Featured Shop! Claireabellemakes Jewellery & Accessories

macramé bicycle bracelet 

Today we're thrilled to be featuring the wonderful maker and blogger Claireabellamakes! We became friends with Claire a while back through Twitter and we're absolutely delighted to get the chance to meet her at the Renegade Craft Fair earlier in the month. Claire makes really simple and beautiful jewellery and has a really awesome blog which is busting at the seems with creative ideas and inspiration. Ready to meet the maker and find out more? Us too!

Give us the low down! Tell us a little about who you are and what you make:

I'm Claire, otherwise known as Claireabellemakes. I live in Cambridge, UK which is the most ace city to live in. I make quirky accessories including Scrabble Jewellery, Macrame Bicycle Bracelets and fabric covered rings and cuff links. I love to crochet and knit and will never let my glue gun get too cold. 

How do you stay inspired?

I get out and about in my city! Taking a walk or chatting to local creatives keeps me inspired. I love reading craft books and magazines or getting lost in Pinterest (my favourite hobby). But I never feel more inspired that when I've been to a craft market. Seeing other makers succeed pushes me to improve my blog and business and being part of the creative world is just awesome. I went to Renegade in London a couple of weeks ago and came home SUPER excited and motivated. 

white glitter wooden heart brooch

What blogs do you read?

I mostly read craft/creative blogs, with the odd baking, lifestyle and migraine blogs thrown in. My current favourites include Studio DIY, Little Things Blogged, Skunkboy and Miss Jojangles which is written by the best 18 year old I know. 

Why do you like being a maker in 10 words or less?

Why buy when you can DIY?!

*ahem* That's the best 10 words we've heard all week!

triangle print cufflinks

What's your best piece of advice?

You can so no sometimes! I used to be a 'YES' girl until someone pointed out to me it's OK to say no sometimes. You've got to cut yourself some slack when life gets busy, and juggling a full time job, migraines, blog and business can be overwhelming for little old me! I really believe in work-life balance and if you can find a job which is your passion, you will never have to work a day in your life :-) 

What question would you most like to be asked?

Eek this is a tough one! I'd quite like to be asked to "describe your dream weekend". I like to fantasise as if I had endless money and time! It involves cake, cats, spa, crafts and blanket forts.

personalised Scrabble initial ring

What's your guilty pleasure? (Chocolate doesn't count :P)

Ha I am not guilty about eating chocolate! I am fueled by Double Deckers most weeks. I would say my guilty pleasure (aside from Pop Tarts) is watching cat videos on You Tube. I'm a total crazy cat lady and often get stuck in cat video You Tube loops. We have the cutest persian cat which your cat card prints remind me of!

Jay Jay! That's the name of Davids persian cat. They look so grumpy but they're totally adorable! Hooray for persian cats! We are totally stocked up on Pop Tarts here too  - I can go through a box in seconds. So glad to know I'm not the only one harbouring that secret! Such great advice too, we're terrible for saying yes which tends to lead on to a lot of long nights and working weekends! I'm going to try and take a page out of your book this week and start saying no. Well... maybe after the holidays are over ;)

Thanks so much for hanging out with us today Claire! It's been an absolute delight having you round for tea!

For those of you who're ready to nab yourself some awesome Christmas gifts (most of which are under £10! Hello stocking stuffers!) you can visit Claire's wonderful shop here. 

Visit her epically good blog for inspiration, banter and good times here 

Also, if you're in Cambridge on the 30th November you can visit Claire and spy her wonderful goodies at her stall at From Cambridge With Love! You can read all about the event and get the details here

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We hope you enjoyed our little feature everyone! 

I know what things are on my Christmas wish list this year... hows about you?

Black Friday - Cyber Monday SALE ....and Christmas delivery dates!

We're having a massive sale to get in the spirit of Black Friday and Cyber Monday this weekend! From Friday 29th till Monday 4th December we're offering a whopping 30% discount on the majority of items in our wonderful Etsy shop. Amazing, right? All you'll need is our magical coupon code to get involved... It's our last sale of the year so if you fancy treating yourself or grabbing a few bargain's as stocking stuffers or gift's for 'secret santa's' now's your chance! 

There will be a limited number of each item available with the discount - once they're gone, they're gone - so if you've seen something wheely special that you'd like to buy with 30% off you'll need to get in there quickly! We'll have prints, our keepsake cards, brooches, a selection of our awesome stationery and a few of our lovely little pug mirrors available during the sale... 

Excited? Us too! Take note of the code and get your elbows at the ready:

Coupon Code: SANTA13

take me to Vivid Please!

PS! 

Those of you who're ordering gifts for Christmas will need to place orders before the following dates to ensure delivery. Obviously the post can be a little unpredictable over the holidays and we don't want to be disappointed!

International Delivery - 9th December

UK Delivery - 18th December

We usually turn around orders in a day or two and will try our best to get your package in the mail as soon as humanly possible, but if you require an upgrade to special delivery please give us a shout and we'll do our best to help you out. We cannot guarantee there will be no post office strikes or bad weather, but we can guarantee that we'll be working extra hard to get your goodies into your hands as quickly as we can :)

Happy hunting!

Oh Snap! Pictures From Our Week

With so many amazing things going on at the moment, David and I have been flat out busy and totally knackered. After our epically good opening we decided to take the weekend off and enjoy a wee break before getting stuck back into it all. Lucky for us the weather has been beautiful! We got to go for a lovely walk and crunch on all the fallen leaves *swoon*

Frosty leaves! Even better! I can't believe how close we are to Christmas now, it's totally snuck up on us this weekend. We went for a wander into Edinburgh's city centre and it's been all decorated for the holidays and they've put the festive lights on. It's so beautiful! 

I can't wait to get a shot on this fella :D Check out that pink feather duster on his head. So dapper! The look straight out of Mary Poppins. I foresee a proper date night in the near future :) Mulled wine and pretzels at the Christmas Market and a go on all the rides...

Tempting, huh! A little something to look forward to in the near future... well, you can't work this hard and not earn a few treats along the way, right? We hope you have something fabulous planned to treat yourself to as well :) Holidays are coming!

Inspiration: Photography & Illustrations By Cintascotch

We've just stumbled across the instagram magic created by cintascotch and couldn't wait to share it with you. Such simple objects totally transformed into incredible things with just a few inky lines. What a great imagination! Here are a few of our favourites, but you can discover a plethora of goodness here. Enjoy!

You Want Fries With That? Our First Solo Exhibition, Sofi's Bar, Edinburgh, 2013

Our exhibition is officially open at Sofi's bar! We had our launch night on Friday and we are so thrilled that so many people came along to the event. The bar was packed out! We'd like to say a massive thank you to everyone who came down, and an even bigger one to those of you who bought prints and our christmas cards. You all totally made our night!



Today I thought I would share a couple of snaps of us hanging all our prints in the show. We have over 20 on display in the main bar and a few in the back room with our special "You Want Fries With That" illustrations. We got to hang our giant screen printed specs again which got a lot of wonderful compliments :D Love them! We've never actually had a space to hang up so many of our illustrations before so it was a real delight for us to see everything in all its glory up on the walls. Don't they look fabulous in their wee frames?!



Our Tea-Rex illustration sold out on Friday night, so I'm going to be popping back to Sofi's with a few more for sale. Our Merry Pugging Christmas cards were also massively popular; we're really delighted how many sold as we're donating 10% from each pack to Teenage Cancer Trust this year. All our work will be exhibited and on sale through Christmas which is absolutely incredible! Sofi's have been super supportive or our work and are the perfect venue for us. It's one of our favourite bars in Edinburgh - so cozy and such a lovely vintage vibe! We're really honoured they asked us to do the show. I was a bit nervous about it all but am completely over the moon now it's all up. It was a bit out of my comfort zone, but that's always a good thing if you ask me!



David and I made a couple of special edition Twistee Treat wooden brooches to wear at the launch party too - well, you can't have a show called 'You Want Fries With That?' and not have a badge for your uniform! So good! We also made some special edition pocket mirrors for the show as well. I'm totally addicted... Speaking of, we also made a batch of chocolate and raspberry macaroons, a pile of Oreo truffles and had lots of lolly pops and plenty of cava (of course!) for everyone who came. It was sugar-tastic and we've got some new sweet treat fans! After the bar closed a bunch of us went out dancing, which we felt was well earned. We put in a lot of hard work recently so it was really lovely to get the chance to celebrate our achievements properly with all our friends and family. Such a great night!

The show will be running till January 2014 at Sofi's Bar in Edinburgh, so if you're in town be sure to pop in and feast your eyes, get a wee drink and get cozy in this wonderful little bar. You might bump into us there too - defo come say hi if you do, we'd love to meet you!

Those of you who can't make it can visit all our illustrations in our Etsy store here ;) a virtual tour!


Thanks again to everyone for all of your amazing support. We think you're spectacular!
xox

DIY: How To Make A Glitter Fabric Pocket Mirror Cover

I've been pretty obsessed with this glitter fabric for a while - my bling DIY pencil case get's a lot of lovely compliments! So I decided to branch out and make a little cover for my pocket mirror too. Not only does it look super trendy, but it's pretty practical and a snitch to make too! I've had a couple of requests for these as Christmas gifts already, so I thought I would share the magic with you too.
Ready to get your stitch on? You won't believe how easy this tutorial is...

fabric        mirrors

All you need is some glitter fabric, embroidery thread and scissors. You can alternatively use oil cloth material or felt for this project - these materials are all great as they are fairly stiff so they keep good shape and don't fray easily so you don't need to hem them. They all also have a soft 'inside' or reverse, meaning you don't need to line anything. Brilliant!!

Start by cutting out two circles that your pocket mirror will fit in, leaving a 0.5cm edge all around. As a guide,  I've cut out two circles at 7cm in diameter to fit our mirrors. 

Tie a knot in one end of your thread and thread it through on the inside of the material. Sandwich the two circles together and start stitching (all the way through both pieces.) Your little knot will be hidden inside :)

Keep a steady straight stitch going 3/4s of the way around your circles. You need to leave a gap that's large enough to fit your mirror in, but closed off enough to hold it in so it doesn't slip out. This will need to be around 5cm wide from edge to edge.

*Ta*Da* 

Looking great, huh! Mirror fits in like a glove :D I've decided to finish the stitching all the way round to make it a little more neat. If you're doing the same, remember you're not stitching the fabric together so you'll need to do one rim and then the other. To keep it tidy, keep your knots tied on the inside like how we started...

ooOOooh!

aaaAAAaaah!

What I particularly like about this tutorial is that you can change the colour of thread to match or totally contrast. Super cute and super stylish :D These are going to make amazing stocking stuffers for Christmas - and they'll cost less than £5 for the mirror and material to make them! Fabulous darling!

Happy Making...

xox

Oh Snap! Images From Our Week

Meet Señor Nacho! He is the newest member of the Vivid Please team and he is ready to party! Isn't he the weirdest but COOLEST thing you've ever seen? It's actually a giant tiki mug - his hat comes totally off his head (and brain!) and it's hollow inside for putting your boozy concoctions in. Pop his hat back on and there are holes in the top to put straws in! So cool. We're yet to put a drink in him, but we've eaten a lot of nacho's from the rim of his hat and we are pretty much mind blown by it :D

We also picked up this A.Mazing mermaid tiki mug over the weekend too. What a gem! I've got a fair collection of tiki stuff from our Hawaiian adventure and we're working our way to a properly tiki themed kitchen. My obsession first started when I visited the Jungle Room in Graceland a few years ago. If it's good enough for Elvis...

This weekend we had a mammoth amount of orders to make up and send out. Look at this pile! Sooo much washi tape happiness! It's like Christmas in our studio right now - tissue, tape, wrapping and string everywhere! I'm so happy :D The post office lady who had to sort it out was a little less enthusiastic about it all though ;)

Our name! On the board! That's right, we've got our exhibition launch night this Friday and I can't wait. I'll be posting a few pictures from the show afterwards so you can all take a wee look. If you're in Edinburgh and want to pop down to the event you're totally welcome! Check it out here

Ha! I just realised the day I bought all our new tiki goodies I was wearing my blue suede shoes :D Clearly I have been channeling the King recently. 

Uh Hu Hu...

Inspiration: Japanese Adverts From The 1950s

The other week on the train I stumbled upon the most whimsical collection of Japanese adverts from the 1950s and I've been dreaming about them ever since! So simple and pretty, it's hard not to be inspired by them. I'd love to print some of these out and hang them up in the studio; David and I have a bit of a vintage advert collection going on right now!

 Don't you just love how timeless these are? I have no idea what they're on about, but I'm pretty sure I want to buy one of everything. Why can't we kick it old school and do amazing print adverts like this any more? Illustrators and designers are super overlooked these days. If anyone wants to hire us to draw them an advert, I'm totally game!

Are you addicted yet? I feel a pinterest-a-thon coming on right now :D