Crafting with my best friend

I have just had a wonderful Sunday being crafty with my best friend Kath. Its not something we get to do that much anymore as she lives just outside London and also has a 11 month old daughter Amy, who I am godmother too, so life is pretty busy. Ka th ventured down to mine this morning armed with all her jewellery making things and fresh muffins and lots of herbal tea :-) After re-arranging my usual work area to accommodate both of us we had a perfect workspace for two over looking my little garden and with the sunlight pouring in, perfect!

Girlies at our little work station!

So with plenty of girlie gossip to catch up on and with a constant flow of tea we had a hugely productive 5 hours of crafting. Its always so much more fun having someone to bounce ideas off and actually I stay so much more focused with someone to chat too.

So here are our efforts, two beautiful pairs of earings and a necklace by Kath, and I managed to complete my card order for a kitchen shop in Lymington, Kitchen Matters. Vicki of Kitchen Matters, has requested card similar to my 'I Love Tea' brooches so I really hope she likes these. I will get these listed on both my Folksy and NOTHS stores soon too so you all can all get your hands on them!

Kaths beautiful necklace and earings and my semi finished cards

My finished 'I Love Tea' cards for Kitchen Matters

HUGE apologies and a very Merry Christmas!

It has been far too long since I lasted posted an entry on my blog so I am very sorry.

Jim Jam Sandwich totally took off this Christmas and I was so inundated with orders that after coming home from my full time job every day I have been working until about midnight most nights making brooches and cards. Having only started with NOTHS a year ago and not being that well established back then, I didn't have any idea of how busy I could possibly get. I ended up having on average about 4 - 5 orders a day with some through Folksy as well. I have been so thrilled :-) It has been incredibly hard work but hopefully worth it in getting my name out there. It seems my 'I Love Tea' brooches have been my best seller to date and I have a few new similar ideas for the New Year so watch this space!

In amongst the Christmas rush I also had an order from No8 in France requesting Christmas cards and lots of brooches. Eve asked me to make some 'J'adore Cafe' brooches to see how they went down with the French. I was quite pleased with how these turned out so they will making an appearance on my NOTHS and Folksy shops in the next coming weeks.

I did a blog giveaway a few months ago which I also must hugely apologise for not announcing the winners of. I promise to do this on my return in January and two lucky people who left a comment will still win one of my brooches x

Anyway I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and very Happy New Year. Thank you to all my followers and fans for helping JJS to do so well. I'm off to Borneo for Christmas to try and soak up some sun (inbetween thunder storms!) and to climb Mt Kinabalu so there will be lots of photos on my return.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

Jim Jam Sandwich in France!!

I had a large card order over summer from a lovely little shop in the south of France called No8 and I have just received photos of my cards in situ! No8 is a gorgeous boutique shop in Auberterre in the Bordeaux region selling beautiful gifts, accesories and my cards :-) Eve has sold most of them and is hopefully about to place an order for some more.

How cute is this little place... You can see my cards on the top two shelves below.

Christmas card designs are here at last....

Its taken me quite a while longer than I hoped but what with a new job which is taking a lot of my time and energy up its been hard to find the time to get these done.

So far I've done two designs, a Christmas Pud and some little Christmas Robins. Both card designs have been handmade using felt, fabrics, buttons and sequins. They are listed on both my NOTHS and Folksy stores. I have another few designs up my sleeve which I hope to get done by the end of next week.

I would really appreciate any feedback from all my lovely followers.......

Watch out for my next blog giveaway which will be coming in the next week.

And the 2 winners are.....

8. CRAFTY ELSIE

&
9. MARICE

CONGRATULATIONS you've both won one of my new Fairy Cupcake cards

They will be winging their way to you in the post asap. Please can you email me your addresses (link on my blog). Thank you to everyone who entered and for sharing what type of tea (or coffee!) they would choose to accompany one of my little cupcakes.

Marice has a wonderful shop on Folksy called Marice's World so make sure you go and have a look at all the lovely things she sells.

Sadly Crafty Elsie is a new follower and I'm not sure what/if she sells but please let me know if you do so I can mention your details too.

The two winners were randomly picked using Random.org

For those of you who didn't win this time I will be doing another giveaway in the next few weeks so keep your eyes open for it. I hope you've all had a great National Cupcake Week. x

National Cupcake Week!

I can't believe I didn't know about this until this morning, how amazing! And funnily enough I have spent all afternoon making my 'Cherry Cup Cake' and 'I Love Tea' brooches, very appropriate I thought!

So as you're well aware from my designs, I love cupcakes too! So to celebrate, Jim Jam Sandwich is offering 15% DISCOUNT all week on all my cupcake related items (cards, brooches & framed pieces) on my Folksy store. When ordering please use the code NCW.

AND I'm giving away two of these cute little Fairy Cake cards that I made today using a lovely new printed fabric I bought at the weekend. To be in for a chance to WIN one all you need to do is become a follower of my blog and leave me a comment stating what tea you think would best to accompany this little Fairy cake :-) I will announce the winners on Friday.

There are also lots of other fellow bloggers, crafters and tweeters helping raise awareness of this very special week including some great cupcake giveaways which not must not be missed out on!

Domestic Sluttery are giving away a box of cupcakes (from Cupcakes & Peonies) every day this week so make sure you check out their blog every morning to enter.

New Mummys Tips has also just posted a cupcake related post on her blog with some great exclusive cupcake products and offers so another must to check out this week. Carol has very kindly mentioned Jim Jam Sandwich and all my cupcake related brooches, cards and frames so thank you.

So, Happy National Cupcake Week everyone and I hope there will be lots of glorious indulging! xx

MY FIRST FREEBIE GIVEAWAY!

Slowly my networking seems to be paying off and I'm meeting lots of fantastic fellow crafters and wonderful fans. In an endeavor to attract more Jim Jam Sandwich followers and as a thank you to everyone who has supported me so far I thought I would do my first giveaway :-) Its something I want to do more regularly once I've got more products in my range so this is just the start.
This first one will only be a small giveaway but a freebie nonetheless! As my cards are what spurred me on to start up Jim Jam Sandwich in the first place I will be giving away two of my lovely hand made cards to one lovely person, one gorgeous Cup Cake card (above) and an Embroidered Heart card (below) with messages of your choice on the front. All you need to do to be in for the chance to win them is to leave a comment below this post. I will choose a winner at random on Thursday 13th xx

Commission

One of my friends commissioned me to make a Fairy Godmother card which had to include a wand with a star and silver thread! This is stitched using felt and metallic thread. Apologies about the awful lighting, the photos were taken very late last night at home! Hope you like it Hels! x

Shop Handmade UK

I've recently joined this great website called Shop Handmade UK which is the UK's largest directory of artists, designers and makers of quality hand made goods. Its a really wonderful website to source lovely unique gifts from and also nice to support small businesses and designers in the UK at the same time. I'm listed under cards/stationery so come and have look.

They also do features on designers and I particularly love Yunisacs who was featured in April. Such beautiful purses. I want one of these, her large Tea Garden purse!

20% discount for all my blog followers and FB fans.

For the next two weeks I'm offering a lovely 20% discount for all my Facebook fans and blog followers. This is just to say thank you for supporting me. This applies to all my card designs and my new little cup cake brooches. You can view all my designs on my online stores Folksy and notonthehighstreet.com. Please email me directly if you would like to order anything.

Cards galore all weekend!

I had an incredibly busy weekend getting all the cards made for my order for No8 in France. I started cutting out all the shapes on Friday evening (whilst watching Wimbledon highlights with a cold beer which probably slowed down proceedings!), was stitching everything together most of Saturday, embellishing Sunday and I have finally just bagged and boxed all 39 cards! I can't wait to get them sent off and get Eve's response down in the South of France.

Here are a few photos of my cards in progress and all safely wrapped up and ready to go :-) Eve is going to send me some photos of them once they are displayed in her shop, I can't wait!

Engagement card approval..

I have been meaning to get around to designing and making an engagement card for ages. Thankfully my friend (girl on tour) ordered four from me this week so there was no excuse not to get on with it!

I am posting this especially for her as she lives far away from me and I want her to give me the ok on it. G.O.T. what do you think?

The band is made using metallic threads and the cluster of jewels is a combination of pearl and clear beads. Greetings can be personalised, or simply 'engagement' or 'congratulations' put on
the front.

This will be up on my online store by the end of the week.

Wedding Season is upon us.

Here is my first Wedding Card design of the season, there will be more to come so watch this blog!!

This very special Wedding Cake Card is hand made using felt, metallic threads and finished with beautiful little sequin and bead embellishments. This can be personalised. For more details and to order please visit my online store.

Fathers Day Cards now on sale!

Its Fathers Day on the 21st June so not long to go. Here are two new designs, both of which are now available to buy directly from my online store.

Both designs are lovingly hand made using felt, vintage fabrics and stitching. They are both finished with personalised hand embroidery.