Check me out! I’ve been picked as a Featured Seller on Folksy this month! You’ll spot my happy bunny icon rotating into the home page and other pages as you visit which I’m sure will only make shopping there even more enjoyable for you. I’m very pleased because Folksy is awesome and I feel like I’ve put a lot of work into my shop but also helped make Folksy a little bit better with all the bug reporting and whining I’ve done in the forums. It’s going to be interesting comparing my Folksy and Etsy shop sales at the end of the year - they’re very close at the moment.

In other news, I bought some CLAMPS today which I am hoping will transform my craft market experience. They’re for the stall, not to torture customers. You’ll see. I am doing a market on Saturday but it’s invite only - however, you can come and see my fellow mafioso at Mono in Glasgow on Sunday and then I’ll be at a bunch of markets in the next few weeks, including the December Mono and QMU on the poster below. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for the bag love. I’m glad you like them! I should really be getting on with finishing the last few but instead I have been doing a stock take to see what I still need to make for the upcoming markets. After discovering I am literally swimming in keyrings, I have lowered the prices on a whole heap of them! If you’re in the market for a new keyring or know someone who’d love one for a Christmas gift, then get ye over to the Keyrings section. I won’t be making some of these ever again so get them while you can.

Back to work!

UPDATE: I also just went through my entire Etsy shop and adjusted the prices for exchange rate changes. Adjusted them the less expensive way, of course, so shop away! There’s free shipping on most additional items so feel free to fill your basket at no additional cost.

First up, we have a new set of gocco printed drawstring bags. These have a dark green print of a vase of flowers, though the flowers are actually vintage buttons! You might remember this design from some cards I made earlier in the year but I always intended to put it on bags once I got the right colour combinations. Most of the bags are a lovely spring green but there’s a few natural unbleached if you prefer.

Second are my lovely tote bags which are actually made using vintage floral placemats! I’ve had these lying around for months now (since my awesome North East charity jaunt) and only recently figured out what to do with them. They’ve been heat set on to spring green tote bags and then decorated by myself with white hand-stitching and over 40 tiny beads! The final touch is a pretty pewter butterfly charm which hangs from the top of the fabric.

I hope you like them, and it goes without saying that they’d make great Christmas gifts!

You can find them both in the newly reinstated Bags and Totes collection and they’ll be on Etsy (both) and Folksy (gocco only) later today.

Sorry for dragging this out but the new bags are very labour-intensive and I need to have at least a couple finished before I add them to the shop. Each bag has hand embroidery all round and over 40 hand-stitched beads! However, I did just print up my new gocco bags which are a lovely colour of green (the same green as above though it doesn’t look like it in the photo below). After the last gocco disaster, these ones printed like a dream and the whole process took about 10 minutes tops. Once they’re dry and ironed I will get some proper photos up.

So, with two new bag designs on the go, Monday will be BAG MONDAY when I’ll be listing both up in my shop. Hope you’re looking forward to it!

Just a little peek at the new bags I’m working on. Will hopefull be able to show you more in a couple of days!

Don’t forget:
- Prettify competition - win a free Shopify design
- Sweet Figments giveaway - win one of my notebooks and badge sets

I am still busy busy on lots of exciting things. I finished most of these brooches at the GCM market on Saturday which went pretty well. The day really flew past and I was not entirely keen to leave. Nor were the customers either, who kept coming back to buy things even as I was packing up. Thanks to everyone who came past and bought stuff or just said nice things!

These brooches are for an upcoming Christmas exhibition that I’m helping organise for the Glasgow Craft Mafia with Ricefield in Glasgow. I’ll tell you more about it nearer the time but it’s all Asian-inspired work. These are a special new edition of my felt flower brooches with Japanese fabric covered buttons! I’m particularly in love with the ones below but they all make me happy. I just need to add the brooch pins and then I’ll be done.

What else have I been doing? Well, I have some very exciting new bags on the go which will hopefully be ready for sale in the next week or two. They’re sitting at the end of my bed just now looking awesome but they still need some pretty hand-stitched detailing to finish them off. I should also have some new gocco drawstring bags once my new ink arrives, and providing I don’t mess them up again…

Also, what everyone’s been waiting for - gift certificates are in the shop. Okay, no-one was waiting for this but I have added them anyway! If you have someone who’s tricky to buy for then let them pick their own gift. You even get a discount card thrown in so YOU get a present too.

And finally, there is now a Customer Feedback page in my shop. If you’ve ever bought something from me, feel free to add your comments, good or bad. It’s always lovely when people take the time to email me when their order arrives so I thought I’d keep them all in one place and help reassure anyone wary of sending their virtual cash to a complete stranger.

Check out the Super Cute Kawaii shop as well, if you get a chance. There are quite a few cute new things in stock.

As I mentioned yesterday, the theme I designed for Shopify has now been released. If you use Shopify you can go to the Themes area in your Admin Panel and use it for your shop.

The idea behind it was to create a theme that would be perfect for artists and crafters, especially those who are used to sites such as Etsy, Folksy and Dawanda. I spent a lot of time on those sites comparing the layouts and design and merged the best parts together to make Prettify.

It has a similar clean look to all those sites, and the design is built around banner and avatar images that can be swapped for your own design without too much difficulty. The emphasis is on large product photos to show off intricate details and unique handmade products. A lot of the other Shopify themes give much more emphasis to product descriptions and prices but for most art and craft products, it’s the pictures that are most important.

There are four colour versions available, as you can see above, and these can be switched easily in the Theme Editor. Of course, you can also edit the stylesheets to use your own colour scheme and build additional features on top of my code. That’s the beauty of Shopify.

I’ve built an example site using Prettify so you can have a browse around and see how all the pages look. I’ll be adding more features in the coming weeks and will explain how some of them are done.

And now for the competition! I’m giving away a FREE Shopify theme design based on Prettify. I’ll edit the images and colours to match your current branding, or come up with something new for you. I’ll add some extra features that you might need and help you get everything set up. The only catch is that you need to have a Shopify account on at least Basic level which does incur a monthly fee. If you’re serious about your business though, it’s an excellent investment. I’m literally 100% happy with my Shopify shop.

If you want to enter, just email hello AT askingfortrouble.org with a link to your current shop or website and why you need a new design. I’m keeping this open until December 1st so you’ve got plenty time to enter. You could have a brand new shop for the new year!

Gosh, that exciting bit of news I promised aaaages ago finally arrives and I am not prepared. AND America did the right thing! An exciting morning for sure.

A while back, I was asked by the lovely folks at Shopify to design a theme for everyone to use. I, of course, jumped at the chance and created a theme called Prettify which has four different colour versions, and a bunny! It’s now been released so if you use Shopify you can go to the Themes area in your Admin Panel and use it for your shop! If you don’t have Shopify, you can see it in action at prettify.myshopify.com.

I’ll be writing more about Prettify very soon and there will be a competition too, woo!

As promised, here is a bunny who hasn’t lost her gloves. Bunny and Panda from Super Cute Kawaii have been hit with a sudden snow fall and know just how to wrap up warm. These cute sticker tags are in the shop right now so you too can cute up your Christmas gifts.

Okay, I need a lie down now.

My good friend the Random Integer Generator has picked some misprint bag winners! Donna and Fuji Mama - I will be in touch! If you didn’t win, there’s still the Sweet Figments giveaway which runs for a few more weeks yet.

Have you guessed what the photo is? During my stationery box rummage, I sorted through all my photo prints and set aside a pile of photos that don’t sell well or didn’t look as good in print as I’d imagined or didn’t have the white borders I eventually decided on way back when. After forking out a hefty sum on my beautiful double-sized Moo cards, I’m finding it hard to throw them around in a suitably promotional way. So I made some stickers and stuck them to the back of these photos - instant cheap business cards and you get a whole real photo as well. Expect to see these tucked in with my orders and showing up at craft markets.

This morning my hard work was interrupted by the long-awaited arrival of the building electrician to take a look at our door buzzer which has never worked in the 3 years we’ve lived here, much to the irritation of my postman. During their extended poking around, I sorted through some random stuff downstairs and before they left I had come up with two exciting new products and ordered the supplies, woo! Apparently they’re in the post already so look out for that soon! The bad news is that the entire wiring of the building needs replaced before our buzzer can work and I can’t see that happening any time soon if it takes 3 years to even look at it. Oh well.

Tomorrow I will show you a bunny who hasn’t lost her gloves. Bet you can’t wait.

Also, America, please don’t mess this one up.

First up, LAST CHANCE to enter the misprint gocco bag giveaway - I’m picking winners tomorrow!

Secondly, I hope you like my new gift tags! I was rummaging around in my stationery box at the weekend trying to organise all my photo prints when I discovered a stack of gocco offcuts from last year’s Christmas cards. I’d kept them to make gift tags this year but, of course, had completely forgotten all about it. What a lucky find!

Each set comes with 2 gold Merry Christmas tags and 2 big red and silver bauble tags and I love them. I might even dig out the screens and print some in different colours, if people like them enough.

While I was on the gift tag track, I whipped up some cute geisha gift tags as well. These come in sets of 5 with an assortment of cool gradiated colours. Check them both out in the Stationery section and they’ll be on Folksy and Etsy very soon too.

Thirdly, we’re all trying to save money this Christmas so I’m open to gift swapping. If there’s anything in my shop you’d like then get in touch and maybe we can trade for something of yours. All kinds of crafts welcome as I have a lot of different people to shop for.