The new Love, Heart, Home - Lots of pictures!

Well we started at 4.30 Saturday evening after the shop closed and we have worked all day both Sunday and Monday but finally the shop is Finished, well nearly! I still have a few tweaks to do and a bit more stock to put out.

I will give you a tour shall I? Apologies for the picture quality but my camera batteries were flat so I was recharging them for a few minutes then taking as many photos as I could then putting them back onto charge then photos and so on so the photos are not the best quality.

First the Kitchen section which is the first thing you see as you enter the shop

The Kitchen area needs a few new bits to fill it up.

Then the bathroom - Bedroom section, there was a nice mirror hanging where the heart picture frames are but a passer by came in and wanted to buy it so it went!

We then move to the Baby - Children's section

This is one of my favourites, all of the girls hanging items now are hung on the trellis and the boys hang on the ladder.

Now the Living room - Hallway section

This area really needs some new stock making for it but we have never had a defined area like this before, I really love the way this looks, the large unit was built with removable shelves so I could add or take away as I needed too, The log effect fire was from my old house and now sits on a 'Granite' slab, its MDF really painted Black and spattered with French Grey and Ivory paint then lacquered.

This is the corner to the right of the fire and the space were my Christmas tree will stand  as it wall be visible both in the shop and the window display.

The counter area was vastly cut down and unfortunately my camera really died before I could take all of those pictures but here is my ribbon/craft and the wrapping paper stands both of which we lost moving the till area

I bought the bookcase for £4-00 from a car boot sale and painted it, it is now filled with baskets of ribbon, ric rac, buttons, felt etc

I bought the umbrella stand and revamped it to hold my wrapping paper.

And here is the workroom before and after

It took me another 2 hours to tidy the workroom once we had finished and although the shop still needs a few bits doing at least it can open this morning in its brand new state.

Well what do you think to the new shop?

The new shop layout has started

A few weeks ago I wanted to re-organise my shop as I wanted it to be seperated into sections, Lounge and Hallway, Kitchen, Bath and Bedroom, Baby and Children making shopping easier for our customers, after drawing up a scribbled plan on a piece of paper which I have lost now we decided to wait until this bank Holiday weekend to do it, well the turn round has started and last night my beautiful shop looked like this

Tony, Stuart and karen are working on opening up a box that was built behind the pillar, this will be the new till area and the new space will be shelved out to hold my carrier bags etc

Karen, Stuart and Tony all hard at work

Large unit cut down and counter out

The large unit had to have 8" cut off it so it would fit on this side of the shop, there is a beam running down this side along the ceiling and as the unit was built to go the other side it made it too tall to be moved across without being cut down. When I first fitted the shop out I had a rather large counter built to take up space as at that time the shop looked too big to fill, now that counter is being made much, much smaller. I had the words Love, Heart, Home cut out of MDF which I painted Cranberry and had them fixed to the front of the counter, hopefully these will be saved and reused in the shop as they cost quite alot of money. 

 Why are we doing this without emptying the shop first? well here is a picture of the workroom having moved everything under the counter and off the tall unit, there was no room left to move anything else so we had to work around the rest of the stock

Hopefully we will get the bulk of it finished today and refill with the stock tomorrow, I have a few new lines that I have made but have waited until this was all done before even thinking of putting them out so they will be on sale next week as well.

So after stressing about this for a week it has finally started and there is no going back, hopefully I will be back with more photos later to show the progress we have made.

What are you all up too this bank Holiday weekend?

Happy Wednesday everyone!

I really feel good about today for some reason, not sure why I am just so happy with my life at the moment, I feel very blessed to have such a lovely family and I am very lucky to have my own business, I love working for myself even though it can be quite stressful at times.

I want to show you a few things that we have been making in the shop since I got back, first we had an order from my friend Bill who needed a very special Birthday card for his Mother in law who is 101 today,

Happy Birthday Gwen!

The boxed card

Front of the box

Top of the box

Karen made this gorgeous card for Gwen using the fabulous tissue paper flowers, I don't know how they are made but they look gorgeous, Karen had the box so made the whole card to fit, once it was made I helped by making an acetate cover for it so it could be displayed.

We have also been busy with some new ideas, I have been open for nearly 6 months now so I have been evaluating the stock we have and I want to add more Shabby Chic and Vintage looking items, the ones we have had have been extremely popular with our customers so I want to extend those lines, I love that look and think it will sit nicely with our existing stock.

Here are a few bits and some of the new colours we have been using

Sets of Magnetic pegs, these make great stocking fillers and are already quite popular, the top 2 are Laura Ashley Peony and Duck egg and the bottom 2 are the new Christmas colours we are using

and these

Painted Hearts

My Daughters Sarah and Vicky along with my Daughter in law Marie have been busy helping out, on Sunday they helped me get started on one of the new Christmas lines; Rag Wreaths which are stunning even if I do say so myself, I don't want to publish the pictures of these yet as Christmas is still too far away but here are some of the other wreaths made for new baby gifts.

New baby Boy

New baby Girl

Both of these have either a Heart or Star hanging in the centre which can be personalised on both the front and back so there is plenty of room to add Baby's details.

So the rest of this week is going to be busy, I have craft club both tonight and tomorrow and the rest of the time will be spent designing some new wooden lines my lovely hubby will make for me and getting ready for the major revamp of the shop this weekend, I wanted to do it a few weeks ago but decided to wait for the bank holiday so we have plenty of time to do it, we will start after closing on Saturday and we have until Tuesday morning to get it all done, I have bought a few new stands and am really looking forward to seeing all the drawings come to life. I must remember the before and after photos!

Its going to be a busy week!

Hi everyone, I'm back!!!

Just a quick post this morning to say I am back from my week off and I have loads of new ideas for the shop.

I can't say I really enjoyed my holiday but the week off gave me some relax time and gave me the chance to think of some new ideas for the shop.

I said the other week that I was going to revamp the shop, well that has been put off until next week as it will be a long weekend with it being a bank holiday, hopefully it will look as good as it does on paper when its done.

I have contacted a couple of lovely ladies who have agreed to become suppliers to us with their gorgeous goods so hopefully more about that in the next few days.

This will be the last week I open on a Monday, I only open for the morning and have decided that having the whole day off is more beneficial to me so as of next week we will only be open Tuesday to Saturday except for seasonal opening.

Well thats it for this morning, I hope to post later with some new photos.

Have a great Monday everyone!

Well it's back to ...

the day job for me, well night job. Maz is back from her well earned break and raring to go. Her head full of ideas and inspiration.
I enjoyed my week in the shop, even did some painting and made some bits n pieces to sell. Getting clever at this painting malarkey LOL.
Back to my comfort zone of cards now. I can't wait to get in my craft room and get colouring and creating.
I'd like to thank my visitors over the week you're support is much appreciated.

Am off as I'm back at work tonight, so need some sleep. T T F N .




PS. Pop back soon for some exciting news. Sssshhh can't say too much at the moment.

I shall be away next week but...

Karen will be here holding the fort for me, Karen will be on hand to look after the shop and keep things ticking along until I get back so a huge thank you to her for giving up her holiday from work so I can take my holiday.


As I am away all next week I wanted to get all my orders done even though some are for Christmas I didn't want to leave without making sure they were all finished so here are a few of the orders I have made this week for my lovely customers, there were more but these are the ones I remembered to take photos of!

Cameron's candy Bouquet

Made for my Daughters Boyfriends Birthday

A Bobble board for Emily

Not sure you can see the
Glitter

Amelia's Birthday Clock

Harry's Money Box

This had to have cars on it

Along side all of this we have had our 4 sessions of craft club and 2 private bookings this week and I have made a start on Christmas although |I wont be showcasing any of the Christmas stuff yet.

So that's nearly another week done at Love, Heart, Home, only a few more weeks and I will have been open for 6 months, where does the time go?

So I am off to get a few chores done before work and I will leave you all in Karen's capable hands until I get back.

See you soon

Morning everyone

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, I promised myself I would post on my blog every day or at least every other day and I haven't posted since Friday (naughty me!)

Well whats been happening at Love, Heat, Home I hear you ask or not, LOADS!!!!!

I am now holding 4 craft club session a week along with 2 private sessions so that's 6 a week now and still more people asking for spaces and we haven't even started doing the Christmas workshops yet, I have a couple of options open to me now either to rent part of the shop next door as a classroom or to rent external space namely the scout hut to hold my Christmas workshops, at the minute I am in the process of finding out how much each will cost and if the scout hut will be available when I need it, watch this space!!

I also have some news about a new range of stock, from the 1st September we will be having Badjacs as a supplier, Claire makes some gorgeous items for kids bedrooms, here are a few of the items she will be sending us

I am so excited about this and cant wait to see these in the flesh so to speak.

I am also in the process of trying to put together a new item for kids, its going to be a  'Today is...' board and hopefully I will have photos of this very soon, just waiting on delivery of a few bits before I can put this together.
So as you can see life at Love, Heart, Home has been very busy and is only going to get busier, I am starting to  fill up the Christmas order book already and we don't have anything Christmassy in the shop yet, I may need to start thinking of employing someone to help out if things carry on at this rate.

Well off to sort out some fabric for my 'Today is' board before I get ready for work, I have a craft session this afternoon and another tonight so another busy day.

Whatever you are doing today have a great day everyone

A little something I have decorated....

A few months ago I bought a rather nice letter rack off the Internet hoping to do something with it, when it arrived it had been quite heavily varnished so it needed to be sanded down before I could do anything with it well now its finished

The reason I liked it so much is that it has a secret drawer

The drawer can be filled with pens, stamps etc.

I painted the whole thing with Matt blackboard paint and used some of my Laura Ashley papers to cover the shelves both back and front, it took 3 full 12" x 12" sheets. I traced the shelves out by holding a scrap sheet of paper to the back and traced the outline carefully then just trimmed it slightly to get it to the right size. I stuck the papers down with PVA glue, front and back first then the bottom piece. I had used all of the papers in this design so I had to use a piece of Bazzill to line the drawer but it blends nicely with the colours of the papers so it looks OK.

I think it looks quite stylish now just got to decide do I keep it or sell it, what do you think?