Ruby’s customers are the absolute best A lovely repeat customer of ours requested a bit of a customisation, and it turned out fantastically! She requested a customisation of our ‘Love Pigs’ design, featuring the bunny on our ‘Little Bunny’ card. Here’s the finished products – looks brilliant!

These will be available on NOTHS and here later today!

I know Christmas seems like aaaages away but I’ve had this little lovely made up, photographed and awaiting listing since the Spring and I just couldn’t wait any longer.

Personalisation is a wonderful bonus when working with small businesses handmaking products. This special Christmas Card features a handcut candy cane with a gift tag awaiting the name of your recipient. I really think these would be lovely for children to give to ‘Grandma’ or for kids to receive with their own name adorning the candy cane.

So exciting! All the new Christmas goodies are listed here on our shop and on our NOTHS shop, so there’s no excuse to start getting prepared for Christmas!

So, I told you about the cat-themed card I made my Mum last week and I’ve been trying to design a cat card for a little while…

Well…drumroll please!

Here’s the final ready-for-sale kittens! Part of our ‘Love’ range, these Love Kittens will be joining our Love Ducks, Love Pigs, Love Turtles and Love Birds. I LOVE these kittens…so sweet and simple. Well, I do love anything with a kitten on it, afterall!

Currently for sale on NOTHS: Click here but hope to add them to our homepage shop and our Etsy shop soon!

I thought I’d share one of our special new items for Christmas this year. I love that handmade gifting takes advantage of personalisation so here’s some of our lovely personal Reindeers!

These cards are made with Handmade, 100% Recycled Paper, Reindeer Poo and Christmas Tree Seeds. They feature handcut Reindeers (of course!) and can be personalised with adult and baby reindeers to reflect your own family. Choose up to 2 ‘parents’ and up to 4 ‘children’ to recreate your Christmas Family scene. These make great ‘From All Of Us’ cards for those special people in your lives! Perfect for grandparents, family friends and people who you think deserve something a little bit special at Christmas! And, don’t forget – these cards could grow your recipient a little Christmas Tree

They are currently available by clicking here.

Small Single Reindeer Cards are £3 each | Pack of 6 for £15

Large Family Reindeer Cards are £6 and can be customised

I think all of Ruby’s best designs are the ‘unplanned’ ones…the ones that just appear from nowhere. I mean, our 3D butterflies actually came almost accidently, for example. So, when I created my Dad’s Father’s Day card, I knew that it would be something good but after making it, I am really excited about adding it to Ruby’s range.

My Dad (and me too, for that matter!) loves all things space and although I couldn’t cut a Saturn V into Elephant Poo, I did make quite a cute little rocket. The stars too are handcut – something which has suprised everyone who’s seen the card. Although I decided on blue for my Dad, the other colours, particulary purple and red, also look fab behind the cut shapes. Look out for it appearing in Ruby’s shops very soon – perfect not only for my dad, but a little boy’s birthday or even party invites. I think it’s pretty darn cool!

As well as making a starry card for my Dad, my friend asked me to make him a Father’s Day card and I filled his with similar hand cut stars. He liked my ‘DAD’ design which features handcut letters and a little red heart – but he didn’t want the heart on his card. After making the ‘DAD’ card without the heart, it looked a little plain and my friend gave me free reign to jazz it up abit, hence the stars.

I also had a little challenge during the Father’s Day rush – a customer asked me if instead of ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’ being hand cut, whether I could cut a name into the card. I’ve been asked this often and sometimes certain letters (S, M, B, E are letters I find are the hardest to cut) make it impossible to cut the whole name. The name she asked for was Charlie and after testing it out first, I said I’d be able to do it. The card, although very painstaking and time-consuming, turned out fab. I’m very happy with the result and am debating about whether to add this personlisation choice in future…but then again, it would have to depend on the name, so I’m not sure. In the meantime, if anyone would like a handcut name card, just email me the name for consideration. I’d hate to have people placing orders and the name being too difficult to handcut, not fitting onto the card properly or not turning out as expected so for now, I may have to rely on requests rather than offering it in my shop. I strive for perfection and will always start again on a card that turns out anything less than 100% perfect, so only want to be selling cards that I’m confident I can make perfect.

When we first launched Ruby Wren Designs we had some products featuring gorgeous patterned paper inside the cards. As we can’t guarentee being able to source the paper again, I’ve launched the new Limited Range of greeting cards.

These feature a few of the popular patterns from 2009, with some lovely new papers also, but available in limited quantities only. This means, once they’re gone they may not return and will be replaced by a new patterned card. This will be fun, I’m sure!

I do have quite a collection of papers so there’s sure to be new products arriving on our virtual shelves all the time. The first pony cards to make it into the Limited Range are now on Etsy and other designs will be added shortly!

It seems I’m allergic to holidays – after spending the run-up to Christmas with laryngitis, last week while preparing for Valentine’s it returned! Or in the case of my voice, disappeared! So the Ruby Blog, Facebook and Twitter has been a bit neglected while I spent the last few weeks making Valentine’s Cards for all Ruby’s lovely customers and resting.

But, with Ruby’s return to the internet, I bring goodies! Our new number cards! This is something that has been in development for some time – it’s probably 6 months since I first wanted to create some text based cards but I’m so happy with the finished numbers. I’ve planned some word-cards as well but hand-cutting words into such textured paper is a hard task and I may be working on these a little longer before you see them available for purchase!

The great thing about buying from a designer-maker like Ruby Wren is that we welcome imput from our customers and can be really flexible with the designs. So, feel free to request any number you want – not just the ‘special ages’ that the big card companies will stick to. All our numbers can be made in a selection of colours too so you can personalise them match the recipient.  The new number cards will be online for purchase in the next few days!

Also in Ruby News – I’m very excited to announce that we have a new lovely stockist! Boxwood of Glasgow is the latest shop to stock recycled Ruby Wren goodies! The shop looks lovely and sells such gorgeous items – check out the website to see more: http://www.boxwood.net