Final CAD design for a custom wedding heart.

Well, February is nearly over already, crazy!! That means that you guys only have 2 days to place your orders to get £5 off any of our design services. All of our design services and some examples can be seen in this post from a few weeks ago – you can also see the prices too (don’t forget you get £5 off each package until midnight on the 29th!).

I always advise anyone wanting a custom or complex order to use the design service so that you know exactly what you’ll be getting before you put your final order in. It also helps iron out any design wrinkles before it gets put into clay – cos once that baby has been made up for real, it can’t be changed!

So what are you waiting for?? Don’t miss out!

The facebook shop (a payvment store) is the one that I use the most, mainly because it was the easiest to use when it first came out. It was simple, straight-forward and super fast to list things. I also like the fact that listings last forever and you don’t have to pay listing fees or any sales fees (other than the paypal fees). But when it came out of it’s beta phase and relaunched, I must admit, I fell a little bit out of love with it. I find it hard to use, hard to add new listings and hard to edit existing listings. It takes an age.

In the meanwhile, etsy had been pulling it’s finger out. Not only does it have a super fast and fab new way to list things, but the user experience it just a bit cleaner and nicer. Don’t get me wrong, I hate having to answer all of the silly questions it asks of me for new listings, but I know that it is thorough, so the more info I cram in, the more chance I will get found. Whilst listings and sales and subject to charges over here, I like the fact that each sale is recorded and gives you a chance for feedback and ratings.

The last shop I have on the go is my folksy shop. I’ll be honest, I’ve been lazy with it. I’ve listed very few things, mainly in the knowledge that it would never be my main salesplace.

I think my initial feelings were to get myself in as many places as possible so that I can have maximum coverage, but I’ve found that really, I’m diluting my effectiveness by spreading my time so thinly. I know that Etsy can be a super successful business platform, if given enough time and love, but I can’t afford to do that with all of the other shops too.

SO… I must make a decision to keep just one shop on the go. Do I save my pennies and press ahead with the facebook store in the hope that it will suddenly ‘take off’ one day and I’ll be discovered, or do I sink all my eggs into the mega craft-basket of etsy and make a real go of it over there?!?!

What do you guys reckon??

Anyway, remember the sneaky peek I gave you guys a couple of Mondays ago… no?! Well, it’s this one. I showed you one of the new drinks labels. THEN, the fabulous Jay Archer blogged the whole new collection on her awesome site last week. NOW the whole party has been featured on les enfants fabulous party blog, so you can see how the collection was used and to see how it looks ‘in situ’ – these pics were taken by the mighty Sassy of Assassynation and feature some of my other fave suppliers too; Jay Archer Floral Design and Cat’s Whiskers Cake Design.

In case you missed the new collection launching last week, here are a few snippets for you:

Let Them Eat Cake - White Glazed Letters

Sugar and Spice Vintage Style Sign

'Eat Me' Garland

Drinks Labels - Cream Soda, Lemonade, Ginger Beer

The rest of the collection can be found on our FB page – they are not yet available in shops, but if you fancy grabbing a few up, just drop me a mail on: info@cherrypielane.co.uk They can also be totally personalised too… Gin & Tonic labels anyone?!

See you all on Thursday!

C x

My New Love Interest from Schuh - Two Fold Hi Li polkadot Trainers

OK, I’m off for 10 minutes of listening to some Pearl Jam, drinking some tea & pretending  I’m not grown up – then I’ll get back to work again, promise!!

No blog post from me yesterday as I had a very rare day of entertaining lovely people so I swapped blogging with baking! I made a rather fancy looking banoffee cake complete with gold leaf dust and red glitter (ok, ok, so the cake probably looked better than it tasted, but hey, who’s complaining!?!)

Yummy sparkly banoffee cake

So, I thought I’d better get something a bit exciting for you today. I’m going to point you in the general direction of the design service that I offer for custom work.

I get through A LOT of custom orders. I reckon for every stock design order I make, I must make about 5 custom orders!! I really love making different designs up for you guys, it makes it somewhat of a challenge for me – especially when the design involves loads of artwork, colour, glazes and lustres (I really love lustres!!). I always suggest getting the design package as part of your custom order with me as so often, details can be lost in translation – it’s really quite difficult to design without imagery and emails are always hard to decipher!! With the design service, you get to see initial ideas, make any alterations needed and then see the final design as it would look in ‘real-life’. The best bit of this is making sure that your design is PERFECT before we get started on it – I always want you guys to be happy with your designs.

Final Custom CAD Design

Final Custom Wedding Sign

So, how does it work??

Well, firstly, you need to pick the right design package for you… there are 3 base packages and then a selection of ‘add ons’ that you can select either at the start of the design process or during it.

* Sketch me up package – This package is the most basic and involves a selection of hand-drawn sketches. You can have up to 3 initial idea sketches and then 1 final sketch. These are for illustrative purposes and won’t exactly resemble the outcome. The cost of this package is £10.

* Sketch and CAD me up package – This package is the most popular as it gives you up to 5 hand-drawn initial idea sketches and then 1 final CAD design. This is also the package that I would recommend the most for general custom orders. The CAD designs are a brilliant help, especially if you like to see exactly what you’ll be getting. I try to make the CAD pics replicate your design as closely as I possibly can, so that you’ll get a good idea of how your final piece will look. These are also in full colour, including details such as lustres, glazes and ribbons. The cost of this package is £15.

* CAD me up package – This package is a bit of a super deluxe job! It is most definitely the one you want if you are looking to get the most perfect result. I certainly recommend this package if you are after something really, really special & perfect.You will get up to 5 initial CAD designs and then 1 final CAD design. This is perfect for tweaking the design and getting a sense of exactly how your piece could look with different fonts, different colours and additional details like buttons and crystals. The cost of this package is £20

Final CAD Design

Final Custom Wedding Heart

*Add ons – any of these packages can have extra bits added to them to tailor them to your needs. Sometimes you just need one extra drawing to get the idea right, or you might want to see your idea in CAD, you might even want to get a few different colour variations to look at. These add ons are only available in addition to a design package. There are various costs for each add 0n: Extra hand-drawn sketch= £2, Extra CAD design = £3, CAD tweaking (e.g. a colour change or slight location change for text/image) = £1 for up to 3 tweaks.

CAD Design Tweak 1

CAD Design Tweak 2

CAD Design Tweak 3

Final Custom Wedding Heart

Do you know what the best bit of this is?? It’s knowing that you guys get £5 off all design packages until the end of the month – so, till March 1st, you guys can grab yourselves some bargain design work and make sure that your custom piece is EXACTLY what you want!!

Have a fab week peoples x

Anywho, on one of my mammoth searching rampages, I stumbled across the most amazing company – Soapopotamus, run by Regina.  I actually found it through a search for gherkins/dill pickles (depending on which side of the pond you are on) of all things! See, my brother and I like the little pickled dudes quite a lot (in fact, i managed to source a ‘pickle in a pouch’ for his birthday last year – another very, very awesome find!!), so I wondered what kind of gherkin related handmade gorgeousness existed on etsy.

Pickle in a Pouch

Well, whaddya know… I only went and found THIS:

Big Dill - Lip Butter

The ‘Big Dill’ is a DILL PICKLE FLAVOURED LIP BUTTER – absolutely perfect for what I was looking for. I figured that anyone brilliant enough to make a gherkin lip butter just had to have more amazing stuff in their shop & I was totally right!

After perusing the pretty extensive selection of other funky lip butter choices, I plumped for ‘Happy Apple’ (caramel apple) for me and ‘Elvis Sandwich’ (peanut butter & banana) for Mr CPL. I could easily have bought nearly all of them, but I only live in a diddy cottage, so devoting a whole room to just awesome lip butter is probably not a good plan!! However, my mind is still boggling about the ‘Italian Sausage’ lip butter

Happy Apple - Lip Butter

Elvis Sandwich - Lip Butter

If lip butter isn’t your thing, then check out what else is to offer in the Soapopotamus shop.  The soaps are literally some of the most amazing creations I have ever seen. I had no idea you could even get soap to look just like other things! Check out my all time faves:

Nom Noms Soap

Cinnamon Rolls - Goats Milk Soap

Rice Krispie Treats - Goats Milk Soap

Glazed Half Dozen - Donut Soap

Strawberry Jam Toast - Goats Milk Soap

Sunny Side Up - Goats Milk Soap

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffin - Exfoliating Soap

Roasted Chicken - Goats Milk Soap

AND… if neither lip butter nor soap floats ya boat, why not check out the solid & oil perfumes. I love the sound of the ‘Cotton Candy Clouds’ and the ‘Wasabi’ one really intrigues me! I also love the sound of the ‘Cream Sake’ perfume oil.

Cotton Candy Clouds Solid Perfume

Wasabi Solid Perfume

Cream Sake Perfume Oil

OK, run, go, get over to Soapopotamus right now and fill your life with amazing stuff!!

A sneaky look at one of the new products

Whatcha think??

My poor broken laptop

It decided to take all of my files, pictures, blog posts and well, pretty much everything with it. So, a few days later and several pounds worse off, I have a nice new laptop from which I am writing to you now!

We should be back on track again tomorrow, when I’ll be sneaking you a quick peek at some new pieces, but you’ll have to wait another week to see them properly as I’ll be previewing them on Jay Archer’s blog

Have a fab Sunday and enjoy the snow… if you got any of it!!

Introducing my fabulous new antique sewing box/table thingy!

My rather exciting new purchase!

The CPL family popped out for a bit of antique perusing (as one does when one lives in Royal Berkshire, lol!!) last Sunday. Mr CPL had already sellotaped my hands to the inside of my pockets to prevent my mass spending on assorted junk precious that we don’t really need or have room for. Anyway, on our way out of the first & rather amazing antique barn, I saw a gorgeous little table huddled in with lots of other ‘less desired and slightly broken’ pieces. Seeing some of the prices from inside, I was guessing this funky little opening table would be a good £70-£100, but fate tempted me to go take a looksie anyhow.

Boo-yeah! I win, the junk precious Gods were smiling on me that day… TEN ENGLISH POUNDS was all that this little beauty would set me back!! So, as I stood outside, fiercely guarding my new find and counting the shrapnel from inside my purse, I didn’t notice that Mr & Mini CPL had done a runner. 5 minutes later, they both reappeared with a receipt The box was mine, ALL MINE!!!

I am now loading it up with tools, colours, glazes, lustres and other delicious things that I use to work my magic on clay. So, from now on, all of your orders will be coming to you with a little help from my lovely awesome find!

*Please ignore the various pieces of junk and half-finished DIY jobs in the photo backgrounds, feel free to admire my gorgeous Irregular Choice shoes and my vintage typewriter!*

Sewing box with closed lid...

Sewing box with open lid - check out the suspended drawer!

I’ll be back on Thurs with an awesome find for you!