Finders Keepers Melbourne

We are so excited to have been accepted into Finders Keepers in Melbourne, yes they are finally coming to Melbourne in October. Having been fortunate enough to take part in their Sydney and Brisbane events it is so nice that we can now go to one in our home town!

Unfortunately Finders Keepers clashes with Bowerbird in Adelaide, so I will be treking off to Adeliade for the 3 days, while Angeline and Simon explore Finders Keepers!

We are going to be so busy cutting to get ready for these two mammoth events!

Your Childhood Fun

The innocence of childhood - how often do you think you just want your kids to have the simple, uncomplicated life you had when you were growing up, when you could spend hours outside creating your own adventures, skipping or building forts?

Our latest range brings this element of simple childhood into your house. It was originally designed as part of our baby butterfly (TM) range, as we thought they would look great in kids rooms, but surprisingly over half our sales are actually for Mum to keep in her room!

We currently have 6 completed designs that you will shortly see on our website, and in our stockists stores, with designs featuring girls playing ring a rosie, a brother and sister dinking each other on their bikes, two brothers playing cowboys, and a little boy out fishing...

I would love to hear your favourite childhood memories, and see if we could turn it into a design. Without a doubt my favourite past time would be lying outside on a warm day making shapes out of clouds, to this day when I am driving I will often point to a cloud and say to my husband doesn't that look like a .....

Bowerbird

We are just so fortunate to again be a part of the Bowerbird Bazaar in October this year, this massive three day event was so much fun earlier this year that we had our fingers and toes crossed that we would be lucky enough to get in again, and we have!

We are lucky that it is at the beginning of October, so all of our Life InStyle orders will have shipped, and we will have plenty of new items to show... Speaking of Life InStyle I will do a new post of this soon, we again met so many awesome retailers, and finally got to meet in person some of our loyal stockists, which was great!

If you can't drop by Bowerbird Bazaar in October, we will be back in Adelaide in November for their last Mathildas market of the year!

Hope to see you there!

Achieving your goals

When we first started our business (officially that is), we had a number of short and long term goals, some of these easier to achieve than others, and covered things from wanting to be featured in our favourite interior design magazines, to being stocked in our favourite stores to just producing work that makes people happy.

Lately we have been having a couple of months where everything has been going right, and things on our goal list have been being ticked off with ease.

A couple of our loyal followers saw our little squirel in some magazines lately, as well as a feature in House & Garden and some of our kids stuff in Comso Pregnancy. I must admit I always get a thrill when the magazines come out, and I am always down at the news agency on the day of release to see how the creations have come out!

For a little while now we have been stocked in Husk, this along with 2 other stores (we only have one to go, and we are in discussions with them at the moment!) was on our ultimate achievement list when we first started out. Carol and the team at Husk have kept us so busy lately, with requests for jumbo pieces, such as the one at the top, to our metamorphis range which we seem to have to restock all the time (not that we are complaining!). So when Carol contacted us recently to do a press release for our products in their gorgeous store, we were more than happy to be a part of it:

We have already had a some press contact us in relation to this release, and there should be a story coming out at Christmas in a magazine that was on our ultimate dream list that we never thought would happen!

We have a couple more exciting things happening over the next 6 weeks, so stay tuned, and keep working on your own goals!

Family Rules Posters

The phrase family rules to me automatically conjures up rules around making your bed, making sure your clothes are in the washing, and eating everything on your plate.

That is why I think I love this family rules poster so much, it covers much nicer rules, such as love one another, and always tell the Truth. I have one of these posters up in my office, and there are times when it just centres me and reminds me what is important during the day.

We had such a nice request for one poster to be personalised, that I think I am making the change permanent as it is a rule that I need to remember especially as the days seem to get busier and busier.

We had a lovely lady ask us to change the rule from Stay Happy, to start and end each day with a kiss. Which one do you prefer?

We also have a new poster, being the family wishes. This is the poster that we see the most emotion from, with 2 ladies at the last Mathildas market in Adelaide start crying as soon as they read the words. I really think the last line Hug me as though you will never grow up sums it all up - When was the last time you hugged your mum like that?

Birthdays at ATF

It has been a busy July already over at Almond Tree Frames, July is when our significant others have their birthdays, with Angeline's husband Chris, celebrating a big birthday on July 4th, while Simon had his on July 5th.

We have just been so busy with everything, that I almost completely forgot about poor Simon's birthday, and had to quickly run down the street to get something for him - unfortunately long gone are the days when I went to the Collingwood training (which for a Carlton supporter was a hard thing to do!) to get a jumper signed.

I had great intentions to make a fantastically colourful cake that Neivh and Shyla, oh and Simon of course, would love, here was my inspiration:

Instead we ended up with a sponge from the Cheesecake shop... Next year I promise to be more organised!

We have had a lot of incredibly exciting news lately, a number of well known magazines have approached us to do a story on our products, such as Marie Clare, Cosmo Pregnany and Inside Out, our metamorphis designs are taking designers fancy everywhere at the moment, and have been getting so much press (which we will never complain about!). We have just released the hummingbird, and feather design which sold as soon as we popped them in shops! Here is a sneak peak:

Shopping for little boys

How hard is it to shop for little boys?

Whenever I attend a market there are 100's of things that I could be my nieces, but when it comes to getting things for little finn, I find it a lot harder.

Well hopefully all my troubles are about to end, as a fantastic new website has been set up for all things boys! The incredibly talented Alana has been working on this for awhile, and I am loving the results!

http://www.boygerms.com.au/

This is a fantastic website, that features awesome goodies like the Animal Index, and toilet paper saver!

Thanks Alana for the lovely write up on our products!

Finders Keepers Brisbane

That's right, we have our next road trip organised!!! We are so fortunate to be selected as part of the Brisbane Finders Keepers event at the end of this month - eekk we better get cutting!

You may know that we did Finders Keepers last December in Sydney, and have been itching to get back to one of their fantastic markets...

Also sorry for the slowness in posting the new photos that we took at the Brunswick Street Gallery, I will be putting them up on the weekend. We just moved house and that has been keeping me plenty busy!

New Works

We have been busy designing some new works for the upcoming exhibition, eek it is only 10 days away! For those of you who can make it, the exhibition is at the Brunswick Street Gallery, and the gallery features 8 different exhibition areas, so there will be 8 different artists exhibiting while we are, including the talented Tabitha (whose prints we have in our gallery). The exhibition opens on the 21st May, and runs for 2 weeks, so if you get a chance to check it out, please pop by!

We have also been inundated with wholesale orders this week, we picked up a large new wholesale customer late in April, and dropped off their completed frames last Wednesday, to which they then sold out over the weekend, and have now placed another large order, particularly featuring the metamorphis, which I must admit are one of my favourite in our range (if only we could get time do finish some designs to hang in our own homes!)

Pregnancy

No calm down mum, I am not about to annouce you are becoming a grandmother on a blog, but I have discovered the perfect pregnancy journal for when the O'Day/Pawley baby does arrive.

This journal has no pre-printed information, so you don't need to fill out a checklist of how you are feeling, or if you happen to miss an entry it is no big deal!

You can write as often as you like, or as little, as the designer says it is your journey, it is your story, so you want a journal that can reflect that.

They are available in 4 different covers, and we will have all four in store.

Ever since I heard of the idea of writing a journal while you are pregnant, I have loved the concept, what a perfect gift to give to your child on the 18th or 21st, or perhaps even when they are expecting their first child. It is also a great chance for you to write down everything you are feeling so you can reflect on all the positivness when you are up at 3am for the 5th day in a row!

We will have these in store shortly, along with the matching bookmarks, so you can jot down names when you think of them.

The art of letter writting

In the age of emails, and needing answers instantly the age old tradition of writting letters seems to have died off somewhat.

This is such a shame, I remember the excitement when I was growing up to wait to see if I had a letter when I got home from school, which was largely from my penpal in the UK. These days it seems that the only letters that I get have a plastic window in them and come from a man called BILL....

This is why I was so excited when I discovered Write to me.. Write to me is made up of two very talented girls who bring us the most gorgeous letter writting sets and journals, I fell in love when I first saw these products on line, but when Anna dropped them into the gallery on Thursday they were even more divine in the flesh...

Write to me make a range of products that include wrapping paper with matching card - I love the one above, with the Love Tree products, as well as the letter writting sets at the very top which include 20 cards and matching envelopes.

I now need to touch base with that long lost penpal, and again anxiously wait by the letterbox for an actual letter...

fun photos

We thought that we would take some new photos of our kids specimen designs, and thought what better way than to actually have some kids in the photos, here is a sneak peak!

Shyla was a bit dubious at first, how good does the mural that Angeline painted look....
We then started to warm up once the products were in the background, Shy started to warm upThen the fun times started...we then took a couple of paper butterflies outside to play and take some photos, luckily Neivh doesn't share her mums fear of moths - it always amazes me how someone so terrified of moths can spend hours and hours handcutting butterflies...

Exciting Happenings

Some times good things all happen at once and unfortunately I can't give too much away here, but more details will follow over the coming months.

This week we have found out that we are going to be exhibiting at a well known gallery in Fitzroy for two weeks, we were approached by the curator of the gallery and were only too happy to accept! The ad will be in next months art almunac magazine so keep an eye out for it!

We also had a meeting with a major homewares store in Melbourne this week, and they have confirmed that they would love to stock our products, which is great - They literally gasped when they saw the new song birds, and fell in love with the morphis range, so we will be in the shelves in those stores in 3 weeks (once we have finished cutting everything!)

We also have the business awards night tonight where we have been nominated for three awards, so fingers crossed we are lucky enough to win won!

Lastly we also were approached by a couple of magazines this month and sent off some products to be photographed, including my new favourite the squirel, so 7 of our products will be in the mags next month - I will upload photos from them once they are published!

As I said this week has been a lot better than the last one, which is nice!

Song Birds

We have an exciting meeting tomorrow with a store in Victoria that has a few show rooms around Melbourne, and have been busily preparing new products which we can show them, which is where the show birds designs have come from. These will be shortly making their way to the webstore:
I think they look just gorgeous, and can't wait to the rest of the series are finished!

We have had a big couple of days, which I will fill you in on a little bit over the next couple of days...

On the front of the person copying our design, we have just the best lawyer who is drawing up papers to serve her for a breach of not only copyright laws but also the trade practices act, for a breach of section 52 - which is misleading and deceptive conduct, as she hasn't contacted us the lawyer will be serving the papers on Monday, and I must admit I can't wait!!!!

Sadly though it appears that copying our designs is not enough, we have seen that she has also some designs that look scarily like the talented Lisa from the Red Thread - I can't actually believe that someone has the nerver to copy a few artists and pass them off as her own...

We also have some exciting news about an exhibition that we are going to be having at Brunswich street Gallery in May, I will post details of the opening closer to the date, but we are busy busy busy cutting at the moment!

Alice in Wonderland

Now i know wall decals have been done to death, and we are all familiar with them, but last week I came across some Alice In Wonderland decals that just got me so excited!

We have been working with Paul in the US to create a whole series of Alice in Wonderland decals that will only be available in our gallery, at this stage we have about 10 designs finished that will be in the gallery in about 3 weeks - here is a sneak peak!

Disappointing

Sometimes I get so disappointed in people, we have recently been made aware of a person who has copied not only our product (which is bad enough), but who also has copied our brand names "Baby Butterfly" and "Paper Papillons".

I thought that this was pretty bad, and in the interest of good faith we sent her a letter outlining our concerns in relation to the naming of the product which went unanswered, and has now forced us to engage a lawyer, which is distracting to us from our own business.

When I thought it was already bad enough, today I found out she was approaching some of our retailers with her product, which she claims in hand-cut despite the fact that they seem to be of an identical shape and size to this paper punch...

http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog/zoomImagedetail.jsp?PRODID=9932161&imageType=m&itemType=sku

It is frustrating that someone can claim them as handcut when we actually spend hours with our trusty scaple cutting them out...

Anyhoo I am sure that Karma will result in a postive outcome but it sure is a painful thing to have to deal with!

Next post (which I will do tomorrow), I will update you on our visit to SA which was amazing!

Mathildas Market

We are so excited!

This Sunday (yep the 14th March), we will be showcasing our wares at Mathilda's market. This is a fabulous niche market that offers unique, stylish and affordable baby & kids goods, which are all lovingly handmade.

Please come and see our stand at the market from 9am to 1pm at the Hawthorn Town hall, or for a sneak peak of the retails, check out the Mathildas market website.

For our interstate friends, don't worry, we will be coming to the next Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide Mathilda's markets!

Grand Opening, sorry for the delay!

Well where to we start... I guess the first place to start is the gorgeous displays that the team had done over the last couple of weeks - Now it had been about 10 days since I had been to the shop before the opening, and the back room was still a store room, so I was absolutely amazed when the guys had transformed this into a new gallery space, it look amazing!!!!

I love how they have grouped like items with each other, so we have a very distinct feel to each part of the gallery, which was devine - The amazing paintings above also looked great hanging, we are hoping to have a feature in an up coming blog on this talented artist, Emma Ward.

Once I walked in and saw how perfect the gallery looked, I just knew the night would be a sucess... Angeline and I had spent the night before making the food, for the Alice in Wonderland inspired theme, and when I was walking past the cupcake bakery in Collins Street, I couldn't go past these gorgeous cupcakes, which I was just so excited to open from their box - we had a range of 6 flavours, which of course meant we had to keep trying until we had tasted one of all of them!

Also the team at Prospect wines did an amazing job with our "Drink Me" wine (which everyone did!)

Well with such a great aray of food, and such gorgeous layout could the night be anything but a success? Of course not! It was fantastic, the gallery was completely full, and there was such a nice buzz around! We met some lovely Williamstown locals, and talented artists, and did a story the next day with the local paper, which was interesting!

Thanks to everyone that came along and made it a great night.