Back in Stock: Embroidery Supplies + Christmas Felt

Thanks to a delivery of supplies yesterday, a few lovely things are now back in stock in my main shop, as well as my Etsy and Folksy shops.

The rainbow embroidery thread (floss) bundles are back after being unavailable for a couple of months. 

I also sell embroidery thread boxes and bobbins so you can organise your threads like this...

... since winding all my threads on bobbins like that, I've found it much easier to find the colours I want & there's no more wasting time untangling knotted thread (hurrah!).

The 3 inch (7.5cm) embroidery hoops are also back in stock (I got some of these in a couple of weeks ago but they sold out pretty quickly). These are great for framing all your smallest stitcheries, and they're small enough for making Christmas ornaments too.

Plus the Christmas felt packs are back, ready for lots of festive crafting!

Each pack contains a selection of wool blend felt squares in greens (for Christmas trees, holly & ivy) browns (for Christmas puddings & reindeer), white (for icing, snowmen & snow), reds (for santa hats, candy canes & berries) and ginger (for gingerbread men & gingerbread houses).

If you're looking for some festive inspiration, check out my Christmas Tutorials page for lots of free felt ornament tutorials and other crafty projects.

There are also four cute Christmas projects in my book, Super-Cute Felt...

... a gingerbread cookie garland, embroidery hoop ornaments, a snowglobe doorhanger, and embroidered mitten ornaments. I made a set of the cookies as ornaments for my mum last year and I'm now under orders to sew a set for both my sisters!

Signed copes of Super-Cute Felt are available from my shop, and it's also available (unsigned) from Amazon UK and Amazon USA (and many other bookshops, of course!).

A New Look + Sponsor Ads

You've probably noticed that I've given my blog a bit of a revamp! (If you're reading this via RSS, do pop over to the blog and check out the new look).

The big change is the addition of a second sidebar over on the left. I'm going to use this space to highlight recent crafty tutorials, plus some other tutorials from my archive... and it's also going to be home to some sponsor ads.

I ran ads on my blog a couple of years ago but they were quite time-consuming to manage so I eventually stopped running them to focus my time on other things. But I recently discovered Passionfruit Ads which is a totally genius app for managing your ads, taking all the hassle out of the process and making it easy for bloggers to host ads & easy for folks to buy them... so I thought I'd give the whole advertising thing a go again :)

Ads start from just $10 (which is currently approx £6.30) for 30 days - even though I'm in the UK, my ads are priced in US dollars because Passionfruit are based in the US (but don't worry, if you pay via Paypal you'll be charged in your local currency).

If you're interested in advertising your shop or blog here on Bugs & Fishes, please visit my advertising page for more info about the available rates + sizes.

Making Mini Thank-you Cards

I'm working towards getting prepared for the Christmas season at the moment (it seems to come around quicker, every year!), and I noticed that my stash of mini thank-you cards was running low... so I've been gradually working on a big batch of them while watching TV during the evenings.

Whenever I send out an order from my shop, I include a business card and a little handwritten thank-you note. I always appreciate a handwritten thank-you when I shop on sites like Etsy, it adds to the sense that you're buying from / supporting a person instead of a faceless corporation, and I hope my customers will feel the same :)

I've used all sorts of random bits of card from my stash to make the cards, first cutting the pieces to approximately business card size and then decorating them with an assortment of pretty stickers and tape - including designs by Summersville and Joanna Rutter which I also use for prettifying my parcels.

It's good to know I won't run out of thank-you cards during my busy season, and it's great to have at least one job ticked off my pre-Christmas to do list!

So Many Ends!

I finally got caught up with sewing in all the loose yarn ends on my sky blanket.

Look how many bits of yarn I've trimmed from the blanket over the past couple of weeks!

I was a couple of months behind (after falling behind with knitting and sewing together the squares this summer) so it took quite a while to catch up. I'm definitely going to be trying to sew in the ends more regularly from now on, as while it's relaxing in small doses this is a job that gets really really boring after a while.