Do Me a Favour!

6 months ago I agreed to make wedding favours for my good friends, Chris & Anna, who are getting married next week. After discussion with the couple, we decided I would fill 4 oz hexagonal glass jars with an assortment of homemade jams, jellies & chutneys, made predominantly with fruits gathered from local hedgerows, with one for each of their 144 guests.

Back in June I posted about the Gooseberry & Elderflower Preserve I made, which filled the first dozen or so jars. Since then, I have been gathering fruits as they ripen, & slowly but surely all 144 jars have been filled with a mixture of the following 7 preserves:

• Gooseberry & Elderflower Preserve
• Pear, Apricot & Ginger Chutney
• Raspberry & Bramble Jam
• Spiced Apple Chutney
• Apple Jelly
• Hawthorn Jelly
• Plum & Ginger Chutney

Once all the jars were filled, I set about decorating each one with pretty ribbon in the couples’ wedding colours & cute little custom stickers, which were made by fellow Etsyian, Alyssa of Alyssa Art & say ‘Spread the Love’ along with the couples’ names & the date of their wedding.

I think the jars look really cool when all stacked together & especially like the way the jellies look when light shines through them.

Chris & Anna love the end result, & hopefully the guests at their wedding next week will do too. Here’s to the happy couple!

You can see more pictures of the favours, taken by my partner (who is to be official photographer at Chris & Annas’ wedding) here.

Dogs, Dragons and Lagomorphs

The Dog House meets Dragon House (of Yuen)

A fortnight ago I purchased a birthday card for my Dad from Etsy shop Dragon House of Yuen. Usually I have to wait (impatiently!) for my Etsy purchases to arrive via the post, but this one arrived on my doorstep along with its creator! Meeting a fellow Etsy seller in person was a first for me, but it was so lovely to meet Annette & share a cup of tea & a chin-wag.

Annette & her lagomorphs

Annette lives in nearby Edinburgh with her fiance & 2 rescue rabbits, Arabella & Wesley. Her rabbits are the inspiration behind many of her creations, which include cards, watercolours, bags, soft sculptures & ACEOs. Everything is her own design & handmade with great love and attention to detail.

Arabella, Annette’s beautiful rescue doe – from Little Critterz Rescue Sanctuary in Perthshire, Scotland

Wesley, Annette’s very handsome rescue buck – from the Rabbit & Guinea Pig Welfare Rescue Centre in Rugby, England

An avid supporter of various charities including WSPA, the BUAV, Rabbit & Guinea Pig Welfare and the Buckeye House Rabbit Society, Annette donates a percentage of some of her sales to these charities, as well as donating some of her hand-crafted items to be raffled.

2 of Annette’s amazing handmade bags – the one on the left is modelled on Arabella & the one on the right on Wesley!

Some of Annette’s unique soft sculptures – baby hare, baby rabbit & baby feline

Annette paints beautiful watercolour pet portraits. She accepts commissions &, if your pet is a rescue animal,  will gladly donate 20% of the total cost of the painting to your animal rescue centre or charity.

A portrait Annette painted of her special rescue rabbit, Zai, who sadly is no longer with her

Annette is a fellow member of both the Etsy For Animals & McEtsy teams, which is how I came to ‘meet’ her online. Her sunny personality shines through in her active participation of these teams & she has a unique talent of pulling together the work of fellow artists to create beautiful treasuries, often with poignant messages relating to her love of nature & animals.

One of Annette’s many curations . This one’s entitled ‘Soul Shaker’ & is part of a trilogy of treasuries with fellow Etsyians Pey & Pat

So many grey hares

Like everything Annette sells, the custom birthday card I had ordered arrived beautifully packaged. Annette had also included a generous selection of samples of her other work, including a puffin image which I am particularly fond of!

The card featured decades of little grey hares, in fact one white cut-out baby hare with added fur detailing in pencil for every year of my Dad’s life (& that’s quite a lot of hares!). Annette had printed then cut-out each individual hare and adhered them onto the A6 card, which opened accordion-style.

The message, which is revealed line by line as you open the card, read:

“It’s that time again!!!

Happy Birthday

Uh – Oh!

So many

Grey Hares!!

Whew!!”

A creative & unique card, Annette can custom make this card for the ‘oldie’ (Sorry Dad!) in your life by tailoring the number of grey hares. I just love it, & so did my Dad!

Dining on kale

The kale which we sowed in our garden earlier this year – we now have a bumper crop & don’t know what to do with it all!

I sent Annette home with a bag full of kale from our garden, which she informs me is a favourite of Arabella & Wesleys’. Although Annette was very taken with both Max & Molly, we decided it was probably best if those two never got to meet her lagomorphs in person! Although, I hope that I may have the privilege of doing so some day soon…

Arabella & Wesley tuck into some kale

You can read Annette’s blog post about our meeting here.

The Alchemist

Alchemy is a space on Etsy where buyers can post requests for custom items. Sellers then bid on the opportunity to make the item and win the sale. It’s an opportunity to collaborate with a crafter or artisan to get exactly what you’re seeking.

My Alchemy purchases

As a buyer, I have used the Alchemy process to acquire unique, handmade customised items for my dog walking business, as well as for the wedding favours which I am in the process of creating for my friends’ wedding later this year:

Dog ID tags by Remember Wynn, car window decal by Christina Kosinski Designs, jam jar lid stickers by Alyssa Arts

My Alchemy sales

As a seller, I have successfully bid on numerous requests requiring screen printing of an image onto fabric. I’ve received great feedback on my custom orders & love this aspect of my work. Here are a few of the Alchemy projects I have completed:

Che-style T-shirt with Churchill

T-shirt with Japanese logo

T-shirts for Pet Sitting business

T-shirts for Massage business

T-shirt with Neil Degrasse Tyson

Dr Who T-shirt

Howling wolf T-shirt

Retro film camera toddler T-shirt

If you have a (photographic) image of your own which you would like me to convert & screen print onto an item & would like to place a custom order, please get in touch. As you can see from above, images need not only be of greyhounds, or indeed dogs!

You can see all the custom orders I have completed here.

My top tips for Alchemy bidders

Tempted to try your own hand at Alchemy? Don’t expect all your bids to be accepted – there is a lot of tough competition out there! Around one in four of the bids I submit tend to be accepted, & I’m happy with that. Here are my top tips for successful Alchemy bidding:

• Value your own work & do not undersell yourself – people assume cheap is cheap for a reason! Plus, do you really want to spend your time working for peanuts?

• Be specific in what you can & can’t make e.g. specify sizes, colours, fonts, time frames etc

• Be flexible – give the customer a few options to choose from & state you are happy to work with their ideas

• Highlight any positive feedback you have received on previous (similar) alchemy requests (give a link)

• Give links to similar projects you have completed, whether that be in your sold items or on your blog or wherever.

• Most importantly (I think), work with the customer to create exactly what they want – communicate with them via convo’ / email (whichever they prefer) throughout the whole process, updating them on the status on their order & checking things with them. I like my customers to come away feeling as if they have had as much input into their custom creation as I have.

For further details of how Alchemy requests & bidding work, please see this overview & read the rules. Have fun bringing your own & others’ creative ideas to life!

Building Business With Our Hands

My dog walking business, Let The Dogs Out has been up & running for over 3 months now & I’m pleased to say that the service seems to be a success! I am currently walking dogs of all shapes & sizes across Midlothian, East Lothian & the South of Edinburgh. My feet are well travelled & glad to get a rest at the end of each day, but I’m loving every minute of it!

Thanks to a talented bunch of people I have met through Etsy, I have been able to build my business the handmade way, reflecting my own personal style…

Remember Wynn

All  my clients  receive a complementary identity tag for each of their dogs. The tags are engraved with my mobile number & should be worn whenever dogs are in my care. They fasten easily onto any dog’s collar & can be removed in between times if you wish.  Thank you to Angie of Remember Wynn for creating these custom tags for me.

Christina Kosinki Designs

You can  spot me transporting clients’ dogs to & from walks with my rear windscreen decal! Special thanks to Christina of Christina Kosinki Designs for making this custom decal for me.

Woof Purr Creations

The dogs love to play with these fabulous recycled tennis ball / fleece loop tug toys while on their walks. They are not only safer than most pet-shop bought toys but also earth friendly. Thanks to Kim of Woof Purr Creations, who handmade & customised these toys for me.

The Dog House

I put my own  skills to work designing & hand printing myself a colourful collection of dog walking apparel. So you can spot me out & about dog walking in my handmade Let The Dogs Out hoodies & T’s!

The Dog House has also designed & printed custom T-shirts for several other small businesses, including other pet-sitters.

Churchill, Che-style

One of my latest screen printing projects is a custom order I undertook via Etsy’s Alchemy, a facility through which buyers can post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bid on the opportunity to make the goods. The request was for a T-shirt printed in the style of the infamous Che Guevara image, but featuring Winston Churchill!

First I converted the above photograph of Churchill to a monochrome image, which you can see on the right above. Then I transferred this image to a reusable printing screen, using a technique similar to the one described in this tutorial. Both the screen & the resulting image are shown below.

I printed the image onto a red organic cotton T-shirt using black non-toxic fabric ink. The end result was the striking T-shirt shown below, which not only was the customer very pleased with, but my partner has demanded I create a duplicate of for him!

I always welcome custom orders! If you have a photographic image of your own which you would like me to convert & screen print onto an item for you I’ll be happy to take a look. As you can see, photographs need not only be of greyhounds or even dogs! Please enquire via my online shop, The Dog House, or drop me an email at thedoghouse.etsy@googlemail.com.