size on the left – teeny weeny on the right (it’s even smaller but you couldn’t see it at web res).

Do let me know if you buy my fabric, especially if you make something with it!

A few people asked about how I made my book so here are some details.

UPDATE: I’ve just added a link to my InDesign template at the bottom, which might save you some time.

Choosing a publisher

I did a bit of research last year for another publishing project I would still like to do sometime and decided I preferred Lulu. I can’t even remember exactly why now but the marketplace is promoted more on Lulu and the community forums are pretty good. I tested the system by putting a couple of my PDF zines up for sale – I haven’t sold any yet but the process was fine. I hear good things about Blurb too though.

Once that was decided, I did some experimentation with the Project Options to decide on a size etc. I really wanted to do a square book and in colour, and the rest is really decided by how many pages you have. So I got all the dimensions and got ready to make my book!

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You might have noticed my shop is just slightly different! I’ve been working on this for a while and decided to put it live yesterday. The old site was getting a bit muddled and hopefully this is a bit more organised and easier to navigate. I still have some tweaking to do so let me know if you spot anything horribly wrong.

You’ll also notice I am finally on the Christmas bandwagon – if your thoughts are heading in that direction then do check out the Christmas gift guide!

Have you seen some of the cute websites I’ve been building recently? Lucky me has had four awesome Shopify stores to build recently, all with cute artwork. One was even for kawaii heroes Cute Plush (and I’ve just finished another job for them, to be launched soon).

There’s also posts about tons of things I’ve been designing recently for 5pm plus lots more. Check out my portfolio to see!

Also, if you’re considering starting a Shopify store, now is the time! There’s an offer on now where any new accounts I bring to Shopify get their fees waived until December! Shopify is basically 100% awesome and can be customised to your every whim or used with one of the great pre-built free themes (like my Prettify design).

There’s no contracts or any obligation to use my design services – just email me and I’ll get in touch as soon as I return. But if you were looking for a designer, well, I do come with the highest of recommendations…