Natural arts and crafts products from Wellington, Somerset

I have been busy working on new ideas for my business in the last few months. I have finally realised that to make a success of my small business; I need to make some changes to how I operate as there is no way in which I can make everything myself. This, for me, was a major hurdle I had to cross; I have always needed to be in complete control of everything, this is nothing new I have been like this since I was a child, but it has taken me until this year to acknowledge that it is not necessarily a good thing. Since March, I have been learning or rather teaching myself the basics of bookbinding, making a wide variety of designs and styles of notebooks and stationery items. There is so much scope in this skill and the things that I can create, but equally important for me to take on board is that making notebooks is not a quick job, especially if you have problems with your hands. So I have made one significant earth-shattering change, I still design all my notebooks and create the images so that I am still involved in their creation, but after much soul searching, I now send them to a printer to be produced. I did a lot of research before making my decision, but I am delighted with my choice. The same has happened with my card ranges, of which I have three at present, two of the ranges are created from my own artwork, and the other content is based on prints from children's magazines published in the early 1900s; these are all black and white line drawings and hark back to a simpler time. I aim to bring them back to the wider public so that more people can enjoy the skills of these long gone and predominantly unnamed artists. I always use my mum as my sounding board for all my new ideas as her way of looking at things is different to mine; she also has the advantage over me in that she knows me very well and understands how I think. My suggestion to get some of my notebooks and all of my cards printed got past my gatekeeper safely, and we are both pleased with the results. My second idea took a bit longer for her to get her head around, not that she was against it in principle, but my second idea was in a different league; this time, I was considering buying a range of cards and notebooks from another artist, my mum was worried how I would feel if they sold better than my creations, I told her that I could accept that as they were both eye-catching and utterly different to anything that I have ever created or ever could. The questions were valid, but she accepted my choice and having now seen the notebooks and cards, she is in complete agreement with me. There are many other things that I am working on at the moment and not just my range of Christmas items. I know it seems shocking we haven't even reached summer proper, although we are nearly at the longest day, and here I am talking about Christmas, but when you are making and designing all your products, there is no such thing as too early. With this thought, I will sign off for today.

So why do I have a photo of the path to the Wellington Monument at the top of this post? There are several reasons for me personally I find it very calming; it is very quiet even when there are other people around; it is still very peaceful, on a hot and sunny day, to be able to sit under a tree where the air is fresh and cool, is for people like me sheer bliss we can enjoy being outside without suffering. I am very lucky to have the Wellington Monument close to my home, but there are many other places close to where I live that I can go.

I was going to name this blog The Phoenix Rises, but I am not a phoenix. I am Crafting Butterfly, and today marks the beginning of my climb from the darkness of trials of the last few years back into the light and the chance to soar up into the sky. I have relearned old skills that I thought were lost to me forever and learnt new ones. Sometimes it is necessary to look at the things you want to do, work out what makes them complex and find the tools to make them more accessible. The first challenge I faced was sewing; whilst I can manage to hand sew, admittedly slowly but I make up for that by being very neat, no the problem was that I was having issues using scissors. A few minutes was the limit. Help was at hand, though; in the guise of someone who believed in me, we went and bought me the most helpful machine ever; my mother calls it the Critter; I call it my extra pair of hands. Everyone else calls it a Cricut. Painted glass bottles were something I took up during the first year of lockdown. It was a new skill but never a challenge as I love colour and geometric shapes. When I altered the items I made, I was left with boxes and boxes of assorted bottles and jars, it seemed such a waste to take them to be recycled, so in my wisdom, I thought to myself, why not paint sell them. I researched both methods and paints and tried some out to see which worked best; I settled on the Pebeo range of glass paint. Soon I was surrounded by painted bottles and jars and had nowhere to store them, which was always a problem for me. I don't know the meaning of moderation; it is all or nothing. My final challenge was a challenge last year. The National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRA Sthey) was celebrating 20 years since its foundation; it set up #DoThe20Challenge to raise funds. I chose to create 20 multimedia images, I did achieve my target, which was excellent, but I found I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing, especially when I got past the feeling that I couldn't paint because I couldn't draw; that idea has well and truly been blasted away. So I would like to invite those of you who have read to the end of this blog to join me on my adventure of discovery into what one woman can achieve with her pair of her, at times, very disobedient hands. So far, I have found that nothing is impossible for me; it often takes imagination and a good range of tools, but I have managed to achieve the things I have set my mind to. Long may it continue