I'm on a podcast!

Last week Jenny Hudson from Indie Quarter came over to interview me for a podcast. We had a lovely time chatting about the new shop, my work, craft, design, the recession and making the most of the internet. I was a bit nervous before hand but Jenny in all her loveliness but me at ease and it was just like having a friend round for a cuppa.

I was more nervous when she finally sent me a link to it yesterday but plucked up the courage to have a listen today and it wasn't too cringeworthy! If you fancy a listen you can find it here. Oh and these are the flowers that Jenny brought as a shop warming prezzie. Lovely!

Component Joy!

Well it's been 'component nightmares' for many many weeks and I have had an underlying layer of anxiety about not being about to get my orders out on time. Today though was COMPONENT JOY!

Maclan sent over the revised prototype and they are good. One of my requirements was that I could get the clips together with 'girl hands' but these girl ones just weren't strong enough so he had to tighten them which made them much harder to clip on. He has made me a special brass press tool which presses them together nicely.....so I THINK we are there. I am just running some tests to make sure they stay together and don't start popping off in the night. They seem really strong though so I feel confident. I have SO much catching up to. Lots of shop orders and lots of internet orders. I'm hate to keep people waiting. It has been a real transition period getting everything together with the move and all these problems. Finally I might be able to get down to some work again. PHEW!

Pass it on

I really love the idea of this 'tag'. Yvette from PaperFaerie blog tagged me sometime last month whilst I was in the thick of rennovating and it passed me by. I remembered yesterday when Ffion was scrolling through loads of our old photos. So here goes. I opened my picture and thought 'oh it's only my kitchen table' but there IS a story behind it. A little over a year ago we couldn't fit that table in our kitchen, in fact it would have been in our bedroom! We were growing out of our flat but couldn't afford to move SO we made our bedroom smaller (we had space we didn't use) which made the kitchen bigger and then allowed us to chop the childrens room in half (they were sharing and getting way too old) and give them a room each. That all sounds quite simple when you say it in one sentence but it's taken us about a year and a half and we're only just coming to the end of the utter building chaos and mess and dust now. It's been hard work but worth it now and even though we can only fit a little table in it's nice to have it there. The lampshade is from Jodii (she has a great blog by the way).

So the rules of this tag are :
1. open your first folder of pictures
2. scroll to the tenth picture
3. post the photo and the story behind it
5. tag 5 more people

Rachel if you are reading this START a blog because i want to tag you. You have great pictures!

Nancy McKay
Jurianne Matter
Lotta Helleburg
Kate Rhodes
TraceyLoves Pattern


...i love hearing your stories and seeing your pictures....

The Big Launch

The launch of the new Radiance went really really well. I had a wonderful day! I hadn't finished making the open sign yet but people got the mesage and LOTS of people came!

My friend Rachel was the photographer for the day. What lovely pictures!

There was pink champagne and surprise flowers...

There were friends who popped in and friends who stayed all day. It was so lovely to have everyone there and see so many friendly faces.

Lucy and the Caterpillar came to play us sing us some of her lovely songs. Thanks Lucy!

The birdies kept an eye on things from their new perch...

and we had a visit from their creator Joanna Coupland.

We also had a surprise visit from Helen Musselwhite who brought this AMAZING papercutting inside a bell jar AND a 'We are family ' papercut picture. How lovely!

All in all it was a real celebration. Thanks to everyone who came and thanks to everyone who couldn't make it but were there in spirit. Thankyou for all your lovely cards, beautiful flowers, yummy cakes and chocolates.

I am one happy lamp shop lady!

We've got there!

Well it's the final night before the big opening. It's been a LONG day making the final preparations and this afternoon has been all hands on deck (thanks Dad and Robert and Keith and Anne and Rachel and Mia and Richard the window cleaner) to get it all ready. I'm SO tired but I couldn't go to bed without showing you. You've been on this journey with me afterall so you need to share in the moment when it all comes together . Getting the signs up this morning and cleaning the windows was the final bit of the jigsaw and brought it ALL together. Suddenly it look like a shop at last...in fact people were trying to come in (very reassuring!).

I'll show you pictures of the opening tomorrow. Night night x

You are all invited!

I know that most of you are far far away but I wanted to invite you all to my opening party. How wonderful it would be if I could meet all you lovely people after you have been such a great big support these last couple of months. Only 4 days to go and then it's opening time. It's going to be a busy few days getting everything ready as there's still a lot to do but it's coming along nicely!