So, I had been planning to keep the shops open while I was away from the studio next week but dates have changed and I’ll now be away longer so have decided to set the shops to Holiday Mode.

It’s a hard decision as I’ve never closed the shops before but a week is a long time for customers to wait for their order to be dispatched. I’ll be making/packing/posting up until Saturday 4th September and will be away for the following week.

So, if you have events coming up and cards you’ve been planning on buying, please be aware that we’ll be unable to dispatch between 4th-11th September.

Hi Everyone!

Just wanted to give everyone a little notice concerning order dispatch dates in September. I’ll be away from the studio for a few days but I won’t be closing any of the shops. Cards can be purchased as usual but will be dispatched on my return.

If you have any Birthdays or Anniversaries coming up at the start of September and are planning to order a Ruby Wren Card, now is the time to do so Orders placed on and after Saturday 4th September will be despatched on my return the following weekend.

Oh how I love our Wildflower Seed Cards! Not only are they super eco-friendly, they are more than just a greeting card too…a card and gift in one!

You may remember recently I blogged about planting my Wildflower Scraps? Not to be wasteful, I planted all the ‘middles’ of cards I make…the bits that get cut out when I hand cut the shapes in the cards. Well…unfortunately, having a little bit of a ‘wild’ garden as we like to call it, the wildflower seeds I planted originally got lost under the catmint plant we planted at the same time. I didn’t know catmint grew so quickly and before I knew it, the catmint plant had taken over the whole flowerbed and the wildflower seeds had been smothered underneath!

So, I planted some new scraps…on the patio, in a pot, away from the crazy catmint and everything else that grows so frantically! And the wildflower cards are growing wonderfully! We haven’t had the best weather this summer but it’s looking good! According to my little cat, it tastes good too…I keep spotting her munching the grass-like shoots (you may notice some of the blunt shoots in the photos where she’s been nibbling at at them!). I can’t wait to see if they flower…I’m hoping we’ll have enough sun to allow them to grow fully before the winter!

I shall keep you informed how it grows! It’s amazing to think that these shoots have grown from one of our greeting cards! If you’d like to purchase your own wildflower cards,  just chose the design from the menu in our shop and select ‘wildflower’ as your choice of cardstock. They make fab unusual gifts!

Happy Summer everyone! I’m a little bit late with the ‘Spring Clean’ so since it’s now officially summer, I guess it’ll be a ‘Summer Clean’ instead.

I spent a while going through the website and tidying it up a bit. Instead of having all designs in each colour as a separate ‘item’ on the website, I’ve now got just one for each design, with dropdowns to allow colour choices. Hopefully this should make the site a bit easier to browse and buy.

And! Good news for those who love the wildflower seed cards! On (most) products, you can now choose if you want the Greeting card as the normal (but still very cool) Elephant poo paper, or the (slightly more unusual) Wildflower Seed paper. Due to the handmade nature of the paper and the cost of the paper to Ruby Wren, the price of the Wildflower cards are dearer, but I think they’re so amazing, it’s worth it! The Wildflower cards are not just a card but a gift as well and are very popular! Now (almost) all designs are available in Wildflower too, it’ll make chosing a special eco-friendly card even easier!

I do have a new plan ‘growing’…but you’ll have to wait and see! I have some special new paper on order and will be trialling something new in the next week or two. Providing the designs can be cut into the new order of paper, it will be something just as special as our Wildflower products!

Phew!!

Ruby Wren has just about finished with her Father’s Day orders for 2010. If you read previous blog posts or follow us on Twitter, you may have seen that we were in the notonthehighstreet.com Summer 2010 Catalogue.

It was amazing to be included and even more amazing to be making so many cards for customers (and their dads!). In the three weeks running up to Father’s Day, following the launch of the catalogue, I’ve not stopped hand cutting ‘Dad’ and ‘Daddy’ into Elephant Poo! What a brilliant response we had!

I’d like to thank everyone for their support over the last few weeks…despite the Summer Catalogue Campaign running until July, we featured our Father’s Day card so our work is about over for now that the ocassion is almost here. I was working upto 16hr days to keep up with demand, so I’ll be resting my very sore and blistered hands now that our orders are up-to-date and then getting started on Christmas! I already have some fab festive ideas and a few special things from our 2009 range will be coming back.

Wishing everyone and their Dads a great weekend! It’s really lovely to think that so many Dads will be receiving a special handmade Ruby card – it really means so much to me that so many people have chosen to send one of our cards, so heartwarming!

This week will be an exciting week for Ruby Wren Designs! We will be appearing in print for the first time – the notonthehighstreet.com Summer 2010 Catalogue! We’re so excited here at Ruby HQ!

Our first appearance features our handcut Father’s Day ‘Dad’ and ‘Daddy’ Cards! These are new for Spring/Summer 2010 and are feature our new handcut text effect. They’re quite painstaking to cut out so customers can be assured that they are giving something unique, which time has been spent making and a lot of love has been put into it. Unfortunately, this means a lot of work for Ruby Wren but we think it’s worthwhile!

You can see our cards in the ‘Finishing Touches’ section of the catalogue (page 39) next to the ordering instructions. Our friends at Coulson Macleod are also featured and you can check out their beautiful typography artwork on page 20.

Those clever people at NOTHS have also set up a virtual catalogue so you can view all those beautiful pages online here. To order your copy of the catalogue, which we fully recommend (full of gorgeous photos of gorgeous products!), please go to the order form here.

A little warning…receiving the catalogue and viewing all those goodies can have a negetive effect on your bank account

It feels like ages since I last blogged! For a long time in March, due to personal reasons, I was inactive on Twitter, Facebook, Blogging etc. I won’t go into reasons why, but to have a break was really good and I took time to refocus priorities and regroup ideas. Ruby Wren had a busy time with Mother’s Day and then Easter Cards, and I’m proud to think that lots of lovely people were given a special Ruby Wren card by one of my wonderful customers – it means a lot to think that someone chose a Ruby Card to give at Mother’s Day.

It’s been almost a year since Ruby Wren Designs made our very first card! What started out as a hobby in April of 2009 has grown beyond what I could ever imagine. What a year!! Our Etsy account was registered on 21st April 2009, but it wasn’t until September 2009 when we considered making a business from it, followed shortly after by joining the Prince’s Trust Business Programme and registering as a notonthehighstreet.com partner, all before Christmas 2009.

We’ve also made lots of friends in the last year – Wall Envy Art, Coulson Macleod, Edwina Simone, Polkadots and Blooms, Storeyshop, AnnaRK, Chain of Daisies, Who Ate My Crayons, ToggleUK, SheDraws…and MANY more! All of you Tweeters, fellow NOTHS Partners, Folksy-folk, Etsians – you’re all a wonderful provider of support and company as we all try to grow our small businesses! I remember being told that starting and running your own small business is a very lonely ‘career’, but I’ve found it not to be the case. The handmade community is a lovely one, full of friendly and helpful people. I wonder if other businesses find themselves to feel the same, or whether we just happen to be like-minded people that have come together. Either way, I’m very happy.

At the weekend, our neighbours gathered to celebrate an local ocassion of great importance to us – the start of a permit parking in our very congested area. We had a lovely night and I felt very proud when the subject of my business popped up in conversation. I don’t often get the chance to talk about Ruby Wren – so it surprised me quite a bit when I realised how proud I was when I said “I’m running my own business”. Over the weekend, I also got the opportunity to fill in the Small Business survey being run by those lovely notonthehighstreet.com staff. As I filled it in, it was another moment when I realised that yes, I am running my own business, and things that didn’t used to affect me now do.

As a small business, I do agree that there’s not enough help for us – the bigger the business, it seems, the more they can demand and the better their benefits. How are we, who are just starting out, mostly working in our own homes as “kitchen table businesses”, supposed to grow our businesses when bigger corporations take advantage of us? For example, over the past few years, I’ve had a PO Box from Royal Mail. I went for the most basic, cheapest option – having a PO Box and collecting the mail from it myself. This has slowly gone up a few pounds each year and last year I paid £62.85, which I felt wasn’t unreasonable. I’m not a fan of Royal Mail at all – our postmen are always brilliant, but the corporation itself has a terrible public image when it comes to reliability and I’ve often waited 3-4 weeks for first class mail posted from the UK, to me, in the UK. Imagine my surprise when I got my invoice for the 2010 PO Box payment. From £62.85 in 2009, to £95 in 2010. It makes me wonder what they have done to deserve an extra 50% increase? I imagine that any big business with a PO Box wouldn’t think twice about paying their Royal Mail invoice. But, me as a small business, thinks it’s an outrage that they demand so much. Maybe Royal Mail are just aware that the majority of people with a PO Box are those without a corporate headquarters – ie., us small businesses, working from our homes, and they are taking advantage of that fact. People in that situation have no choice but to pay the huge increase – or publish their home address online for the world to see. Sneaky tactics I’m sure, Royal Mail!

So, all in all, I think that things should be better for small businesses. The small business should pay lower rates, get better discounts, have better opportunities than we do already. The smaller the business, the more help I think should be available for us. If a small business is taken advantage of in regard to bully tactics and pricing, how will they become big businesses? This is all new to me and maybe things are available that I’ve not found out about, but that Royal Mail invoice has really made me mad and is just another example of how these big faceless corporations get away with whatever they want. It reminds me of the times I’ve read about our highstreet shops ripping off designs by independent artists – I won’t name names, but we all know who they are – those huge businesses that copy designs, patterns and drawings they’ve found from artists on Etsy and replicate them for themselves. How are we supposed to compete with that, without the fancy legal team and millions of pounds that they do?

The notonthehighstreet.com survey about small businesses really got me thinking. There are things that are out of our control – such as what help is available from the Government, bully tactics by the large corporations. But, at the end of the day, what we put into our business is up to us. With the right product and hard work, lots of small business have grown and overcome hurdles that face them. Afterall, it’s likely that a big business was once a small business!

I am a huge supporter of all things recycled and as soon as I heard about plantable paper, I knew I had to use some in my designs. You might remember my Reindeer Poo Cards at Christmas with growable Christmas Tree Seeds? And then, I introduced a few new additions with wildflower seed. Well, now, on Notonthehighstreet.com, you can choose to select if you want your card made from the usual (but still unusual!) Ellie Poo card, or if you want to have it made with Wildflower Seed Card. For an extra £1.75 for the 2D designs (the wildflower seed is super special but also more costly) you can send what is a perfect card and gift combination – a growable greeting!

Also, now that the cold weather here in Northamptonshire seems to be disappearing (hopefully for good!) I plan on planting up the scraps of paper from my Christmas designs. When I cut the designs into the Christmas Tree Seed paper, I kept the scraps that were cut out to create the reindeer shapes and plan to keep a little photo diary on how my little Christmas Trees grow! Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to use a tree made from scrap seed paper as my Christmas tree one year – how cool! I’ll keep you updated as to how my garden grows! If anyone bought or received a growing greeting from Ruby Wren for Christmas, or maybe you’ve purchased the wildflower cards, I’d love to hear how yours are growing! I might offer prizes if people do get involved!

I’m very lucky to share my hometown with two special Kettering-based artists, Wall Envy Art run by Louise and Coulson Macleod run by Hannah and her partner Mark. I’ve known Louise since last year when we found each other on Etsy and attended a few fairs together. We’ve since started a little joint project and it’s great to have a like-minded person to bounce ideas and plans off. Twitter introduced us to Hannah of Coulson Macleod who is also based in Kettering and has found success selling super cool artwork to the likes of billionaires and CEOs. Coulson Macleod are celebrating their first birthday today, 4th of March 2010, and have already acheived so much in just a year – Hannah definitely inspires me with her focus and passion!

Last night, the three of us met up for a good long chat, about everything from our products, online venues for selling and twitter, to pricing and press. It was a lovely evening and made me feel very glad I live so near to such talented people. I think people would be surprised to know that Kettering is home to the three of us – working away on our creative projects. I’ve defintely come away with a lot of motivation after meeting with like-minded people.

As well as our ‘Creative Kettering’ meeting yesterday, I also had my latest meeting with my Prince’s Trust business mentor, which also fueled my motivation. For anyone aged 18-30 and thinking of starting a business, or developing your handmade creations into a business, I’d definitely recommend signing up for the Prince’s Trust’s Business Programme. Ruby Wren joined Etsy in April 2009 but it wasn’t until August 31st when everything changed and Ruby Wren went from a hobby to an actual business, and in such a short time I’m overwhelmed with how far it’s come. It just goes to show how quickly things can change and, to quote someone who has always inspired me, “expect the unexpected”. I’m definitely very happy to be doing what I love and know such creative and inspirational people!

Over Christmas, we were in the process of swapping websites/blogs to this new pretty version made for us by Who Ate My Crayons. While we were planning the new site, I had lots of blog posting cravings and didn’t feel it was worthwhile to post when I’d have a new blog soon. So, I do have a few updates that I have wanted to share for a while.

Some of you may be aware that in December, I pledged a percentage of my Christmas profits to the RSPCA’s Big Christmas Feed. The campaign aimed to raise money to feed the animals in RSPCA rescue centres over Christmas. The RSPCA is a charity close to my heart, as almost a year ago we rescued 3 cats who spent 6 weeks in December 2008 and January 2009 being nursed back to health at the RSPCA Woodside centre in Leicester. They had been abandoned, left in a cardboard box and fighting for their life. The staff admitted that they didn’t think they’d live. Thanks to the wonderful care from the staff over Christmas last year, all three cats were healthy enough to come home with us and are now very healthy and happy.

In December, Ruby Wren Designs managed to raise £100 to donate to the RSPCA’s Christmas campaign and we are thrilled. According to the RSPCA website, that amount of money can pay for 200 meals for animals this winter. I’d like to thank all my customers and friends who bought from Ruby Wren Designs or promoted our Christmas Pledge. Thank you so much!

I have plans in the future to do more of these Charity Pledges so watch this space!

Picture below shows my cat, Carra, who took the longest to recover and is shown here enjoying (maybe!) our recent snow.