Tuesday 24 November 2015

Colours

Once I got my delivery from Country Love Crafts I quickly realised that it was going to be quite hard to use the decopatch paper I'd received from them to do all the colours I'd promised on Etsy and the only way to order specific paper from Country Love Craft was to order 20 sheets of each design which for my small business wasn't going to work.

Luckily, The Arty Crafty Place do packs of decopatch paper with different designs in similar colours so I bought their pieces packs which has about 8 different designs and they give you a quarter of a whole sheet so I had less to pay out to get a pack of each colour on offer.

Colours available are:

Blue
Pink
Red

Green

Purple

Turquoise

Yellow

Orange


The business idea

The simplicity and beauty of my E made me think this is something other people may want for their children.

I have set up an Etsy shop: Deco Bowes and a Facebook page: Deco Bowes

I next had to find somewhere I could get my supplies from and I found two great places online: Country Love Craft and The Arty Crafty Place.

Country Love Craft is a wholesale suppliers so only sell to businesses and you have to spend £50 each time. The Arty Crafty Place is for anyone and their prices seem very good compared to places like Hobbycraft. For example decopatch paper at Hobbycraft was £3.79 for 3 sheets. Well over the £1 a sheet I could buy it for at Creation the pottery place in Loughborough. The Arty Crafty Place sells decopatch paper at £17.40 for 20 sheets and does a selection of different sheet designs around a theme like colour or Christmas. Country Love Crafts does a mix of 20 sheets for £13.75 +VAT, so £16.50.

Eager to get the business going I ordered lots of bits from Country Love Craft.

My first business purchase
As soon as this came I was eager to have another go at decopatch and then was filled with worry that this might have been a really silly idea. I decopatched one thing and now I think I can sell it! The jury is still out on that one but here's a pic of my second letter I've decopatched. 




Tuesday 17 November 2015

Lets start at the very beginning


Several weeks ago, in fact it was half term, the first seeds of this blog were planted. My eldest had arranged with her friend that we were goung to Pizza Hut in the holidays. There would be 5 children in all and I thought rather than just going out for pizza and going home it'd be nice to do something together whilst we were out.

I suggested that we went to a pottery place that we'd found during the summer holidays in Loughborough. It's a lovely place where you can paint your own pottery, make mosaics, make teddy bears or do decopatch. I'd been fascinated by decopatch since we went in the summer holidays and was determined that this visit I was going to have a go.

Well after our pizza we went to the pottery shop and they said they were closing early. We were all so disappointed but made plans to go back at the weekend.

Finally we got to the pottery shop. I'd already decided what I was going to decopatch. I was going to do a capital E for my youngest's bedroom door. My determination and excitement must have rubbed off on the kids as my eldest and my friends eldest decided they were also going to give decopatch a go. My daughter chose to do a cat and my friends daughter decided to do quite a large giraffe. 

But what is decopatch I hear you cry...

Decopatch is decorating an object with special paper. You tear the paper into postage stamp sized pieces and using special glue stick them on your object. It is that simple but looks great. 


My first creation - Front
My first creation - Back

Decopatch is so simple that my daughter was able to create the beautiful cat below.





It did take her a bit longer than the couple of hours we had at the pottery shop though so the wonderful people there let us take some scraps of paper home to finish it off. 

This is when we learnt our first important lesson of decopatching. The glue you use is not standard PVA. It's a mix of glue and varnish to get that beautiful glossy finish. A quick trip to hobbycraft and this was all fixed.

As for the giraffe I think it's still a work in progress!


If you are local to me, the pottery shop is in Loughborough, Leicestershire, more details can be found here: http://creationspottery.co.uk/

If you'd like to find a Hobbycraft near you go to: http://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/