It’s that time again – Zazzle have a big Labor Day sale this weekend (30% off shoes!) and I have £100 of commission in my Zazzle account. This means I can possibly buy two pairs of shoes! So I designed four new pairs of shoes. And now I need your help.

I am almost definitely getting the balloons and bees design above because I will never stop being amused by those shoes. What I am really stuck on is which of the other style of shoes to get.

Cakeify and Friends?

Or happy suns and sad rain clouds?

I can’t decide! I also made some pretty vintage flower ones but they were never really in the running. Please tell me what you think I should get.

And if you want to save some money at Zazzle this weekend, just use the code LABORDAYSALE at checkout. It’s good for 30% off shoes, 20% off bags, 10% off tshirts and mugs and an enormous 60% off aprons! (Code works on Zazzle.com accounts only, but they ship worldwide)

I cannot deny that I have actually been wearing shorts for 90% of the Summer and only haven’t drawn them yet because I knew I’d have to draw some ankles. Also I don’t really wear my shorts outside much unless I’m on the bike. But I bought some new shorts this month so here you go. August was good, especially all the wholesale orders, getting to paddle in the sea and MY BOOTS. Hopefully I will get to draw myself wearing my boots next month – imagine!

Reading, Watching, Playing

The discovery of Tahiti: From the journal of George Robertson, Master of H.M.S. Dolphin
I mostly bought this because it’s so pretty and has lovely woodblock prints inside. I do like old expedition books too though. This is exactly what the title says and sadly doesn’t even cover the journey to and from Tahiti in any detail, concentrating on the daily observations of a senior officer as they arrive at Tahiti. Once the initial threats and scuffles with the natives are over, it becomes fairly repetitive but the language and daily incidents provide plenty of entertainment. I particularly enjoyed his 18th Century style bitchy girlfights with the First Lieutenant, “Old Growl” who does indeed sound like an ass. At the very least, it has given me the words bumbard, calabash and musquetoon, all of which I think would make excellent modern day insults. And a working knowledge of the worth of nails when it comes to barter.

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
As expected, once I got myself interested in Pride and Prejudice, I’ve been zipping my way through the others in my pile. Sense and Sensibility is not entirely dissimilar but is nicely understated and subtly humorous with the sort of romantic misunderstanding type plot that doesn’t quite tip over into farce. Short and sweet, in fact.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
Since I’ve been reading a lot of books about islands lately (is it LOST withdrawal?), I figured now was a good time to read this. I’ve seen parts of the film so I knew generally what it was about but always better to read the book. However, I found it very dull and disappointing. The whole excitement of shipwreck tales is the ingenuity and exploration offset by loneliness and disasters. The Robinsons are certainly ingenious but arrive equipped with literally everything required to start a new civilisation, from food and animals to farming equipment, windows and a handy build-your-own fancy sailboat. Which makes things a bit less exciting. You also soon come to despise Mr Robinson who is something of a walking encyclopedia and just happens to know exactly what to do with any animal, plant and mineral they discover, not to mention his extensive knowledge of farming, engineering, hunting and medicine. This might not be quite so annoying if he and his many sons didn’t also kill everything in sight, generally so they can find out what it is and then eat it (and this island seemingly has every animal in existence – penguins, ostriches, bears, jackals, sharks, whales, rabbits, monkeys and even an elephant! However, it doesn’t have a single human, though I imagine they would relish the opportunity to shoot some of those too). By the last third of the book even the narrator is saying how repetitive it would be to continue describing their adventures and eventually they wrap things up with a rescue of sorts. At which point I was entirely happy to see the back of the lot of them.

Sherlock
How can I put this? I totally loved everything about this. Like immediate addition to my favourite TV shows ever. I am often one of those people who moans about modernising of classic novels and language but now I see what I am actually moaning about is unnecessary modernising of classic novels for the sake of it, badly. When done properly by people who actually love the originals and are possibly geniuses, then it’s brilliant. Sherlock Holmes is not my favourite Conan Doyle but I have read a lot of the short stories, and there seemed to be just enough nods to the books to make fans happy while basically changing whatever else they liked. The amazing part is that everything works so brilliantly in a modern day setting. As much as I love Doctor Who, Sherlock was basically the TV show I wish Doctor Who was – the same sense of gleeful madness but with less silliness and monsters. Also as an overly-gullible TV dullard, I also liked how it made me feel clever. The moment in the first episode when I realised I was supposed to be thinking Mycroft was Moriarty was a high point in a lifetime of TV watching. I would pretty much like this to be on every weekend, forever.

Covert Affairs
This is basically a fluffy Alias with a perkier, blonder, more naive female lead, less disguises, less ass-kicking, no hilarious Rambaldi nonsense and less awesome characters. Though it does have a hot blind womanising techie with a futuristic braille keyboard. No, really. Last week he even ‘went rogue’ and fought some bad guys on a train. Bad guys with guns, and eyes that can see. I hope they don’t get really bored and have him been faking his blindness for evil means in about S4. Anyway it’s entertaining likeable spy fun with ridiculously overblown musical cues and I like it a lot. Possibly because I miss Alias a lot (even if was totally stupid from S3 onwards).

iPhone app of the month

LoveFilm (Free!)
As often mentioned, a large proportion of my TV and film watching is done via LoveFilm. I very rarely go to the cinema ‘cos it’s so expensive, and instead take mental note of any interesting sounding films and add them to my rental list for when they eventually come out on DVD. The problem of course, comes with my terrible memory and I forget them all. Now I can add them straight to my rental list and also use it as a quick research tool instead of Amazon (since looking up stuff on Amazon is one step too close to buying stuff on Amazon). The only rubbish part is you can’t seem to re-order your list unless you remove a film and re-add it. Hopefully they’ll add more features soon.

Resolution update

- Ordering my cards in bulk is a big step in lots of my resolutions
- I have something being made right now that was on my big secret list

Websites I’ve been enjoying

- For some reason I’m feeling pleased that I have nothing new to add here. In fact I removed quite a lot of stuff from my RSS.

Things to look forward to in September

- Using my new prescription goggles to go swimming on my own for the first time in my entire life. I am too blind to find my way around without my glasses. Freedom! (Actually, I have just done this – it was amazing).
- Some new products arriving and hopefully being awesome
- my rainboots arriving? Please?
- New season of Fringe – hurray!
- The days near the end when I realise it’s only a month til I go to Japan – eeeek!

New Product Round-up

- Sew Cute Rainboots!
- Improved Jammie Dodger, Happy Orange and Ice Cream Bears cards

Online sales

Items sold on Shopify: 16
Items sold on Etsy: 20
Items sold on Folksy: 16
Items sold on Dawanda: 10

Bit quieter this month, but then I was on holiday for a week.

Well, now that the excitement of my rainboots is over (although more to come when I actually get mine!), it’s back to work as usual. I’ve been continuing my card redesigns and two more are now available in a bigger, brighter, more exciting designs complete with coloured envelopes!

It’s quite difficult deciding which designs to order first but the Ice Cream Bears have been a runaway success so they’re always on the verge of selling out, so they were an easy pick. Happy Orange has never sold enormously well but I was never entirely happy with the design so I was glad to have a chance to tweak it. Hopefully he’ll be more popular now.

As you can see, I’ve been having great fun designing the insides now that I have full control over everything. It really does make it so much more fun! Even the backs of the cards are cute now.

In other heavy parcel news, I also got a box of Busy Bee Organiser Pads which are ever so slightly bigger, and because I bought so many I’ve been able to lower the price to just £5! That’s an absolute bargain for organising your life :)

They’re available in all in my shops now so go take a look!

Surprise! My rain boots are finally being launched this week by Plueys! They’re called Sew Cute and feature my vintage buttons in a Moroccan-inspired colour scheme of cream, brown, rust and navy blue. Not my usual colours at all but I think they look very elegant, and will be perfect for the UK’s rainy Autumn and snowy Winter.

Sew Cute is a limited edition design and will be available  in a range of sizes from 3.5 to 9 (UK). The most exciting part for me is the signature lining, featuring my name! How amazing to know people will be walking around with my name on their shoes.

If you like what you see, they’ll be on sale from tomorrow from the Plueys web shop, and also from various stockists throughout the world. I may have a few pairs spare to add to my own shop too – I haven’t seen the boots in real life yet and can’t wait til mine arrive! Do you like them?

Yay! I’m still Up North and the weather has been amazing. I’ve even been paddling in the sea! Back soon.

Okay, as mentioned yesterday, the only problem with my new product pages is that a lot of my products have no reviews. That’s doesn’t mean people hate them or they aren’t popular (well, I hope not!) but just that all the feedback left so far has been a thank you or a blank positive. And once again, that is totally fine – I appreciate all my feedback, even the constructively negative.

But I’m sure there are plenty people out there who have bought or received my stuff and would love to tell me what they thought about it, especially if there were prizes on offer!

First some ground rules:

• You must own or have purchased the item/s you review. I want reviews of the actual product, not just comments on how nice it looks in the pictures.
• It doesn’t matter where you bought it -  from my shop, Spoonflower, a bricks and mortar shop, a craft fair or if you were given it for your birthday, as long as you own it.
• Honesty is the best policy. I’m not just publishing the positive reviews – neutral or negative reviews are fine as long as they’re constructive and helpful to prospective buyers, eg. it was smaller than you expected, or the colours weren’t as bright as the photo, and not just ‘I hate cupcakes!’ or ‘I wanted a pony, not a stupid button bag’, although I would probably publish both of those.
• Similarly, I will be picking winners randomly so there’s no need to write a novel or break out your best witticisms and puns. Once again, your honest opinion is what I want, however short or badly spelled.
• No date restrictions – if you bought it two years ago, or tomorrow, that’s fine. Also, if you already left me feedback, I’m going to automatically include feedback left in July and August so you still get a chance to win.

Okay, got all that? If I see any suspicious reviews I won’t be publishing them. It would help if you mention where you bought my stuff.

To enter

Just leave your comment/review on my Customer Feedback page, NOT on this blog. Please use a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. You can also add your feedback as normal at Etsy/Folksy/DaWanda if it’s still outstanding. You can review as many products as you own in one comment – I’ll count them individually. I’ll be approving reviews once  a day so don’t worry if it takes a while for yours to show up.

You’ve got til September 1st to add your feedback, and then I’ll pick 3 winners – one will get a £15 voucher to spend in my shop, and 2 others will get £5 vouchers. Vouchers need to be used by the end of the year, and don’t cover shipping. They also can’t be used to buy more gift vouchers!

Any questions? Leave them here. But not your reviews.

If this goes well, I’ll be giving away away a £5 voucher every month or two so play nice, and don’t make me regret this :)

Have you been in my shop lately? Last week I finally added a new bit of code I’ve been fiddling with for a while – a fancy new product info box on the product pages. With a few clicks, you can view the product details and related products, the shipping and returns info and customer reviews, all in the same page!

I went to a very interesting seminar at Pulse about ecommerce. I admit I didn’t expect to learn much, having been building the things for many years, and the seminar was a thinly veiled ad for their ecommerce service, but I did pick up some good points, most of which I’ve now added to my own shop. Here’s some of the points I took note of and worked on:

1. Most people don’t read product descriptions so make it easy for them to see the bits they need to know – eg. a one line summary of the product, it’s size or materials.
2. Dimensions! Make these clear and available in metric and imperial. If possible, add a product shot with the dimensions marked.
3. Provide detailed information on everything they need to know but move them into tabs or clearly linked pages so they don’t clutter up the page.

It’s been a lot of work (clearly, since Pulse was at the beginning of June!) but I think I’m pretty happy now. All my descriptions have been rewritten into clearly marked sections of subtitle, description, dimensions, care instructions, offers etc. The second tab provides a summary of my shipping and returns pages, plus it’s now specific to the type of product (eg. my Spoonflower fabrics have a different return policy).

My final brainwave was to use all the customer feedback I’ve received over the last few years. I don’t expect many people read my Customer Feedback page before ordering. It’s more likely they do on Etsy, Folksy etc. but even then, they might read pages before seeing a comment about the actual product they want to buy. So I gathered all my feedback from various sites I sell on, organised them by product and now each product has its own tab with reviews about that product! I’m pretty pleased about this.

However, the one thing I discovered while doing this is that a lot of people just leave a blank positive (which is totally fine, I still really appreciate it!) and that many of my most popular products have no reviews at all. Usually around 50% of customers don’t leave feedback because they don’t know how, or don’t have time.

So, check out my site tomorrow when I’m having a Feedback Amnesty! There will be prizes…

PS. As always, this was a breeze to code because of how awesome Shopify is. It never ceases to amaze me how I can have an idea, do a little bit of research and have it all work as expected. I love Shopify.

Yes, I am going away again. This time up North to see my family. I’m not taking my bike*, but I will miss it a lot – it’s been great for going round the park and then to sit and read a book, and eat some ice cream, if the ice cream van is around.

Anyway, I’m leaving my shops open but I won’t be shipping any orders until Thursday 26th August, so you can take your time deciding what to buy :)

I’ve scheduled in some posts to keep you entertained during my absence and there is a contest later in the week too. But in the meantime, maybe you could help me with a couple of things.

1. I’m getting more wrapping paper printed. Any requests for patterns, characters or themes you’d like to see? Maybe another of my Spoonflower designs?

2. It wil also soon be time to think about designing my Winter products. I’m considering doing a birthday hanging calendar instead of, or as well as, a 2011 one. Is that something you would be interested in? Basically it has dates but no days on it, so you can keep using it every year and mark birthdays, anniversaries etc. on it. I have a Miffy one which is invaluable to my terrible memory but it’s getting a bit messed up. Birthday calendars seem a very continental thing to me, but maybe that’s nonsense. Do you use one?

3. I keep dithering about whether to add some kind of pick ‘n’ mix badge offer to my shop. Would you like to be able to buy individual badges, or to make up your own personal badge pack?

Thanks for your thoughts! See you in a week.

*This doesn’t mean you can come round and steal it while I’m away. I do have a flatmate.

Bit of a change up in the free things – some kawaii avatars for your Twitter etc. I recently did a custom Bunny avatar for @poptastic so I figured I’d do some for you lot as well. Just right-click to save to your computer.

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As always, please abide by my Creative Commons license – you can use these as avatars and re-post them with attribution, but don’t use them for anything commercial or edit them. If you’d like me to do you a custom avatar, then just get in touch!

Check the Free Things section for more!

I’ve made some big steps this past couple of weeks. I feel a bit like Jammie Dodger there, peeking out at the big world. I’ve often said my yardstick of business success would be when I could order hundreds of a new product without the fear that no-one would buy it. I’m still not past that with brand new products – even recently, I only initially made 4 Spooky-Wooky Badge Sets, and ordered 10 Volcano Cards – but I am getting better at ordering large amounts of already-popular products.

I’ve been working with a new printing company to get new and improved versions of my cards done in bulk. The ones I have are fine but the size is non-standard and these new ones are A6, full colour inside and out, and give me full control of all 4 card sides so I can add my own logo and other fun things. The more wholesale orders I get, and with plans to do a trade show next year, it’s becoming more important that I have more product in stock and that it stands up next to more established companies’ work. So ordering a box of 250 wasn’t too scary.

My favourite thing about these new cards is getting to pick out coloured envelopes to match each design. Fun times! The all-new Jammie Dodger card with matching red envelope is now in the shop, and other designs will be following over the next few months as they run out / I get wholesale orders / I have money. And maybe next time I design a new card, I’ll manage to order 250 right away and not secretly worry I’ll have 249 of them sitting under my bed 5 years later.