Remember....

.... the 'BIG' order that consumed my Summer.

90+ boxes that were filled to the brim with Christmas cards, place settings and decorative sticky tape. Well a lovely facebook follower let me know that she'd seen them in her local store, so I guess now they are 'out there' I can reveal where they all went.

It's to a retail chain of garden centre's called Dobbies.

I must confess until one moved into our local area I had never heard of them.

But they are big stores - 30+ stores around the UK, although predominately in Scotland and from 2008 they joined the giant that is Tesco's.

They do have a website and above is the interesting history of how the business has grown.

So after the tip off, I have been to visit our local store and there they were, dots and spots cards amongst their other Christmas bits and pieces.

I must say I did feel proud to see them there, I always get that little tingle of excitement when I see my stuff in a shop and when you lovely people out there, tell me where dots and spots goodies have been seen.

Fingers crossed they sell well and we will be doing it all again next year!!

Christmas Flyer

Due to the lateness in producing our Christmas wrap or I guess you could say, sharing next year's Christmas wrap early, we have put together a Christmas flyer for our trade customers to show off all our lovely dots and spots goodies, due to arrive the end of this week.

We sent ourselves a trial copy just to check it was all OK and it was so exciting to see it on the doormat! (Okay, silly little things get me excited!) but it does look very professional!

We will be sending out a variation of this card to all our lovely retail customers who have bought from our website, slightly later in the month. If you are a trade customer and didn't receive a copy - do please let us know and we can add you to any future mailing lists and if you did receive a copy and are interested in any of our products, do get in touch.

Busy weekend

Following on from the 2 recent posts on tins and boxes, I decided to cover a box with some of my wrapping paper, just to see what it looked like - and I like the idea! Will have to investigate further!

Jeff, my husband has been busy preparing the shop on our website for Christmas.

The wrapping paper is now loaded for you to view and if you click on any of the images on the page, they now enlarge! It's not available to buy yet but I hope to have it by the beginning of next week, if everything goes to plan.

We also have the matching Christmas gift tags for you to see - click through to the page to see all the various buying options.

I'm now working on a set of new smaller notebooks which will be available to buy either individually or in pairs (but not until the new year!) - there will be 16 different designs in total - should keep me out of mischief for the next few days.

My second unintentional collection of......

......boxes.

Now a couple of posts ago, I shared a little unintentional collection of tins with you and was quite pleased to hear you could understand my love affair with a tin! Then the lovely Rachel commented on facebook, if I had ever considered getting my designs printed onto boxes. I have.... but as with the tins, it's the quantities and storage that are currently stopping me from going forward.

But then it struck me just how many lovely boxes I have around my home and well maybe if I liked them so much, others might buy them too, so I may, when I have a moment, investigate further.

I must confess every room in the house has a box or two in it - even the bathroom (see above)

This little collection houses my small jewelry collection - yes I know there is a tin in the photo I forgot to share with you last time.

This bow is a favourite from IKEA - it was bought for Christmas.

Even Hubby has to have a lovely, flowery Cath Kidston box to house his cufflinks!

Sam has quite a few spotty boxes for all his bits and pieces

and Sophie has quite a collection in her room too - must be following in her mother's footsteps - such good taste!

My study is just as full of boxes, as it is tins - you can never have enough in my opinion......

........ but alas like the tins, they fade so badly in the direct sunshine.

This has to be my most used box - it's full of all the usable scraps of paper I get - would be lost without it!

Have a lovely weekend.

Party Time!

Firstly apologies if you think you have seen this post before, I somehow pressed 'publish post' once the images were loaded on, before adding any text - sorry, one of those mornings!

So back to the real matter - that, being parties.

We launched our range of new party invites, thank you's, party packs, magnets and wrap in July at the Harrogate - Home and Gift Trade Show and we have been over whelmed by the response - the invites, thank you's and magnets have all had to be re-printed already.

We have coordinating invites and thank you's for the boys and the girls - both have printed reverse sides to make the writing out a lot easier.

These Party Packs have been so very popular - ideal as a gift to give to the Birthday Boy or Birthday Girl or to give out as a party gift at the end of your party.

Each pack includes a notebook, 2 sheets of stickers and a magnet.

They can be bought for only £5.95

(£2.35 cheaper than if you bought all the items individually)

Our stickers have been with us for nearly a year now and are the perfect party extra - each pack contains 2 sheets so 30 fab stickers in all.

Of course you'll need to send a birthday card and these 2 fit the bill perfectly.

And finally you need to add the finishing touches with our new wrap!

Do email me if you are planning a party - we can offer a special price on our party packs, notebooks, magnets and stickers, if you want to order in larger quantities (more than 10)

info@dotsandspots.co.uk

A little unintentional collection

I seem to have developed a little collection unintentionally but never the less, a collection of tins all the same. I have no use for the above tin what so ever - I just liked it last time I was out shopping, so I bought it and then I started to look around at home at all the other tins I have scattered around the place.

The First Aid tin was a present, bought from Cath Kidston (you will soon realise quite a few of my tins have been purchased from Cath Kidston)

This tiffin tin, meant for food and snacks is the perfect tin for plasters!!

This tin was from Next - part of a set of 3 but has become terribly faded in the sun in my studio - it's supposed to be for coffee but is full of scraps of sandpaper.

This tower of tins is a real mix of Cath Kidston, Tesco's and Next (another of the set of 3!) These too are faded from the sun but neatly store away bits and pieces.

This trio of tins, again a mix of Cath Kidston and Tesco's live in the larder cupboard and are home to the biscuits, cakes and a few sweet treats.

These 2 tins were bought from the Flea Market - and have so far been spared from being filled yet. They sit on the top of an old cupboard, so far out of sight, out of mind but I'm sure they won't remain empty for long!

A tin for string obviously and a really pretty tin from Greengate which was part of a set of 3, stuffed to the brim with all those little bits and pieces you don't know where to put!

This union jack tin was a present for my husband last Christmas and has stayed on the shelf where it was put when unwrapped! Looks nice though, just propped up on it's side.

This little Greegate tin is filled with all the odd birthday candles that get left over. It's full to the top so never a birthday without candles here.

This set of 3 Cath Kidston star tins sits nicely in an old French glass wall cupboard and are pretty in themselves - they hide the Calpol, inhalers, paracetamol etc.

And finally this lovely old Greengate tin - my favourite, sits on the dresser and hides all those bits of paper you feel you can't throw away. There are more tins, quite a few more and probably even more will be added to the collection over the coming months as the lovely festive tins come into the shops - I have spied some rather nice festive tins in Laura Ashley already.

I would love to see my designs on a selection of tins but the order quantities scare me for now and where would I store them all?

One day - maybe!

Festive gift wrap is on it's way!

As you know, over the past few weeks I have been working on a range of gift wrap for the festive season. We are quite late in 'trade terms' as quite a lot of shops will have done there Christmas buying a long time ago but we thought we would try to sneak in past the finishing post and see if we could tempt any of our trade buyers before the Christmas season is in full swing.

I produce the imagery and then work with my printers, to do all the technical wizardry stuff to turn my initial collages into the fab wrap that has been created.

We have 3 festive designs - all double sided with a complimentary red and cream pattern on the reverse. Each sheet is printed here in the UK on 90gsm, uncoated, acid free paper.

Festive Faces

(a favourite for children)

Candy Canes

Festive Puds!

These are the final proofs and it's all systems go at the printers as I type, so should be with me by the end of the month. I have been busy today photographing our Christmas goodies in preparation for a 'Festive Flyer' to be sent out to our trade customers in the next week or so.

My poor, hard working husband has a week now, to get everything up and ready on our trade website and on our main website in readiness for the festive season and all you early bird shoppers.

I'm going to lock myself away and get busy onto my next design project now.

Have a lovely weekend.