I’m starting early thinking about Easter! I know, it’s not until April this year and it has nothing to do with my diet and craving chocolate I promise!! Ha ha

Anyway, my duck family proved so popular at the duck race last year that I thought I’d make some more for Easter. They make a lovely alternative to a mountain of chocolate eggs and are much easier to post to a friend. They are also very cute and a Mum and baby would be a lovely gift for a new Mum.

So, out came the knitting needles again and I’ve started on the hatchlings.

They are quite quick to knit up. Each one takes about an hour to make but I tend to knit several of each piece rather than make one hatchling at time. A bit like a production line I guess. It means the time spent making them is reduced as I’m not constantly swapping yarn and hunting for needles to sew up with!! I spent last week’s dance class sewing them up – well I have to have something to do will little one is dancing her socks off! I might take some actual knitting next week as she has her first exam as well as a class.

I’ve made a few hatchlings and now I’m getting to work on the ducklings with gorgeous knitted hats! I love knitting them up and they can be made in any colour or pattern you like. I tend to stick to plain or stripes, but I reckon a little rainbow hat would look great. I was asked to make two pale blue and one red the other day. My bet is that they are for football fans.

Don’t they look cute?

I am now taking orders for the ducks. If you would like to order a duck, you can choose from Mum, Dad, duckling or hatchling and I can make them in cream, white or yellow. Then choose your hat colour.

Prices are:
Mother Duck £4
Father Duck £4
Duckling £3
Hatchling £2

Duck Family (Mother, Father, 2 Ducklings, 1 Hatchling) £15

Contact me on kath@handmadebykatherine.co.uk or message me on www.facebook.com/Handmadebykatherine

Happy Crafting
x

A huge thank you to all my customers from 2013. You have helped make it the best year ever for Handmadebykatherine.

It’s been a fantastic year.

Thank you all
x

I’ve completed my article for the March issue of Craftseller magazine.

I’m very excited to have been asked to write something. You never know where it might lead!

So keep a look out in the shops. It goes on sale February 13th!

Happy crafting x

Well it’s that time of year again to make some new resolutions and this year I’m going to focus on growing the business and expanding my stock levels.

So my resolutions for 2014 are
1. Attend 4 craft fairs
2. Learn to double crochet
3. Blog at least once a week
4. Post to Facebook page twice a week
5. Work on twitter profile and increase promotion

I’m going to continue with the hearts and flowers themes from last year, however, I aim to use more different materials on my cards. I also hope to be more organised for the big events of the year and I will have more gifts available for Easter, Mother’s Day and Christmas. In particular I will start on my Christmas stocking crafting much earlier!

With some more work on promotion I would like to reach 250 facebook ‘likes’ and 500 followers on Twitter!

Any suggestions or ideas, let me know.

K
x

It’s been a huge year for me and HandmadebyKatherine.  So it’s time to reflect on the year, my achievements, successes and failures and whether I actually met my resolutions set back in January!

I started the year with five resolutions, set around improving the business, increasing my audience and learning new skills.  I managed to set up a facebook page which has been fun to do and has grown to have 170 ‘likers’ by the end of the year.  It’s a great place to try out new designs and get immediate feedback.  It’s also proved to be a great way to increase my audience and a popular way for contacts and orders.  So this has been a great success.

Next I set up an Etsy shop, Craftykathcards.  This has not been the best success and I will need to add a lot more stock to it and do more promotion in order to make this a worthwhile outlet for my cards and gifts.  But I’m not giving up on it just yet!  There is more to do and lots to learn…

My third resolution was to blog at least once a week.  This hasn’t always been easy, but I have written a variety of blogs on topics ranging from new products, ideas, knitting, cards, kids crafting and baking.  I wrote a total of 77 blog posts last year!  The most popular seem to be the baking recipes, so keep an eye out for some more in 2014.

I planned to attend at least four craft fairs over the year, but this didn’t quite work out as I had hoped.  It was quite difficult to track down local craft fairs with good footfall, and I will continue to work on this over 2014.  I did go to two fairs, both of which were moderate successes.  I have some new ideas for displaying my products on my stall.  Plus it was lovely to share a space with a friend.

My final resolution was to learn to crochet, and after 30 years of wanting to learn, I finally did!

It’s been great to learn a new craft.  Now I have to master double crochet and reading a crochet pattern!!

It’s been a really interesting and busy year for me.  I left my job of seven years in April and have become a full-time Mum, Housewife and Crafter.  A huge step to take.  Yet our family homelife has improved dramatically over the last few months.  We are able to spend a lot more time together, eating dinner together every evening and not rushing to fit in the household chores.  We’ve all been able to add an extra interest into our weeks – for me Slimming World, ballet for my daughter and a local community group meeting for my husband.  We’re all a lot less stressed and the best thing of all is I get to take my daughter to school and collect her every day.

I’ve done a reasonable amount of charity crafting over the year.  Having the additional time at home as meant I’ve been able to bake much more.  There has been a lot of cake in my kitchen in 2013, and most of it for other people.

Once again the chocolate scones have been a big hit at the local community fairs, the mince parcels were an appreciated low fat alternative to mince pies and the banana / bran loaf is a great favourite for coffee mornings.  My charity raffle to win my knitted Father Christmas was a great success, raising £170 for the Christie.

In May and June I took part in my first awards and competitions.  I was awarded a bronze award by Mumpreneur and entered my local agricultural show craft classes.  A steep learning curve in the craft tent, and I hope to enter again in 2014.

Knitting has been my major craft of the year.  It was popular throughout the year, but particularly at Christmas.  I have really enjoyed making knitted keyrings, and the fruit were a real success.

Keyrings

So it’s been a great year.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all the making, blogging, chatting to customers, learning and hard work.  Time to look to the future and see what 2014 brings.

Happy New Year to all my readers.
x

Best wishes for a Happy, Healthy and Crafty New Year.

Well the baking has continued after Christmas! I really wasn’t expecting to have more cakes to make after the dancing Christmas party.

However, this year we are going to have dinner with some friends on New Year’s Eve, and I volunteered to make and bring a chocolate cake to the proceedings. I decided to make a chocolate sponge sandwich, the filling being raspberry jam and chocolate buttercream. And to top it all off I’ve melted some dark chocolate with a little butter and covered the cake in it. Just to add the extra touch, I added some decoration using some maltesers.

I’m quite pleased with it! What do you think?

Happy New Year
x

I’ve had some lovely news! I’ve been contacted by Craftseller magazine to write a short piece for them!! This is one of my favourite magazines as it’s always full of great ideas, patterns, recipes and inspiration from other crafters.

Time to get the brain cells working again.

I’ll let you know when I know if it’s to be published.

Happy 2014 everyone
x

We’re in to the second half of the school holidays now and we’ve had some fun crafting with my daughter.

We started with card making! My daughter made this one at school. A really simple idea.

There’s been lots of drawing too. She loves dinosaurs!

We’ve also had a couple of baking sessions, mainly for the dancing class Christmas party.

But we had to make some more so that we could have a taste!

Then Christmas brought some Hama beads. A friend mentioned that her daughters love them, so I thought I’d give them a try. They kept my almost 5-year old in concentration for well over an hour. I was really impressed with her determination to make something and I love the designs she came up with. They are now pride of place on her bedroom wall and door.

I would thoroughly recommend getting some of these beads and pegboards. I’ve ordered her some more for her birthday and I think I might have a go myself. (If she’ll let me this time!) The only look in I got last time was to do the ironing to stick them together!!

We only have a few more days now until her 5th birthday, so there will be more baking and crafting before the end of the holidays!

Happy holiday crafting
x

My stocking was surprisingly light of any crafty goodies, so I’ve had a completely craft-free Christmas break! It was lovely to spend time to family. I had a fabulous Christmas dinner with my parents. After dinner, this year’s family game was Hungry Dinos (a present from Father Christmas to both my daughter and nephew)! This was a resoundingly popular present. Followed by Pop-up-Pirate. Who knew how much fun it is to lose!!

With Boxing Day almost over I’m now winding down after catching up with the house cleaning, and I shall be starting to organise my daughter’s 5th birthday party next week! But I am feeling the need to craft so I think it will be time to get out the knitting needles and yarn to start making a ballet cardigan for the New Year.

What have you been up to? Did you get any crafty presents? Can you recommend I look out for anything?

Happy crafting
x