It seems very strange to only be doing one craft fair this Winter, but it’s going to be a good one! I’m getting things ready for the Made in the Shade Holiday Hullabaloo on Saturday and if you can make it along, I’ve got some festive exclusives just for you.

For starters, I’ll have fat quarters of my fabric designs available to buy at just £6 each, cheaper than the current price on Spoonflower! They’ve been sitting around my house all year so I thought I’d give you the chance to use them. They’re all quilting cotton and great for patchwork, doll clothes, purses and more.

I’ve also been sewing up some Cookie ornaments, from my Spoonflower design. I’ve done them single sided with a felt backing and candy cane string – just £5 each and perfect for your Christmas tree.

And everyone who buys something on the day will get a free Cookie Cute ornament postcard to keep you occupied while you wait for Santa.

Don’t forget! I’ll also have my Pushpin Zines hat on, so you can browse and buy a selection of awesome zines for your holiday reading.

Check out the Made in the Shade blog, for all the details of the vendors and exciting extras, including a pop-up cinema! I hope to see you there, but if not I’ll have something special happening online too.

PS. Everyone outside the EU – I need your orders by 10am GMT tomorrow (Thursday) if you want your parcel to arrive for Christmas. I’m putting ornament postcards in every order!

I’ve been working on some new fabric designs recently, with the plan of getting the swatches on free shipping day. However, I could not get this Cakeify design to work. I wish I’d kept all the stages it went through so you could see the trials of repeat patterns! I finally got it to work, exactly 18 minutes after free shipping day ended. Luckily, I have lots of free Spoonflower money, thanks to all the awesome people who keep buying my fabric – there are going to be lots of gingerbread men on Christmas trees this year!

So, swatches are ordered including Hello Cakeify in the four colours above. Which is your favourite? I can’t decide between the blue and the grey. Or the pink. Sadly, there is not much chance I will receive them to check before 2-for-1 Fat Quarter Day on the 28th, but you never know.

Yesterday was apparently Cakeify day with two cute new products arriving for the shop. I’m in love with these tote bags, and will definitely be keeping one for myself. I only have a few available so snap them up.

I’ve also added Cakeify to my expanding collection of letter sets. These are becoming some of my most popular products – it’s good to know people are still sending letters.

If you fancy seeing all my new stuff in person, I’m pleased to say I’ll have a stall at the Made in the Shade Holiday Hullabaloo at the Lighthouse. Come along on December 10th and get all your Christmas shopping done.

You may remember I won a runner-up prize in Moo’s City Sticker contest? Well, I thought you might like to see what I bought with my prize money. It was actually way harder than you might imagine since I didn’t want to spend it all on business stuff, but on fun things for me.

My favourite item is my new business cards. They are double-sided – by day web designer! by night, idiot! I like them a lot and imagine they’ll be sufficiently memorable for anyone I hand them to.

I also got loads of greetings cards for my own personal use, including some with drawings of myself on them. As you do.

Plus some cool thank you cards featuring my favourite Hipstamatic photos from the last year. You should probably send me something awesome so that I can thank you with one of these.

I did also get some business-related stuff, some of which will be in the shop soon. The rest went on stickers aplenty, so much so that all orders over about £5 will be getting free stickers for the next while. Hurray!

Big thanks to Moo for such an ace prize. I highly recommend all their products – the print quality is always great and they have a fast turnaround. Or would have, if my local delivery office hadn’t left it sitting on a shelf for two weeks without telling me!

While it may still be a little early for Christmas, hopefully you’ll forgive me this post.Since I started making gift wrap, I’ve really wanted to have festive gift wrap but that’s not really very profitable so I spent a good while thinking of a design that was festive but still useable for the rest of the year. The colour scheme was pretty key to that – it’s wintry rather than Christmassy, and gingerbread men are good all year round!

As previously mentioned, the design is called Cookie Cute and features a cute gingerbread couple, plus a gingerbread Bunny, Panda and Bear. There’s also some happy little hearts and stars to add a bit of colour. I hope you like it!

In the shop now is wrapping paper, gift wrap sets and badge sets, plus some Christmas cards in a much more festive colour scheme – once you add that green it just screams Christmas.

I also made a hanging ornament sewing pattern featuring my cute cookie, which is in Spoonflower’s contest this week. I would love to make it into the top ten this time around so PLEASE VOTE FOR ME HERE if you can. In return, I promise not to mention Christmas again until November. Deal?

Finally, I can spill the beans on my secret project – it’s a 5 year diary! Also called memory books, the idea is you record your daily doings and thoughts every day throughout 2012, then turn back to January 1st and do it all again. As you go, you get to compare your days each year and see what stays the same and what changes. I’ve been using a prototype since July and I’ve had no trouble remembering to jot down a few things every day – it only takes a couple of minutes.

Of course, each page is decorated with my characters and there are also profile pages for each year so you can note your location, occupation, interests etc. and compare those over the years. I’m sure that will be fairly embarrassing to look back on.

Anyway, I’m now taking pre-orders for Christmas. If you head over to my shop, you can buy copies which will be guaranteed to arrive for Christmas, providing there aren’t any volcano/strike/doom situations. I’ll also have a few copies available later for immediate shipping and plenty copies for delivery late December.

You can see more photos on my shop and Flickr, but rest assured it’s a quality product. Unlike mass market 5 year journals, the dates are already filled in so you can get started straight away, and the sticker is removable so it’s not obvious it’s a diary.

I hope you like it! It’s been a huge job but I’m really pleased with it.