Last week, I proofed the copy for the NOTHS Winter Gift Guide 2010 – and now, it’s just hit me that we’re in the last few weeks of preparation! Didn’t it just seem like 5 minutes ago that we were preparing for our Father’s Day feature in the Summer 2010 catalogue?

I know lots of my lovely fellow-NOTHS sellers are also in it and I’m getting excited to see find all our friends in the catalogue. I can’t wait for the Christmas orders to start flooding in (we’ve already had some, as early as August!).

How are everyone’s preparations going?

This is how I left my desk yesterday evening…approximately 200 Reindeer cards ready awaiting hand-cutting…

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

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!

I’ve been wanting to share photos of my planted goodies for a few weeks now, but things have been so busy here recently! There’s been lots of individual orders, a big wholesale order and we’re preparing for our first feature in a very special publication…more on that shortly, but be assured that Ruby is currently in creation-frenzy-mode!

A few weeks ago, when things were much calmer, I managed to get out in the garden to plant some scrap paper…intrigued yet?

Being a very eco-friendly little bird, Ruby Wren saves all the scrap paper cut from the middle of our cards. It doesn’t really have much use usually as the animals and shapes aren’t handcut in just one smooth motion, but we make sure to recycle every scrap. So, when it comes to the wildflower seed cards we make, there’s often scraps of paper cut from the seeded paper.

I’ll keep you updated on how they grow! The scrap paper from our wildflower cards were planted in one of our new catnip beds…and of course, there were a few nosey faces wanting to know what I was doing in their flower bed!

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!