Personal Projects: The Mead’s House is Moving!

Besides getting married, this will be the biggest thing I have done in my life. Since moving to Exeter almost 2 and a half years ago my husband and I have been renting a one bedroom flat. It was our first home as a married couple and has provided us with all that we needed. We have had a lovely landlord, quiet neighbours, and just about enough space.. but alas we seem to have grown out of that space and my new crafting venture has definitely contributed to the clutter. We are now finally in the position, after a couple of years of part time jobs and returning back to university, where we are both working and can afford to buy a house. It’s very strange how quickly these things can happen. Less than a month ago we had a meeting with our bank, with the intention to do nothing more than find out how we can improve our chances of being given a mortgage. Four days after this meeting we found a house that we loved and made an offer, and within an hour we found out that the offer had been accepted. Two weeks later and the mortgage has now been agreed. No onward chain, no major improvements… it all seems almost too good to be true. But in the last 6 years I have learned never to be too surprised at my blessings.

Now what does moving house mean? Firstly we can have some rabbits, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about that! Secondly, it means a spare room to be crafting in so that I no longer have to get every item of furniture in our living room covered in glue, bits of thread and beads rolling all over the floor. And lastly, and possibly the most exciting of them all, I have a whole new house to fill and decorate with hand made goods! I love up-cycling, but living in a second storey flat with no balcony and no garden has limited the amount of projects I can crack on with. My new small garden and shed will give me the perfect space to change all of my charity shop bargains, which frankly have seen better days, into items of beauty- I hope!

Fingers crossed we will be in the house within the next two months and I can get sawing, sanding and painting away. Keep a watch out for all of my up-cycling for the house posts and let me know what you think, they will all begin with ‘Personal Project:’

Celebrating My First Sale

It was about three weeks ago that I first set up my online shop and although I knew that this soon it would be unlikely, every time I opened up my Folksy page I was hoping to see the number under my ‘recent orders’ change from 0. I have to admit, every time it didn’t my heart sank a little.

It’s been quite difficult to hold down a full time job and have time to both craft and promote my new business, on top of all that my husband and I are looking to buy our first house so it’s been a hectic few weeks to say the least. As soon as I wake up in the morning I’m working  on my craft business, at work I’ve finally taken semi-lunch breaks to work on my craft business (I still don’t leave my desk but I do take 30mins to think about what I can write on my blog, how I can promote myself or what craft project I can get working on at home), and when I get home I have just enough time to have dinner before getting back to work again. Not that I mind, especially when it comes to making the crafts as I could (and very often do) spend hours on end doing that, but working on the business side of things can be a bit tiresome when you’re not making any sales.

Then it happened. Last night, just before getting ready to go to bed I went onto the Folksy website… it’s become a bit of a bad habit of mine to check out the recently listed items at least five times each evening. When I opened up the front page, this is what I saw…

Though of course I added the black box and little arrow. I had to do a double take and check that the item was actually mine and not something incredibly similar someone else had made but no, it definitely said ‘TheMeadsCraftHouse’ beneath the picture. I know it’s cliché but my heart was pumping so hard it was like a child on Christmas morning. Firstly I had appeared on the homepage, which seems to be a rare gem of a thing to happen, and secondly I had made a sale.

I clicked on my account page and saw that I had sold not just one, but two pairs of earrings! Overfilled with joy I began to squeal with excitement. I felt so encouraged and relieved.

When I looked further down at the details I realised that I recognised the address. It was my parent-in-laws house! I racked my brain trying to figure out when I had told her about my shop, and whether I had tried to persuade her to buy something, but I’ve never told her anything about my Folksy page. After my birthday in the summer when she gave me some money to treat myself to some crafty bits I said that I really wanted to make a go of my craft business in the next year but I had never told her I had set up a shop yet.

Turns out that my sister-in-law (husbands, brothers, wife) who I invited to like my Facebook page told my mother-in-law about my Folksy shop, she checked it out, liked my items and bought some- social media does work after all!

I know that it is baby steps, but as long as they are steps I don’t mind. I love crafting and whether they are a relative of mine or not, it feels amazing for someone to like what you have made enough to spend their hard earned money on.

What an encouragement it is to make your first sale.

Here’s hoping that The Mead’s Craft House will continue to make these positive steps forward, it’s so encouraging and makes me feel so positive.

I think I’m going to do some more crafts tonight J

Customised Earrings

I realised this morning, after making a pair of nest-style earrings and deciding that I wanted to keep them for myself, that it’s a lot of fun being able to put your mark on something and to wear it yourself. Almost as fun as selling your handmade goods to others to wear! However, there’s only so far you can go with personalising a small item such as an earring. Long lengthy messages like your name, date of birth etc might not always work and I certainly do not have a steady enough hand for such intricacy. But one thing I love to be able to do is pick my own colours that reflect my personality, or match the outfits that I often wear.  I wear a lot of deep red and blue to work so I decided to go for a red bead, a blue one, and a pink one to soften the look. 

As a special deal for my lovely blog readers I want to put an offer out there where I will make you your own nest earrings- just like  in the above picture- with whatever bead combination you like.

Just pick three colours from the ones shown in the picture below and email me at themeadshouse@gmail.com along with your name and delivery address. 

The cost of the earrings will be the same as I charge for a pair normally- £8.50 with £1.50 postage for the UK. If you would like them delivered anywhere outside of the UK feel free to contact me and I will let you know how much the postage will be.

Happy colour picking!

 

(1- yellow, 2- green, 3- pink, 4- blue, 5- orange, 6- brown, 7- red)

My Earring Adventue

Jack and I have a habit of finding TV shows on Netflix and watching them obsessively in the evenings. First there was 24, then Breaking Bad, then Prison Break and now we are on House. I do love this but at the same time I can’t just sit there and watch TV- I take after my mum in that way. Watching shows became a bit more difficult with the sewing machine going in the background, so I wanted to find something that would keep me busy but wasn’t quite so annoying for Jack.

We went on a short holiday to Rome over the summer and there was a sweet little shop that was like an explosion of beads when you walked in. They sold beaded jewellery of all kinds and the whole shop was colour coded. I could have spent hours looking at everything, but we were only in Rome for 4 days so this seemed like a bit of a misuse of the time. Nonetheless I bought a cute pair of blue swirly earrings. Just a random comment here, but if any of you visit Rome any time soon, there’s an ice cream (gelato) shop near the Pantheon called il gelato di san crispino and it’s amazing so you must visit there- it was the ice cream shop from Eat Pray Love too!

When we got back I decided I wanted to start to try to make earrings, thinking I would enjoy it and on the off chance that I would be any good at it. As soon as I started I found it almost impossible to put them down. Though for some reason I bought the wrong colour hooks so I hard to order some more. You know what they say- a watched pot never boils! It felt like I’d waited forever and when they arrived in the post I was literally dancing with excitement… perhaps I shouldn’t be that excited, but I’m just so passionate about my little shop!

After an evening of attaching the hooks (and using up almost all 100 of them already!) and an entire morning of taking photographs I’m nearly ready to post them on my shop. https://folksy.com/shops/TheMeadsCraftHouse

 Here’s a sneaky preview of some of them!

I tend to like silver earrings myself- what do you guys prefer? Silver or gold?

Welcome to The Mead's Craft House

Firstly, let me say thank you for visiting my blog. Whether I have many readers or very few of them, all of you are making the difference to my ability to follow my dream. 

So, welcome to the blog for The Mead's Craft House! I hope you enjoy everything you see on here. If you are interested in seeing more of my creations, please check out my online shop: https://folksy.com/shops/TheMeadsCraftHouse

I also have a Facebook page, though forgive me as this is a working progress at the moment! Nonetheless please do like my page and share with your friends: https://www.facebook.com/TheMeadsCraftHouse

One of the best bits about hand crafted items is that they are unique and that's because they are made by people and not machines. After recently taking the plunge to start up my little business and opening up my shop on Folksy, I've been reading up on forums about how to get out there and interact with customers. It seems to be a regular theme that the customer wants to know more about the crafter- hence my blog. Here is the best place for you to get to know the Mead behind The Mead’s Craft House a little better.  

Now, I'm not very good at this bit as I don't like to talk about myself too much, but I'll give it a try....

I'm a twenty-something journalism graduate. After finishing university, my husband (then fiancée) wanted to move from London to Exeter where he had studied- he fell in love with the city and had gotten really involved in our church, Belmont.  The move happened very quickly, and I somehow ended up in a job in administration. Nice colleagues but zilch in the realm of creativity. There’s a limited amount of satisfaction you can get working with numbers and computer systems when all you want to do is craft.

I can’t remember exactly how I got into crafts. I always liked it as a kid but hadn’t really pursued it much until I went to university. I lived with a fashion student and was good friends with an art student and being around them made me want to do something more creative, so I started painting.

After we moved to Exeter, I hear a lot of people talking about a place called Trago Mills so I felt like I had to take a trip there. Before this point I had never really been interested in working with fabric, but I must say that Trago Mills has the most amazing (and rather cheap) fabric section I have ever seen. With no idea of what to do with it, I ended up buying some floral fabric. That’s how I got into making cushion covers and started toying with the idea of selling my crafts- as much as I love my cushion covers I don’t need 40 of them!

Maybe I will one day, but at the moment I haven’t settled on a main type of craft. I still paint every now and then, and I still work with fabric, but I have also gotten into making cards and gift tags and I love making beaded earrings too. I’ve got a box full of fabrics, buttons, beads, papers, embellishments, polystyrene balls, clay, paints- the list could go on! I love having my supplies there just waiting. Sometimes you feel inspired to make something and don’t want to wait to go out any buy your materials. For this reason, I think you should keep an eye on my pages- you never know what goodies might appear!

So whether you are a fellow crafter, or an individual looking for unique gifts for others or goodies for your own home, I really hope you enjoy my items and enjoy my blog.

Thanks again for reading!

Jennie J

Oh. And why is it called The Mead’s Craft House? Because at The Mead’s House everyone is welcome!