Yay, Glasgow. Considering I did not grow up here, nor do I have any family here, you know I really love Glasgow. Seriously, I would not really be interested in living anywhere else (well, I would but not for too long). I came here in 2000 so it has been a while and I’ve lived in 5 different areas so I know most of the good places. I would like to apologise to the Southside though – I know there are tons of awesome places there but I just never go.

Anyway, Ann-Marie (hi!) asked for some tips of places to go so I promised a blog post and here it is! It encompasses all my favourite places in Glasgow so that’s parks, shops, restaurants, hangouts and crafty haunts. Obviously, this is not all the best places in Glasgow, but my favourites. I’ve split them into areas as that seemed to work best, and how I do my own trip planning. Everything here is on a special Google Map I made so I haven’t included addresses or websites, and there are a few extra places on the map I haven’t written about because they’re really obvious or not my style, but still worth a visit. And let me know if you are visiting – maybe I can show you around (if you buy me cake).

These areas all overlap a little so you can easily do 2 or 3 in a day. Good ones would be City Centre (South) and East End, both West Ends, both City Centres or use the bus, trains or subway to skip around. I’ve put some travel tips at the end.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t plug 5pm here (I work for them but they are ace anyway) – they have great restaurant deals for Glasgow/Edinburgh and also The Big Deal, a Groupon style sub-site where you can get massive discounts on hotels and attractions.

Anyway, onwards!

BUY THE ZINE!

Since writing this post, I’ve published Miles Better – A Guide To Glasgow, a printed zine with even more shops and tips – you can get a copy from my shop, and a PDF version is also available from pushpin. The below may be a little out of date so check before visiting!

WEST END / GREAT WESTERN ROAD

Botanic Gardens
One of my favouritest places in Glasgow. It’s nice and small so you can pretty much see everything in one go, but it also has walks along the River Kelvin (top photo) which are fun to explore. I used to walk bits multiple times a week when I lived nearby and never got bored. The main attraction is Kibble Palace (above), a big glasshouse, which was recently renovated to marvellous effect, so that’s good for rainy days. Plus there are regular events including book fairs, open air plays, orchid exhibitions and astronomy evenings.

DeCourcey’s Arcade
If you like quirky shopping then this is the place for you! Tucked in a back lane behind busy Byres Road, you’ll find tiny shops run by creative folks. The highlight is Auntie M’s Cake Lounge, where you can enjoy awesome homemade cakes in retro surroundings, as well as pick up some crazy American and Japanese candy. On the same floor you’ll find The Maisonette (indie and vintage gift shop) and a host of vintage clothing shops. And don’t miss La La Land, run by the folks behind The Coveted Magazine, for the best local and independent fashion.

Cup
If you don’t have time for Auntie M’s, then try a cupcake from Cup. Their cupcakes are extra fancy with clever flavours and great decorations – last time I was in they had Gingerbread, Lemon Meringue, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Orange and more. They also do Afternoon Tea, which looked amazing.

The Life Craft
Pretty much heaven for knitters and crafty types, The Life Craft is a new venture which combines crafty supplies, creative classes and of course cake! Take a look at their class schedule and you’re sure to be inspired.

Tinderbox
A great stop for lunch or coffee, as it’s very relaxed – you can stay here for hours and no-one will bat an eyelid. The cake is great and the sandwiches are amazing. Good place for Glasgow indie celeb spotting too. The City Centre branch is a little out of the way but much bigger.

Otago Lane
Another good place for a wander as it hosts Tchai Ovna (a laidback tea house with a huge menu of weird and wonderful teas) and Voltaire & Rousseau (an amazing bookshop I am scared to visit for fear of my purse – see here for why). There are also lots of other interesting shops, cafes and charity shops around this part of Great Western Road and heading into town.

Fopp
See City Centre entry.

GETTING THERE
Take the subway to Kelvingrove for Otago Lane and walk up Great Western Road. The Botanic Gardens is on the corner of Gt Western Road and Byres Road. Or get off at Hillhead on Byres Road. For buses, the 20 and 66 will take you up Gt Western Road from the city centre.

WEST END / PARTICK / FINNIESTON

Photo by Welcome Home

Welcome Home
At the other end of Byres Road, you’ll find a real haven of art, design and crafts at Welcome Home. It’s got a lovely selection of prints, accessories, jewellery, stationery, zines, homeware and more and you’ll have a hard time deciding what to buy! They also have a little gallery space and regular classes including sewing and life drawing.

Ichiban
Well-loved Japanese restaurant (there’s also a smaller branch in the city centre) with the best gyoza in Glasgow. The menu hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been going but everything is great, especially the bento boxes and side dishes. Pop in at lunchtime for their good value lunch deal.

Partick
If you walk along Dumbarton Road towards the West, from Byres Road, you’ll find a plethora of charity shops, which range from the shiny and overpriced to good old rummagers. Walk along the other direction to get to Finnieston with lots of cafes and Kelvingrove Park.

The Shop of Interest
A new shop in Finnieston specialising in quirky gifts and art. Whether your style is kawaii, retro, vintage or street you’re bound to find something interesting here. They also stock my stuff :)

GETTING THERE
Take the subway to Hillhead on Byres Road and work your way downhill to Dumbarton Road. Or Kelvinhall is at the bottom of Byres Rd. You can walk from there along to Partick which has a subway and train station. Trains go from Partick, past Exhibition Centre (for Finnieston), into town and along to Bridgeton (for West, Glasgow Green). For buses, the 62 is your best bet, as it goes from the city centre past Finnieston and over to Partick.

CITY CENTRE (NORTH)

Photo by by TGKW, on Flickr

Nice & Sleazy
Sleazys is legendary. It was THE place to go when I started coming to Glasgow in the late 90s and it’s still the place to go now for a whole new generation of indie kids. It’s got a great tiny venue downstairs (above) where I have seen some amazing shows (and played myself, twice!) while upstairs is a general hangout – if you’re part of, or a fan of, the Glasgow indie scene then you are guaranteed to bump into someone you know any time you go there, quite possibly serving you, so that’s part of the attraction. They also do good pub food and have the best jukebox ever. It can be super-busy at weekends due to its proximity to bigger venues like The Garage and the ABC, but always fun.

Paperchase
Since the demise of Borders (sob) Glasgow no longer has a decent sized Paperchase but we do have a mini one in Waterstones bookshop. It’s got a decent enough range but it’s all quite cramped and they annoyingly display some stuff in random places around the floor (like in the main shop queue) so you miss stuff. Better than nothing though. Waterstones itself is pretty generic for a bookshop, though they’re quite happy for you to sit around reading the books in the cafe so that’s a bonus if you have time to kill by yourself.

Chinatown
Our Chinatown is almost an insult to any other known Chinatown as it’s really just a small indoor shopping centre. Still, it has a pretty good supermarket (with lots of Japanese snacks and ingredients too), a bakery, restaurant etc. There used to be a kawaii store but no more. Also nearby is Lim’s, a smaller but still well-stocked Chinese supermarket and Matthews, a huge cash and carry.

Mandors
Really the only place to go in Glasgow if you want fabric and sewing supplies (John Lewis also has a small but quality haberdashery). It has huge amounts of craft, dressmaking and interior fabrics in all kinds of colours and patterns, plus thread, buttons, zips etc. The remnant bins are good for a rummage too.

GFT
Just across the road from Mandors (and round the corner from my old flat) is the Glasgow Film Theatre, an independent cinema where you can catch all kinds of interesting films from home and abroad. They have regular film festivals for countries and themes and lots of events with talks and Q&As. Well worth supporting – pick up a brochure if you’re passing.

The Flying Duck
Another part of the Mono/Stereo axis of amazing, The Flying Duck mainly hosts club nights and small gigs. It’s got a super quirky layout with areas designed as the kitchen and the living room, and the stage is a pit in the middle. They even serve toast!

CCA
The Centre for Contemporary Arts has lots going for it – exhibitions, film screenings, a bookshop, a cafe/restaurant and a bar. They also host quite a few experimental music events so always worth keeping an eye on their schedule.

Nanakusa
A Japanese restaurant that’s a bit more high class than Ichiban, but still accessible with an extensive menu and good descriptions. Also the staff are hilarious. Avoid the desserts though – they’re unimpressive. Right next door to Sleazys too.

Forbidden Planet
Comic shop with lots of geekery and a small dose of kawaii too.

Maia
A bit more mainstream but you can still pick up stuff by small brands like Noodoll. Plus they also have a mini cafe selling milkshakes and cupcakes.

Avalanche (Now Love Music)
I haven’t been in much since the name change but hopefully it’s still a great record shop crammed full of new and secondhand CDs and vinyl.

GETTING THERE
For the Sleazys end you can take the subway to Cowcaddens beside Chinatown and walk to Sauchiehall Street. Or get off at Buchanan Street which is right in the centre of town. Almost all buses go through the city centre so it just depends where you’re coming from.

CITY CENTRE (SOUTH)

Photo by by String Bean Jen, on Flickr

Mono
Back in the day there was an amazing cafe/bar/venue in Glasgow called the 13th Note. All the great local bands played there, all the coolest US indie bands played there and everyone hung out there seemingly all day every day drinking Irn Bru. Sadly the 13th Note went bust but the same folks set up Mono across the road, which is airy and comfy and hosts both a vegan restaurant/cafe/bar and the greatest record store known to man – Monorail, run by Stephen Pastel. That’s right, you can drink beer, eat cake and browse records all in the same place! They also host events here and there, usually acoustic or solo gigs, book readings etc. and have some great DJ nights. We also ran some craft fairs here. The food may be vegan but it’s fantastic – the burgers and spicy chips are legendary – and they do a great line in homemade drinks, especially the lemonades. There’s always lots of room to just hang out and it’s classic on a Sunday lunchtime. Make sure you visit Monorail for an amazing selection of hand-picked records.

PS. The 13th Note is still open but under new management, who have kind of trashed its original spirit (the food is vegetarian, not vegan and the quality of bands playing has nosedived). Still, if you’re not old and bitter you might enjoy it :)

Stereo
Mono’s younger sister is a little more hip and happening with gigs and club nights in the venue below (which is always mega loud) and a cool relaxed bar/cafe upstairs. As with Mono, the food is vegan but amazing and great for lunch. It’s a bit tricky to find, and intimidating too, but if you manage to brave the dark alley full of puddles and work out which is the front door you’ll be well rewarded.

Fopp
We take it a bit for granted but there are very few Fopps left in the UK and we have two of them! You can pick up new and classic CDs, DVDs and books for great prices here, plus there’s usually a small selection of local band releases too. The City Centre branch is the biggest.

Artstore / Millers
The places to go for art supplies! Both have a great selection of proper art supplies like lino and paintbrushes and coloured pencils by the shelfload, plus a selection of craft supplies. The Artstore branches out into novelty gifts, wrapping and kits, while Millers has a huge cardmaking/scrapbooking etc. section.

Missing
Once the biggest independent record store in Glasgow, with a string of shops throughout the city, it’s now diminished into one tiny shop under Glasgow Central station. It sells mostly secondhand stuff so good for a browse.

Tinderbox
See West End entry

Ichiban
See West End entry

GETTING THERE
Again, you can take the subway to Buchanan Street which is right in the centre of town, or St Enoch at the bottom end of town. Almost all buses go through the city centre so it just depends where you’re coming from.

EAST END

West
A mere stroll from my current flat, this is quite literally the only decent place to eat in the East End. And what a good one! It’s a German restaurant and brewery, which means an entire blackboard’s worth of intriguing beer choices and a menu that includes both traditional German dishes (like amazing sausages with sauerkraut and mash) and more generic, but still great, stuff like burgers and pies. Despite being a little way out of town, it’s always popular but has so much space you’re unlikely to ever be turned away. West is also right on Glasgow Green so has a lovely beer garden for the nicer weather. Plus it’s inside an old carpet factory (above), which is beautiful.

Barras
It may be Glasgow’s oldest and most famous market but it hasn’t quite stepped into the 21st Century yet. To find the interesting antique stalls and vintage clothing shops, you’ll have to sidestep the bootleg DVDs, men selling tobacco and the unbelievably unhygienic meat auction. It’s all very entertaining though and you might pick up a bargain (tip! go on a Sunday as the antique dealers will be trying to get rid of stuff). At the very least, you can try some Scottish delicacies like square sausage in a roll and tablet at knockdown prices. It’s open Saturdays and Sundays until about 4pm.

Glasgow Green
Definitely worth a wander (and you might spot me on my Ikea bike) – you can walk from town to the Barras and West without much effort. It’s mainly a park but it has some nice historical areas and the river with some nice bridges over to the Southside. The main attraction is the People’s Palace, which has a people’s history of Glasgow and a winter garden. There are quite often big outdoor events here in the Summer too.

GETTING THERE
Buses (or walking) are the easiest ways to get here. You can walk easily from the Trongate / Mono area, or get a 16, 18, 40, 43, 61, 62, 64 (and many more) from town to the Barras. You can also get a train to Bridgeton from Glasgow Central and then walk along London Road to the Barras and Glasgow Green.

GETTING AROUND

Photo by by innoxiuss, on Flickr

Glasgow is pretty easy to get around – we have a buses, a subway and lots of trains, plus you can walk between most places, it’s not that big. The city centre is also built on a grid so it’s pretty hard to get lost.

Buses
Run by my nemesis First Glasgow. They are expensive, late, grubby, full of mental cases and frequently break down. But they’re often your only option – the FirstDay ticket is pricey at £3.75 but will get you all over Glasgow til 1am. Exact fare only, so don’t stick £10 in the box or you’ll get nothing back. Bus drivers range from helpful to surly but you can look up routes and timetables online.

Subway
The underground is the best bet for visitors as you really cannot go wrong. However, you may die laughing at our tiny orange 1970s styled trains! We have one line and it goes in a circle so even if you get on the wrong train it will just take you back where you started. Ticket prices are the same whether you go one stop or the whole way round so get a Day ticket if you plan to make a few stops. What’s the catch? It doesn’t go far – it’s great for the city centre and West End and into the Southside but that’s about it.

Local Trains
My favourite mode of transport, because there is a station right beside my house (and West), which goes into town and along to Finnieston and Partick. You can also get local trains from Central and Queen Street stations to most areas in Glasgow. The best thing about trains is they actually turn up when they’re supposed to (mostly) but they can get expensive so check out day tickets if you’re staying near a station.

GOOGLE MAP

View Glasgow Guide by Asking For Trouble in a larger map

Hope that helps! If you have any questions, please ask, and if I missed out your favourite place in Glasgow, feel free to add it in the comments.

I’ve decided to make it official (or at least public) and commit to having a regular Admin Day. That sounds really dull but it’s going to totally improve my business. Here’s what I’ll be doing on my Admin Days (and you should too!).

1. Re-check my prices

Supplies costing more, or less? Postage gone up? Currency conversion changed dramatically? Run out of those free envelopes? All these things affect my costs, and thus my profits. And also potentially my sales, if someone decides against a purchase because my €/$ prices or postage costs are now completely inaccurate. I’m going to do this at least every quarter, and/or after I make a large restock of a product.

Bonus tip! Use it as a sales opportunity. Work out your new prices and then use your blog, Twitter, newsletter etc. to tell your best customers which products will be going up in price so they get a few days to pick up something cheap!

2. Sort all those receipts

I am awesome at doing my online accounts every month but somehow I always seem to forget about that pile of paper receipts stacking up by my bed. Considering that’s mainly bus tickets, pound shop envelope purchases and special Post Office trips (Recorded Delivery etc.), it can make quite a difference to my monthly figures. Plus it’s a right mess. And without accurate accounts, how can I do point 1?

3. Do the online housework

If I don’t update things regularly, it’s easy to forget and then I discover they’ve been stagnating for 6 months. A regular day to do all those boring tasks will be a big help. This includes adding new products to my Gallery, sending stuff to my newsletter signups, updating my wholesale product list, adding new work to my portfolio site, changing the featured products on my homepage, Etsy, DaWanda etc. Regular updates are sure to keep people more interested than big dumps of stuff every few months.

4. Do regular stock takes

I’ve tried many many ways of keeping track of what I sell/use against what I have in stock and none of them work because they require me to do something every time I make a sale and I am easily distracted. If I try and do a batch at once, then I forget which orders I already marked, or run dangerously low before I get there. I’m going to make a list of the things I run out of regularly and just check those weekly. The rest can fare for themselves (it’ll be a while before I sell all 250 Jammie Dodger cards). I’m also going to be packaging more stuff up in advance – it takes up more room but it’s a better early warning system for low stock and saves time on shipping days too.

5. Check in with my stockists

I have awesome stockists but we’re all busy people and sometimes we fall out of touch. I’m going to make more of an effort to check in with them personally (and definitely not in a mass email way!) to see how things are going and let them know about any new products I have available. I should also take the time to get back in touch with potential stockists who never made an order and look for new shops to approach.

Then make something fun, for free!

Okay, so this isn’t boring admin, but once I’ve done my boring admin I’m going to treat myself to some no pressure fun designing time! Especially the sort of designing that isn’t for products or clients but just for the heck of it. So expect more freebie wallpapers and downloads and things. Yay!

What do you reckon? Want to join me? I’m going to do this on Sundays as a start because I hardly ever leave the house on a Sunday and I may as well have something to show for myself at the end of the day.

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!

Content

I already had a lot of content written, from my zines and blogging, and I bashed out a rough draft of my recent trip over Christmas. I cannot deny I started it on Christmas Day while watching TV! I also did some illustrations in Illustrator and made lots of photo pages in Photoshop from my favourite photos. Unlike my zines, I’ve kept the photos and text separate – it just looks much nicer and I can group sets of photos together. This was pretty time-consuming – I really made the most of my time off getting this all done!

Layout

After that, I set my file up in Adobe InDesign and started laying out the pages. You don’t have to use InDesign – Lulu also provides templates you can use in Word – but I needed full control of the layout and I’m also pretty experienced with InDesign. If you’ve never used InDesign, it’s a professional publishing program – probably all your favourite mainstream magazines are laid out in InDesign. It basically makes everything so much easier – you can set up styles for your text and headings, run long text pieces through multiple layouts and make sure all your bits and pieces are lined up exactly. The image above shows two different types of pages – click for a bigger view and you’ll see the bleed, trim and column guides I set up.

So, I pulled in all my text, images and illustrations and laid them all out end to end. I wasn’t worried about page order yet, just seeing how many pages it took. Once I knew that, it was a question of fiddling with margins and font sizes to decide what would work out cheapest but still readable. The Lulu forums were a lot of help with this.

Editing

Once I had got things down to their smallest size, I was still using way too many pages so now came the editing – cutting out and rewriting stuff to make it read and fit better. After the first big edit, I moved everything into the right page order and kept doing the calculations to find a happy medium between cost and all the content I wanted to include. The winning number turned out to be 67. As a zinemaker, this seems like madness, but it was actually cheaper to have 1 blank page at the end, rather than fill it.

Problems

My biggest issue by far was figuring out the bleeds. Please ignore this paragraph if you have no interest in print layout! Bleeds are where you extend your content (usually images) outwith the page border so that when your page is trimmed, your images cover the entire page with no white borders. Trim sizes are never exact so it’s tricky at the best of times. I was completely baffled by what was happening with my bleeds until I finally figured it out from many many forum posts. Lulu does not use bleeds as one might expect, instead it resizes your file so that the bleed edge is on the trim line. That does mean your important content will never be trimmed, but does mean you can get white borders as there isn’t actually a bleed. Annoying, but what can you do? Other than pay to get things printed professionally, of course! Apart from that, I had no big problems.

The Cover

I had kind of forgotten about the cover until it asked me and had no real ideas about it. My main aim was to make it obvious at first sight that this was NOT a book about traditional Japan. I didn’t want someone to buy it and be enraged at my frivolous tales of shopping in Kiddyland and photos of cute bunnies! And also, of course, to set my book apart from the traditional Japan books already for sale on Lulu. So the cover design ended up being a bit of a collage of Japanese-inspired illustrations. Lulu provide templates for covers so it was really easy – they even tell you where to leave a space for the barcode. My only disappointment was that I didn’t get to write anything on the spine, I guess because my book is quite thin.

Uploading and Ordering

Once I had all my files together, I uploaded them using Lulu’s rather clunky book maker. The cover builder (above) is really really terrible. Even after all my efforts and deletions, my test copy still somehow has my name typed on top (it’s in white so you can’t see it, thankfully). After that, you can save it as a private project and order a test copy for yourself! I signed up for Lulu’s mailing list so I was able to time my order during a 20% discount offer – that helped with knowing my book might print terribly first time. Lulu partner with various printers around the world so postage was very reasonable and it only took a week between ordering and it arriving at my door. And, despite what their website says, the cheap shipping is just with good old Royal Mail so no courier troubles for me.

The Actual Book

You are constantly reminded by Lulu and forum users that it’s all a bit trial and error until you see the actual book, so not to expect everything to work first time. As it turned out, mine was almost perfect! Because of the white cover title thing, I would have to revise it anyway, and my rush to use the 20% discount meant there was still a bit of text tweaking to be done. Seeing the actual book also made me see I could move the page numbers much nearer the edges, which looked 100x better. The other issue was that I do have a white border on the bottom of my pages. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that, since it’s caused by the trim – my second copy has virtually no white border and the next batch have the white border at the top. As a bit of a perfectionist it’s hard but I’m just going to have to Let It Go, Jack.

Revisions

One other thing to note: the title you choose when you begin your project at Lulu is set in stone and becomes the public title of the book! You do get a chance to change it before publishing but it certainly wasn’t obvious or pointed out to me. Luckily, you can change it by creating a revised version, so I was able to do that before making it public. Because my book was still private, I didn’t have to order another copy but I did anyway as I ended up making a lot of little changes. As mentioned, that came out pretty much perfectly so I was all set to make thing public!

Publishing

While I was waiting for the revised copy to arrive, I took the time to write up my book description and autho bio, create a preview section for people to view online and decide on my commission for copies sold through Lulu, as a printed book or downloadable PDF. Lulu does take a big cut for copies it sells, so I’ll only get a few pounds from each sale, but it will add up in the end. And they do have to do all the work!

Once the book arrived, I was able to press go and make it publicly available on the site. Once you do this, you get the opportunity to set up an Author Spotlight page (above), which is well worth doing as not only will it collect all your publications in one place, but you can add a picture of yourself and links to your websites. It’s not very customisable but it does the job. It takes a few hours for everything to show up on the site and then you sit back and wait for orders. You can also pay to have your book listed on other sites (like Amazon and Barnes & Noble) but these seem to be mostly US-based just now so I’m going to hold off on that for a while.

Conclusions

I’ll definitely be using Lulu again in future as it worked out fine for my needs, and the books turned out great. I only wish the process was a little less clunky and the help section was easier to browse. Also, it really lacks a real community space. Things like the themed groups are basically dead and there’s nothing like wishlists or listmaking tools to highlight books you want or like.

Anyway, I hope that was slightly helpful. A lot of it is very specific to how I work (a total control freak!) so it may not be of much use if you don’t have InDesign, but I hope it spares someone a little bit of the hassles I went through. If you’re making a much simpler book and don’t care about bleeds and things then it would be much easier. Let me know if you have any questions!

And of course, you can buy the book or PDF either from Lulu or from my own shop. Thanks everyone who has done so far – it’s so exciting to imagine my book on your bookshelves!

My InDesign Template

For anyone else struggling with Lulu layouts, I’ve uploaded a blank version of my InDesign template for a Small Square (7.5″) book. Click here to download it – includes INDD file for CS5, IDML file for earlier versions and some notes on the formatting.

PhotoPaperDirect.com specialise in inkjet printer papers and were kind enough to send me and the Glasgow Craft Mafia some samples to test. Although I own a pretty great Epson printer/scanner/copier I don’t really print many products on it. It prints my badges and coasters, a lot of my packaging and of course lots and lots of postage labels. So I was keen to see what it could do. I chose A4 Light Inkjet T Shirt Transfer Paper and A4 Matt Vinyl Self Adhesive Sticker Paper to test and here are my honest opinions.

For the sticker paper, I tried two things. First up, something I’ve been needing for ages – ‘Look inside’ stickers. At craft fairs I have a sample of each card on display and you can pretty much guarantee that no-one looks inside the ones that have a design inside. Sometimes they look inside a blank one and then decide they must all be blank. So I designed a little round sticker in Illustrator and printed them off. The paper came with full instructions on dpi, printer settings and most importantly, which side to print on. They came out beautifully and look awesome on my cards. Yay!

I then collected together some of my characters and printed them for a set of stickers. At this point, I had a reminder that however good the paper, the outcome is only as good as your printer. Mine has an annoying habit of sometimes ignoring pieces of a design. It doesn’t do it often but it did it here (see the right side of the sprite below). Luckily only on one character and the rest were perfect – nice bright colours and a lovely smooth finish.

Finally, I moved on to the transfer paper. I was going to put a design on a tea towel but I couldn’t find the one I’d bought ages ago so instead I printed off some bees and tulips for drawstring bags. Again the instructions were great here, reminding me to print the designs back to front.

After cutting round each of my designs for a neater look, I placed them on the bag and got ready with the iron. I was a bit confused by the instructions which said the iron icons would turn brown when it was ready – the iron icons were brown when I started! However, it was pretty easy to see when it was ready as the backing wouldn’t peel off until it was done. Peeling off was the most fun part as there were my designs all colourful and shiny! They really did look great.

At this point, I discovered you had to fix the design by ironing with silicon paper or high quality printer paper and then peeling it off hot to remove the shine. Having no idea what silicon paper is, I tried printer paper which pretty much worked but a tiny bit of the design stuck and came off too. For the second bag I ironed for longer but it peeled off loads of the design, so for the final bag I tried greaseproof paper (supposedly similar to silicon paper) which was a complete disaster and got stuck to the design. By this time, I was boiling hot and called it a day.

I would definitely recommend the sticker paper and will probably try out some of the other varieties sometime soon. If I ever find myself with some silicon paper, I might give the transfers another go. It’s fine for a fun project but it’s not something I can see myself using for business – I’d rather pay someone to do it professionally than slave over a hot iron.

So, overall, it was a fun experience to try out some different things without worrying about minimum orders and unit prices and colour matching. I’m already thinking about the fun things I could make with magnetic paper or clear sticker paper.

And now the giveaway! I’ve got a set of stickers like the ones above to give away  and I’ll throw in a few surprises too. Just visit the Craft Paper section of the PPD website and leave a comment here saying what paper you’d most like to try, or think I should try next. Giveaway closes at 6pm on Sunday 18th July and I’ll pick a winner at random.

Also, keep an eye on the Glasgow Craft Mafia blog as Emma from Pumpkinsputnik will be reviewing more products there soon and we’ll have some heavy weight greeting cards to give away.

This post is probably very dull if you’re not interested in fabric design, sorry!

If you remember back to this post, I created a pattern using safe colours for Spoonflower fabric. Spoonflower uses LAB colours, which can be a bit of a hassle. Basically, it’s the same as how CMYK can’t accurately display all RGB colours.

Here’s an example of out of gamut colours. In the left, my yellow was not a LAB yellow so it marks the area in grey. If I go ahead and send this to Spoonflower, it won’t print grey but it will shift the colour to the nearest match, which may or may not be what you expect. I left some out of gamut colours in my Vintage Flowers print because they were so small and I didn’t have this palette – the yellows came out almost fluorescent. That’s not a big issue for a few tiny lines but if my whole fabric background was suddenly fluorescent yellow, that’s a problem.

Spoonflower (and users) already offer swatch palettes for download. The one for Photoshop (above, right) works fine for me, but I do most of my work in Illustrator and the palette on offer doesn’t work with my edition (CS). So I made my own (on the left).

Once I had an image of all the colours, I opened it in Illustrator and created a new Swatch set using the eyedropper. I saved that Swatch set as Spoonflower Colours so I can load it up whenever I’m working on a fabric design. These are not all the colours Spoonflower can print, by the way, but it’s a good spectrum for me and they will all print correctly.

Once I had my Swatch palette, I created the above image in Illustrator by filling in circles with each of the colours in the same order as the palette. I then opened this file in Photoshop, checked it for gamut errors (none!) and saved it as a tiff for Spoonflower. For more info on preparing files, see the Spoonflower FAQs. I then uploaded it and ordered a print on fabric.

All my latest fabric designs were done using this palette (before I ordered the print) and came out perfectly. About 90% of the time, there was a colour exactly as I required – the other times, I would have to compromise, choosing the best from a few reasonable matches. You can probably see oranges and reds are the colours with the smallest range – most issues people have had with their fabrics have been with reds going orangey.

Now, when I next design some fabrics, I can choose a colour from my swatch palette in Illustrator and then double check it on the fabric swatch to make sure it’s what I want, or vice versa. This gives me so much more control over colours, as I’m not being swayed by my monitor colours/brightness and I can see any colour shifting caused by Spoonflower’s printing, inks or base fabric colour.

You can download my Illustrator swatch palette by clicking this link*, and then order a print of this on fabric right here on Spoonflower. It fits perfectly on a swatch so that’s just $5. You might have to resize your palette in Illustrator so it shows the colours in the same grid pattern but then you’re all set. You’ll also note I ran out of space on the fabric design, and only included about half of the greys. You should be able to extrapolate the remaining greys from what you have. At some point, I need to order this on all the available base fabrics so I can compare.

Happy fabric designing!

*To use it, copy the file to the swatches folder in your Illustrator program directory. On a Mac, it should be something like Illustrator CS > Presets > Swatches. PC users will probably find it in Program Files, or do a search. Once you’ve saved the file, you can open it in Illustrator using the little > arrow at the top of the Swatches window.

I felt slightly guilty after giving in and purchasing an iPhone late last year but that was soon forgotten when I realised I had bought something pretty much indispensable. No jokes, this has totally changed my life.

I think my favourite thing about the iPhone is how light I can travel. If I’m only going across town, I don’t need my iPod and if I’m away somewhere for a couple of days then I don’t need my laptop. Or maybe my favourite thing is how I can keep up to date with my shop/s wherever I am so I know about new orders and can delete sold things at craft markets. But no, actually, my favourite thing is how I can check my email, Twitter, weather and news headlines without having to get out of bed. Double bonus if you’re sick. Hurrah for Apple.

Anyway, I have immediately become hooked on installing apps to do whatever random thing I just thought of. Not that you can’t have hours of fun looking up the weather in Tokyo, or typing PIE LONDON into the maps thing to find the nearest pie seller, but these apps make my life even more fun.

Hello Kitty Camera (£1.79)
I read about this aaages ago and had to get it myself as soon as I had an iPhone. Basically, you take a photo of your friend/s and pass it to Hello Kitty who will place fruit on their heads and otherwise decorate the screen like a 3 year old. To hilarious effect, of course. It’s always been a dream of mine to wear a pineapple on my head and Hello Kitty can make that come true. Although, having posted about it here, I’ve lost the element of surprise and won’t be able to collect so many idiotic photos of my friends in future. Disaster! At least Angel Bunny is a willing subject.

WordPress (free!)
The first app to truly blow my socks off, as it lets me do almost everything I can do on my computer – write and edit posts, approve comments and do that on all 5billion of my blogs. Which doesn’t explain why I never blogged once from my sickbed, hmm. It does mean, I will quite likely BLOG FROM JAPAN later this year. Amazing. See also the Flickr app, though it’s a bit less amazing.

Brushes (£2.99)
Since the iPhone has a touchscreen, clearly people like me want to use it for drawing. Brushes has a great interface with colours, brush sizes, zooming and everything, plus layers so you can draw on one and add colour on another. Now if only I could control my fat fingers better. Might be investing in a stylus soon for this.

Facebook (free)
Notable for being an app that is infinitely better than the website. At least I now check in with my FB friends on a dailyish basis. Might even start posting things again soon.

The Guardian (£2.39)
I like The Guardian best for news because it doesn’t update too often – when I had BBC news on my RSS, it used to update with about 700 stories every minute.  It also has lots of writers I like. This app is a bargain, as you can choose which sections to get updates on and even download a bunch of articles to read on the train. Other newspapers/magazines take note.

Solitaire City (free / £3.49)
This pretty much saved me from stabbing my eyes out on a number of occasions including extremely delayed train and illness-induced insomnia. The controls are really nice and the design isn’t too hideous. The free version did me fine for ages but I just upgraded to the full version and it has so many more games and variations. Farewell, boredom!

PicGrid (free / £1.79)
Picross on the DS is literally my favourite game in the entire history of the Universe. It’s tricky enough to make me forget about work stuff but enormously fun and satisfying too. I’ve played through the whole game twice and am missing it so much since my sister borrowed it a few months ago. So, the first app I searched for was picross. PicGrid is the best of a bad bunch – sadly the small screen means the puzzles never get bigger than 10×10 but it’s still fun, even if some of the pictures are ludicrous.

Amazon UK (free)
Like I need an easier way to buy stuff off Amazon. This is a truly dangerous app, which not only lets me search Amazon’s inventory but gives me access to my wish list, and allows me to pay for stuff with 1-Click. Argh! It is actually very useful for wishlisting things I read about in magazines etc. but I fear for my bank account. I also note it has a new feature where you can photograph covers and it will look ‘em up for you.  Wait, WHAT? When did we arrive in the future?

iBattery (free)
One of my “I wonder if..” app searches. It just tells me how much battery power is left and what that actually means. You get a breakdown of time left in various uses – internet, 3G, phone calls, standby etc. As the owner of a camera that can work on a third battery power for about a week, this is hella useful.

National Rail Enquiries (£4.99)
£4.99?! Are you insane?!, you’re thinking. Best £4.99 I ever spent. It would be almost worth £4.99 just for being able to see when the next trains are leaving Bridgeton station (in real time!) so I don’t have to type all the info into the website every time I want to go across town. Even better though, if you’re taking a train, say, to Inverness on Christmas Eve during some unexpectedly heavy snowfalls, you can look up your train and see if there are any delays or problems along the line and get real time updates along the way that your train is currently running 40 minutes late. That way you can text your dad and tell him to carry on shopping and not stand around in the train station waiting for you. Mind you, if the train staff actually ever told you when you might arrive at your destination we wouldn’t need iPhone apps for it, but you know, best £4.99 I ever spent.

If I’d had 11, I would have added Tweetdeck, but really all Twitter apps are great as Twitter is pretty much custom built for phones.

If you fancy any of these apps, do buy them – just search for the app name in the App store. Most of them should work on iPod Touches too, though in a less useful way once you’re out of wifi range.

What have I missed? Tell me about your favourites so I can install them too.

You might remember, back in September, that some of the Glasgow Craft Mafia were interviewed for the Enterprise Nation Home Business Road Trip documentary. That’s still being edited but I was lucky enough to attend the recent Enterprise Nation conference in London on behalf of the Glasgow Craft Mafia. Here’s my report back.

20th November was the very first Home Enterprise Day with an aim of raising awareness about the huge number of home businesses in the UK. Home businesses are largely ignored by the government, despite their contribution to the economy.

These issues were raised in the 2009 Home Business Report published by Enterprise Nation, which includes the following key points:

• 2.8 million home businesses contributing £284bn to the annual UK economy
• Over 60% of small businesses started in the UK are started at home
• 89% of home businesses expect to increase turnover in the next 12 months
• The majority of businesses will grow by outsourcing and sub-contracting, as opposed to taking on staff
• ‘Working 5 to 9′ is on the rise as people hold down a day job and build a business at nights and weekends
• Home business is bringing families together and contributing to the local economy and environment

You can download the full report here, which includes a little interview with our own Miso Funky!

The report was launched at the Enterprise Nation conference. All the panels were really interesting and though-provoking but I’ve picked out some of the most relevant parts for crafters like us.

Doug Richard (former Dragon & CEO, School for Startups)

A great way to start the day as Doug was extremely entertaining and a natural speaker – he had no notes or slides and constantly interacted with the audience. As a web designer, I spend a lot of time trying to break down myths about Search Engine Optimisation, social networking etc. and was completely delighted to discover Doug talking 100% total sense about these subjects. I couldn’t have agreed with him more. Here are a few of his main points:

Get rid of costs to make more profit

So simple but so easy to forget. If you quit your day job you learn this very fast – if you can’t make money, then spending less money is almost as good. Do you need an office/studio? If you need extra staff, can they work at their own homes etc.

Don’t be shy

If there’s one thing about entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s that we love taking about our businesses. So talk about what you love on your blog, Twitter etc. and that enthusiasm will help promote you and your business, honestly. Customers love a peek into how the magic happens.

Target your potential customers

Figure out what the target group is for your products, find them on blogs, forums, Twitter etc, and talk to them. They may not buy now but they might remember you in future,

SEO

Use SEO to intercept your potential customers’ desires. Find out how your target audience or strangers would describe your products and build your SEO around that, not around what YOU think your products are. The majority of Google users click on the 1st-3rd organic result, not sponsored links or ads, so make sure you’re there when they decide they want a wool scarf or a bunny necklace (as opposed to a hand-knitted cowl or a rabbit pendant).

Use word of mouth

Word of mouth is the most trusted recommendation but don’t fake it. Try things like video testimonials from happy customers. Keep them honest and real for trust – don’t worry about being professional or hi-tech. The less professional it is, the most trustworthy it will seem.

Be shameless

Get the best deal any way you can. Doug actually suggested pretending your husband just died in order to get a cheaper stand at trade shows!

Know what you do

Make sure you’re able to describe what you do and what the benefits are in a single sentence and use that at all times, whether in person or online.

Doug’s SEO tips were fantastic but, as I say, they match mine exactly, so I’m going to write another post on SEO soon.

==

Sites that changed the home business world

A panel discussion chaired by Dan Wagner (Venda.com) with eBay UK (Mark Lewis), MyEhive.com (Louise Campbell) and BT Tradespace (Ivan Croxford)

This would probably have been the most relevant panel for crafters, except that the speakers were very much talking from a business perspective. I couldn’t help wondering how much more interesting this could have been if someone from Folksy had been invited, to talk more about the community aspects.

Product photography

Both Louise and Mark picked good product photography as the most important thing to get right with online marketplaces. It’s a vital link to sales, features and opportunities. Second most important is product descriptions, which need to be well written but also include keywords for SEO.

Feedback builds trust

A lot of discussion was about the feedback system pioneered by sites like eBay and which is now such an important way for buyers to find trustworthy sellers. If you have your own shop, can you incorporate a feedback system or testimonials page? eBay are even planning to highlight and promote sellers by their feedback ratings and good service record rather than the number of sales.

Stand out through customer service

With thousands of other sellers on marketplace sites, you need to use customer service to get yourself noticed. Good service leads to good feedback and repeat buyers.

Use Video

Apparently video is the next big thing – can you use video to show how your products work, or to showcase happy customers?

Use your individuality

People buy from a person not a company. Use your unique voice and a personal service to set you apart and build trust and word of mouth recommendations.

Build your network

Recommend other small businesses outside your scope, especially on business networking sites. Are there products or services that compliment your own? Can you refer your customers or collaborate? Help build a sense of community outside of big business.

==

Building a global business from my home

Christian Arno (Founder, lingo24.com) and Mike Hollands (Founder, Toniks)

A short discussion, as the previous panel ran over. Translation is something I’ve only recently given any thought to, having set up on DaWanda so I did find this very interesting.

Expansion through translation

Expand your customer base by translating your site into multiple languages, but be prepared for enquiries in those languages. Translated sites also do well on foreign search engines as there’s not as much competition.

Take advantage of free technology

Similar to Doug Richard’s point – Mike talked about how they use Skype for global language classes – since Skype is free, they remove costs and instead can market a value for money premium service.

==

Make Me Famous!

A panel discussion on the media with Daryl Willcox (DW Publishing), Jenny Culshaw (Working Lunch) Lisa Sykes (Features Editor, Country Living) and Jimmy Leach (Head of Digital, Independent)

Another great panel for crafters – most of the advice here is common sense but so easy to get wrong. Also, the room was asked who did want to be famous and only 1 person raised their hand!

Stand out

Find a story about yourself and your business that makes you stand out. Your story should highlight your Unique Selling Point but, despite the name, you should also have more than one USP! Editors like jeopardy and life changes and want to know about the individual, not the company.

Target your promotion

Make sure you’re contacting the right person in the right way, otherwise don’t bother. Do your research to find the relevant person at a magazine or TV show that fits your target audience. Show you know what they do and why you’re a good fit.

Paper press releases are dead

Always use email – never send anything in the mail unless you have a unique idea or samples that will catch someone’s eye.

Why should someone open your email?

Journalists are busy and won’t read every email – you’ve got just the subject line to convince them it’s something worth opening.

Provide all the information they need

Once they’ve opened it, get it right. Give them all the information they need – don’t expect them to go to a website. On the other hand, don’t send attachments – send links to images and PDFs.

Make it personal

Include photos of yourself and where you work as well as your products. Quality is not that important – if they want to feature you, they’ll arrange to take their own photographs.

Are you ready?

Most importantly, are you ready for fame? Can you handle a sudden influx of orders, appearing on television or being recognised in the street? If not, approach the press at a level you’re comfortable with – try a local paper instead of an international magazine.

==

Interview with Mark Dixon (CEO, Regus) by David Parsley, Parsley Media

I admit I had never heard of Regus before this interview and spent the first half wondering what on earth his businesses actually did. While being way above most of our ambitions, being someone who has established global companies, gone public and sold off businesses, Mark Dixon was extremely interesting and I could have listened to him for a few hours more.

Not a huge amount I can pass on from this – you might not think of yourself as an entrepreneur but a few things really stuck out.

Drive to do better

Despite multiple successful global companies, Mark mentioned that he is only ever satisfied for a few minutes then wants to go on and do better.

Stay excited

Mark advised to sell a company once you’re no longer excited about it, or have nothing more you personally want to try with it. On a smaller scale, this could apply to giving up a product, range or style if it no longer gets you excited. Don’t just make things because they sell, or because no-one else does.

Most of the interview was personal experiences but he also mentioned a couple of Regus services that intrigued me. Regus own flexible use buildings throughout the globe. Coming soon they will be offering swipe cards for pay as you go office space worldwide so if you’re visiting stockists or manufacturers you can have a short term office space anywhere in the world, 24/7. Also access cards for business hubs where home workers and freelancers can meet for networking and socialising.

==

The future of business support

Panel discussion with Patrick Elliott (Business Link for London), Professor Colin Mason (Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde), Dawn Whiteley (National Federation of Enterprise Agencies) and Andy Hudson (BT Local Business)

This sadly got bogged down in broadband availability issues but Colin Mason in particular raised two excellent points.

• The majority of businesses that close did not fail, nor were financial disasters
• Risk takers aren’t more successful

==

Mr Motivator aka Mike Finnigan

The final session was with ‘Mr Motivator’, though sadly not THE Mr Motivator. It was a little too cheesy for me but it was good to be reminded of a few motivational thoughts, e.g.

- Love what you do, so it’s never work
- Never be embarrassed about what you do – promote yourself at all times
- It takes a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur or start a business. Remember it’s you and your attitude who drives the business.

And a final word from, Scott Cain of Enterprise UK who had the sweetest point of the day, that however bad you might think you are doing, to some people, who’ve tried and failed at business, you’re a hero! Aww.

==

If you’ve found this advice helpful then make sure you check out the Enterprise Nation blog, for lots more tips and interviews. We’ll keep you posted when the documentary is available.

(All photos by Enterprise Nation – see more on Flickr)

I’m back from my long weekend in London and I had a great time! Well, apart from the journey down, which took NINE HOURS, five of which took us all of 75 miles out of Glasgow. This wasn’t entirely surprising, since the whole Borders area and half of Cumbria had pretty much been turned into a lake but it was still very boring.

Other smaller disasters included;

our favourite Japanese restuarant Soba turning into a Mexican restaurant seemingly overnight with no change to the decor or staff by the looks of it. Still, Mexican food is good too.

London Transport deciding to ‘do a FirstBus’ in honour of my arrival, with the East London buses on strike, half the tube lines down and buses we wanted taking forever to arrive, in the rain. Thanks for that!

No pie! Despite major efforts, including typing PIE LONDON into my iPhone and then being directed to a shopping centre with no pie, but instead a Waitrose (yay!) and a Japanese restaurant (double yay!). I spent my journey home full of rice and clutching chocolate orange tarts, nom nom.

Anyway, apart from that I did two very important things – go to the Enterprise Nation conference and SHOPPING. I’ll be posting about the conference soon but obviously shopping is the important stuff. Here’s the highlights:

ANTHROPOLOGIE

You know, that lovely shop US bloggers are always going on about. They’ve finally opened a store in the UK so we had to go and have a peek. It is indeed beautiful in every way, with the most gorgeous clothes dotted around the floors surrounded by homeware, stationery, toys, accessories and everything else pretty you could ever want. Not to mention unbelievable things like a giant squid tapestry and a 10ft narwhal hanging from the ceiling. I couldn’t have afforded a single thing in the shop but I really wish I could. If you’re passing and fancy getting me a gift, the narwhal would be great, thanks. Or maybe an embroidered fox teatowel. Lots of photos on Print and Pattern. www.anthropologie.com

Where is it? On Regent Street, next to Hamleys

ARTBOX

Possibly the cutest shop in London and filled with all our favourite kawaii brands. There’s a good range of products and prices so whatever your budget, you can at least come home with some little notebooks or stickers, even if you can’t afford Hello Kitty ear muffs or a Rilakkuma mug. They also had amazing panda mittens which I hope will be mine this Christmas :)

Where is it? In the Thomas Neal Centre, off Shorts Gardens in Covent Garden. Get a map, or just have a wander around the lovely shops in the area as there are maps all around showing where the cool shops are. There’s also a bigger store in Camden Market which I really want to go to now! www.artbox.co.uk

BOROUGH MARKET

If there’s one thing the recession can’t seem to touch it’s quality food and Borough Market has been getting a ton of press over the last couple of years as the best food market in London. I’m a big fan of food myself so we went to have a look. If I lived in London, I’d be hard-pressed not to go here every weekend – so many amazing food stalls plus people handing out free samples and loads of hot food ready to buy and eat right there. Not to mention the cakes, oh my. I had a fantastic burger and then we split a huge squidgy brownie. Next time, a meringue the size of my head is called for.

Where is it? Opposite London Bridge tube station, or it’s a nice walk from lots of interesting places – Liverpool Street, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, Design Museum etc. etc. www.boroughmarket.org.uk

JAPANCENTRE

The Japan Centre used to be something of a hidden secret, where you could find all your favourite Japanese foodstuffs and a few bits of kawaii too. Then they started importing homeware from Daiso and now it’s expanded across the road so it covers two buildings! The original shop on Piccadilly Circus is mostly homeware, toys and gifts plus lots of books and magazines in both Japanese and English. Across the road on Regent Street the new branch is next door to Mitsukoshi, the Japanese department store and is mostly food (hurray). As well as the supermarket, there’s a bakery selling fresh curry bread and the always-intriguing melon pan and a sushi/bento bar. I got some rice (sheer laziness, but also cheaper than the Glasgow stores), some grape chews, some grape Cheerio (almost as good as Fanta Grape) and of course, a custard pancake which I had for breakfast the next day. Don’t leave without a custard pancake!

Where is it? Homeware branch, just off Piccadilly Circus,, next to the Clydesdale Bank. The food branch is on Regent Street (heading South) next to Mitsukoshi. www.japancentre.com

MAGMA

A shop to be avoided, unless you have strong willpower or lots of cash as pretty much everything is amazing. Lots of quirky gift ideas plus stationery and cool homeware. I didn’t even dare look at the book shop part as I can’t be trusted with books at the best of times.

Where is it? In Covent Garden – see above. www.magmabooks.com

MR PANDA

Yay for Mr Panda, who sells my favourite iPod monsters, hand-sewn pouches with all different animal designs. My current (amazing) cat one was falling apart a bit so I picked up a brand new bunny one, plus a few bits and pieces for the SCK shop. It’s all pretty affordable though, especially compared to the other vendors in the building – they’re best treated as a kawaii museum of awesome but overpriced cuteness. They also have a Japanese photo sticker machine and out the back takes you to Chinatown proper which is good for a wander.

Where is it? In a little shopping centre on Charing Cross Road – there are loads of Asian restaurants surrounding it so not too hard to spot.

MUJI

Ahh, Muji. It’s still absolutely ridiculous that there isn’t a single branch in Scotland. The online ordering is really good but it’s always nice to have a browse in real life. I only ended up buying some soaps but there are loads of cute Christmas things on offer. At least I now smell like an orange.

Where is it? Branches everywhere. We went to the one on Tottenham Court Road. www.muji.com

PAPERCHASE

The flagship store, which means three floors of awesome stationery, homeware and art/craft supplies, and even a cafe. Mostly we were there to squeak individually at each and every item in the Food Friends range but they’d kindly dotted it around the shop so we saw lots of other cool stuff too. We managed to restrict ourselves to a shared box of notecards – bargainous!

Where is it? On Tottenham Court Road, nearer the Euston end than the Oxford Street end.

Clearly, these are not the only good shops in London – I’d usually add Liberty, Selfridges, Hamleys, Rough Trade and many many more, not to mention the other markets at Spitalfields, Camden, Portobello etc. Do some googling!

It’s certainly been a busy Friday! I was wrenched out of bed to handed my brand new notebooks by the DHL man and since then I have photographed them, added them to the shop, gocco printed 3 notebooks, 50 thank you cards and 100 paper bags, made a bunch of Jammie Dodger cards and am just about to finish off a stack of badge sets. And it’s only 3pm!

I’m very pleased with the notepads though – they’re custom printed just for me with lovely glossy covers and ringbound. There’s something awesome about ringbound notebooks. Anyway, there’s two designs to choose from and they’re in the shop right now.

They’ll be making their debut at the Glasgow Craft Mafia day out to Inver Cottage in Argyll for a craft market. It’s a good hour or two outside Glasgow so it really does feel like a mass road trip. Plus, look! It’s lovely out there and the food is amazing too. I can’t wait. If you’re in the area or fancy a day out, all the details are here.

I still have a to-do list as long as my arm so I will leave you for now with a rather rubbish photo of my card carousel ready for action, complete with giant cardboard Cakeify. Enjoy!

I wrote this for my Tips & Tutorials blog on Prettify but I thought it might be of interest to you lot as well. Remember, if it wasn’t for Shopify, there wouldn’t be any Cakeify.

If there’s one bad thing about Shopify (and there may well only be one bad thing), it’s that they’re too modest. All the tips I’m going to give you can be found either in your Admin panel or in the Shopify Wiki or Forums but so many Shopify users have no idea about them. Many of these can be added in a few clicks and might just change your life!

EASY

Whatever your skill level, these are must-do tips but they’re all really simple too.

Turn around abandoned orders

Despite being listed in your Orders page as clear as day, this is like the hidden gem of Shopify. Just go to your orders page and click Abandoned in the right sidebar. You’ll now see a list of all orders that that never completed payment. Some will be you testing things, some will be by Mr aaa who likes to pretend shop regularly, some will be customers you recognise who changed their mind (or had a browser crash) mid-order and filled their basket again. The rest will be your mystery almost-customers. Except they’re not mysteries as they entered their contact details. So contact them and ask them what the problem was!

I contact almost all of mine with a standard email that asks if they were having any issues with the shop or PayPal that I can help with and gives them a link to their saved cart in case they want to have another go. You can get the cart link from their order page. Maybe 50% of these customers email me back, usually because PayPal gave them an error but once because the customer wanted 3 of something and I only had 1 available! What have you got to lose?

Having said this, I would advise against repeatedly contacting these people or adding them to your mailing list (even if they agreed to marketing). Be cool.

Add Google Analytics

Shopify offers basic stats with most packages but Analytics will give you much more detailed info on where your customers are coming from, what they’re looking at and what your conversion rate is from visits to sales. To add it, just follow the instructions in this guide and you’ll be all set!

Add shipping deals

Shopify quietly slipped in price-based shipping options a while back which makes things a lot easier. Now, as well as your usual weight-based options, you can add special deals for your best customers. For instance, I offer free UK shipping on all orders over £20.

To set this up, just go to Preferences > Shipping and click on ‘Add price-based rate’ for the relevant regions.

Set up a mailing list

Shopify automatically collects customer details for you from those customers that accept marketing. You can download these in the Marketing section. Set up a mailing list with a company like Constant Contact or MailChimp and sign them up. If you keep your newsletters to once a month and offer exclusive info and deals they’ll hopefully come back and buy again sometime.

Extra tip! If you don’t get many people accepting marketing, it could be the wording in checkout as the default text makes it a little unclear who is going to use the information. If you go to Preferences > General you’ll see a drop down box for Checkout Language. Choose ‘Create a new translation’ and you can edit any or all the wording in your checkout.

MEDIUM

If you’re confident with computers and dabble a bit in code then you should manage these fine.

Use your own domain name

Why have askingfortrouble.myshopify.com when you can have shop.askingfortrouble.org? It looks so much more professional and it hardly takes any effort. Just how much effort depends on your domain hosting company. Mine took 1 email and a whole 3 minute wait (I love United Hosting). Your hosting company may be idiots who take weeks to mess it up repeatedly before finally getting it right. I’ve seen it happen.

Have a look at the DNS section of the Shopify wiki which has details for the major hosting companies. Good luck!

Add a customer feedback page

This is a hack but a good one. Your customers may be too shy to email you personally and give you feedback on your products or service but give them a comment form and they might be more keen.

I just set up a new blog (in Blogs & Pages) called Customer Feedback and then a new post in that blog also called Customer Feedback. Make sure comments are turned on. You might want to set them to be moderated as well. Add some friendly text inviting feedback and publish it.

Your feedback post will have a ridiculously long url (mine is shop.askingfortrouble.org/blogs/customer-feedback/489682-customer-feedback) but use a service like tinyurl to create something more memorable (mine is tinyurl.com/troublefeedback). Add that link to your shop menu, emails etc. for everyone to see.

Your customers can now leave comments and prospective customers can see how great everyone thinks you are. Win-win!

Customise your Email Notifications

If you go to Preferences > Email Notifications you’ll see a list of Email templates for the various auto emails. They are generally fine but why not personalise them? Even if you just add your own greeting and sign off, it will look a lot more personal. Even better, you can add helpful information or special offers.

For instance, my order confirmation email tells the customer I ship daily and gives them links to my blog and mailing list. My shipping confirmation email gives the customer estimates for delivery and a link to my customer feedback page so they can let me know what they think when it arrives.

Just click on the emails to edit them and save when you’re done. If you’re unfamiliar with code then copy and paste the original text into Notepad or something as a backup. Be careful of any content within curly brackets {} unless you know what you’re doing.

A BIT MORE COMPLEX

If you’re confident about editing your theme templates then these tips are for you.

Brand your checkout

If you’ve never tried out the checkout part of your shop then go have a look now. Ugly isn’t it? Your shop may be beautifully designed and branded but the default checkout makes for a jarring change and might even give your customers second thoughts about trusting you with their money. We don’t yet have access to edit the checkout pages but we can change the look with css.

You’ll have a very hard job making your checkout match the rest of your shop exactly so my preferred plan is usually to keep it clean and white with a simple logo. This way your customer is aware they’ve moved on from shopping into buying, but are still reassured that they’re still dealing with you and that you’re a professional.

This thread has some ideas and code to remove most of the formattting to give you a blank sheet, or feel free to email me and I’ll send you mine.

Make SEO even easier

Shopify is already very search engine friendly but there are some additions you can make to the code that will improve things further by automatically using individual meta information for each page from your descriptions, tags and content.

Read this thread on the Shopify forum for details (and make sure you read the whole thread!).

Customise your search and error pages

The Search and 404 error pages have recently been opened up for editing so personalise them to match your site. 404 pages in particular are a great opportunity to do something fun and original to amuse anyone unlucky enough to click a bad link.

They’re also a marketing opportunity. Anyone looking at your 404 page is lost so suggest somewhere for them to go! On my main shop, as well as a search box and all the usual navigation, I’ve added a few of my Featured Products and a way to browse the shop using tags. Take a look

For error pages, there are some basic code ideas in this thread, or email me and I’ll send you a copy of mine.

Do literally anything!

There really is no end to the custom features you could add to your shop. You’ll find lots of ideas in the Shopify Wiki or Forums, as well as designers and coders happy to help you work stuff out.

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I hope you have fun with these tips. If you’d like some help, or any of the files I mention, feel free to email me. I’m also available to design custom Shopify themes and features – see my portfolio at www.marcelinesmith.com.