Scrap attack!

I have been banned from Spotlight by my husband until I make some more money by selling some of the things I've already made.(Quite rightly so since I always manage to find some fabulous but quite unnecessary fabric that I'm sure I could make something with!). I've decided to look at this positively and see it as a chance to get creative with the fabric I already have (of which I must admit there is quite a lot!).

I decided first to tackle my massive box of scraps. These past couple of weeks I've been watching the Australian Open Tennis, so cutting up my scraps has been something I can do while watching that. I'm cutting squares, rectangles and triangles, some scraps are going in the girls craft box, and the remainder cut up for stuffing.

Today I decided to have a go at putting it together. I've never taken much notice of quilting before, so just spread out the squares and stitched! It seemed to work ok, Then for want of a better thing to do with the finished square, I folded it over, stitched around and stuffed it with the aforementioned stuffing scraps. Hey Presto, Mickey now has a pillow!

I'm sure there are lots more things I can make with these scraps, I guess I just have to get better with choosing and arranging the fabrics for maximum visual effect! Perhaps I'll try cushion covers, bags, pencil cases.... and they won't cost me a penny to make! Perfect!

Jill

The next step?

We're coming up to JeMbellish's first birthday next month, and looking back over our first year we're awfully proud of what we've achieved so far. We've got a good range of quality products, and we're even beginning to get repeat customers!

The monthly stall we set up at the local shopping centre at Mt Sheridan, is doing well. The centre is small and quiet, but plans have finally been approved for its expansion to 3 times its current size! Work is due to start on that in a couple of months, and we're looking forward to the increased volume of people it will bring past our stall!

But since that is going to take several months, we're looking at what we can do to promote ourselves a bit more. We've been working on our website, making it more user friendly, and also as you can see, we're now learning about the delights of blogging!

We have lots of ideas floating around that we are currently discussing. But the next idea to be trialled is to make use of my ambition to be a published writer! I have written a short romance story, which we are going to give away to our subscribers! Hopefully this will bring increased interest in our little fledgling business, and also give me some feedback on my skill as a writer!

Watch this space to see how our creative promotion works out!!

Jill

Aprons

Well, I was inspired by a friend's child's tupperware birthday party at the weekend, where the kids all got to cook, dressed in luminous yellow tupperware aprons!! I've been planning to try out aprons for a while, ever since my daughter got to bring home the kindy cooking pack with contained a groovy apron and chef's hat, and we had fun in the kitchen creating 'freckle faces'. She loved wearing the apron, it did sort of save her clothes from the mess (although my daughter is particularly good at mess and would need a full body suit to truly save her clothes when baking!)

Anyway, today I finally whipped up a couple of basic aprons for my girls. They're nice and simple to make and turned out very well. These will make a good addition to our market stall stock, particularly in our latest drive to add 'useful' items rather than just gifts.

Jill

New set up

Well market stall day went well, considering it was just a couple of weeks after Christmas and nobody has any money left to buy anything!

After forgetting one of our tables, we ended up shuffling our display around and finding a newer, better set up than before! See the photo!!

My new hats drew a fair bit of attention, and I sold one which was good!

This month is all about getting our website streamlined and paypal set up so people can easily order and pay online. It's a steep learning curve, but we're getting there!!

Jill

Hats, hats, hats

Well, the next market stall is in two days and I'm almost ready! I managed to finish off 6 hats today (my new line) and have 8 more cut out to do tomorrow. Phew! They're turning out really well and I love the cute fabrics I've got for them. Fairies and ballerinas for the girls, doggies and racing outfits for the boys. Hopefully the public will like them too and I'll get some sales! Since hats are something that's an everyday need rather than the gifts we've been selling, perhaps that will broaden our market a little!

I wish I'd thought of making hats years ago. I've always struggled to find nice hats for my girls at a decent price. Oh well, they'll have a good supply now! And I've got ready made models for photos for the website! (they model the boys hats very well too!!)

Jill

Here goes

Well here is our first blog post for JeMbellish. An addition to our website:

http://www.jembellish.com/ which we set up almost a year ago, together with our market stall, to sell things we make ourselves.

This is the beginning of our grand master plan to continue working from home when our kids are in school full time (for me - Jill, that's this year! Michelle still has one more year to go!).

We are still getting our name out there and JeMbellish is still in its infancy, but we're enjoying being creative, having something that is truly ours, and of course one day a month when we get to drink coffee and chat while we man our stalls and our wonderful supportive husbands take care of our kids!!

Ok, since it's my first post, I'm going to see if I can add a photo......ooohh it worked!! This is a picture of one of our market stalls earlier last year. Gosh, makes me realised how much we've evolved in a few short months. I think our stall looks much better now!! must try and add a new photo, perhaps after this month's stall, which is this Saturday coming.

Well, before I descend into endless waffle, I'd better stop for now!