Easter Cards

I now have a new blog address.

To look at this post at jodegenhart.com just click this link- Easter Cards

After my adventure with the Mother's day card and the positive feedback, I decided to try to design some Easter cards along the same lines. The design for the heart on the Mother's day cards was the same as I had used at christmas but this time I had to design and carve a new stamp to fit the birchwood egg shapes I had bought. I also bough some bright pink and green ink pads to keep them looking bright and springy.

After spending some time sketching, I finally decided on a design and began to carve the lino block. When I did my first print I got that buzy, excited, creative feeling you get when something you have created has gone to plan!

So here we have the decorations; the pink egg and the green egg.

Then, all I had to do was attach them to a card, stamp 'Happy Easter' on them and I had two lovely new Easter cards to sell in the Etsy shop.



This is when the pink Easter card was featured on a design website called DesignSponge.com which is a great blog to look at other creative people's creations. Which was very exciting!

As I am still producing relatively low numbers of each design, I sold out before I had even noticed I had been featured. I found this slightly frustrating as the time it takes from ordering the eggs to having cards to sell ment it has taken until today to get more on my Etsy shop, but I suppose it is all a learning curve and next year I will make more.

I am finding that I get more views on Etsy with the celebration cards ie. Mother's day or Easter than I have so far with the new baby and wedding cards. I have not been doing much publicity in other mediums so maybe that is the problem.

I do find it hard to 'self premote' though. I feel like I am pushing people I know into uncomfortable situations where they will feel they cannot say no, or that I am pestering people. I realise I must get better at it, investigate more of Etsy and the forums and treasuries, use facebook more, and generally get more confidence in what I am producing, because I am very proud of myself and what I have done so far.

 I just need to get better at telling people about it.

Catch up

I now have a new blog address.

To look at this post at jodegenhart.com just click this link- Catch Up

Sorry for the long break but now for the catch up!

I decided to make some mother's day cards using the new and improved stamped hearts. Still the same birch heart but now painted white then embossed which gives it a much nicer feel than the printing ink did. It also means that I do not end up with lots of wooden hearts in the way of family life as the printing ink takes days to dry. All good news as I am working on the same table we eat our dinner from and now I can get it all done while the kids are at school then pack it away.

I found some nice recycled cards in a craft shop on sale and they were the inspiration for the new cards.

I sold quite a few through my Etsy shop and got some great feedback which was lovely and gave me a bit of a buzz so I decided to do something similar for Easter.

So if you pop back tomorrow I will tell you all about the Easter cards and my first experience of being featured on a design blog!

I now have a new blog address.

To look at this post at jodegenhart.com just click this link- Budworth and Chapelford Fairs

So, first post on my sparkly new blog! Hard to know where to start so I will begin with introducing myself. I am Jo, mum of three children, wife of one husband. I have spent the last 8 years being at home with my children and as the youngest started school in September I have begun a journey of returning to work.

So let me tell you the story so far…

In October 2012 I did a craft fair at Great Budworth Church, selling Christmas decorations. I made peg dolls and angels with crocheted dresses, crochet star decorations, French knitted hearts and some lino printed wooden decorations. I had a good day but when I set out my stall I must admit it looked rather bare compared to all the other stalls. I learnt a lot and as my goal was to cover the cost of my stall, I felt it was successful.

Then in December 2012 I had my second stall at Chapelford Christmas Fair. This was outside so I was in a gazebo and had more space to fill.

I decided to do more lino printing and made a range of nativity Christmas cards, heart Christmas cards, notebooks for boys, girls and ladies, diaries and coasters.

I also made more of the wooden lino printed shapes; hearts, birds and stars and crocheted more stars and peg dolls and angels but this time I used small wooden stars so that I could write a name on them to personalise them. 

Different things sold (which was a little confusing) but I did much better and the fair was well organised and very busy. 

Here we are in January and I must admit to feeling rather lost. So I have written a plan.

Watch this space to see how I do!