Meet a Member - Spratt's Designs

 
Hello I'm Sarah Spratt (Saz) owner and creator at Spratt's Designs, my own little company that I set up in 2014, with the aim to sell my creations that get made from sparks in my imagination, all bundled up with oodles of my love.  I live in a small town called Worksop which sits on the top of Nottinghamshire to the right of Sheffield as you look on a map, where I am lucky to have a wonderful man in my life who I married in 2004, and with us lives our Cat called Bob who we rescued as an unwanted adult in 2003, but honestly this is his house and we are his servants who annoyingly do other things besides just serving him.

So how did I end up here, running my own business?  Well……I have always had a strong artistic side, which with my big imagination made me far more creative than academic.  My artistic side lead me to take a degree in Stage Management & Technical Theatre where I would love to be set free on Set Designs, Prop Making and Scenery Painting, and for a long time this was my career.  Injury led me to have to take a different path, and for a long time I stepped away from my artistic side and went into training, first with medical devices and then training clinicians on using clinical systems, it was during this time my artistic side only came out for my own makes or gifts for friends and family. My health though couldn't keep up and eventually I was medically retired.  It was then that I was nudged by those friends and family to sell my creations to a wider audience and so Spratt's Designs was born.  Here I tied together all my artistic loves, Spratt's Designs would be for the graphic work I did for people, Spratt's Photography would pull together all the photography I work on and Spratt's Prints & Crafts for all my many crafting creations.  All of these creative outlets are pulled together by my special Spratt Fairy Logo that has been with me since 2004 and was drawn in Loving Memory of my Mother.

The best thing about having a background in Theatre is it allows me to have the skills to work with a wide range of crafting mediums, so one day I can be working with Vinyl images on Glass Blocks or adding Diamante's to a MDF Dragon and then the next I can be working with Glass Beads cascading from a Watering Can or stretching a personalised Canvas Word-Art onto a frame.  Being a mixed-media creator does however lead to a very eclectic collection of Arts & Crafts and have had customers sometimes feel overwhelmed when trying to choose from such a large range, but this is when I love to spend time with them and chatting about their ideas, some of my greatest creations have come from a spark of imagination from something a customer has said in passing.  There is also nothing better than a customer coming back and telling you how much better their order was than they imagined it would be.  Feedback makes any crafter puff up with pride; it's also what helps keep us going, well it does keep me going that's for sure.

Being disabled limits my freedom, so my house has become my crafting studio, it's a good job we don't have any children as I think they may have been moved into the garden shed by now as I have taken over the house.   I have to have a clean room for all the printers, required for the large Stretched Canvas Work to the small inserts for Keyrings.  Then there is the messy room, full of spray paints and glitters, as well as stock stored all over the other rooms.  I'm lucky to have a loving husband who doesn't mind glitter in his socks; however Bob Cat I'm sure doesn't appreciate going out all sparkly, I think it ruins his street cred.  My husband is wonderful, not only has he set up a link to my PC so that on bad days I can still work from bed, but he is also my assistant doing the heavy work that would stop me from certain creations.  He is also the one that can put up with me turning on the lights at 3am when a new idea has come to me, or losing his weekends to the occasional craft fair and stocking up my displays in the shops I'm in, as a crafter normal working hours don't exist.

Now I'd  like to say crafting is all roses and light, but like any designer there is a collection of 'fails' that I have, ideas that have not made the grade to become products for me to sell, and a book full of ideas waiting for me to have the time or equipment to make them.  Like any artist we will pick holes in any creation wanting to always be the perfectionist, and it can be terribly frustrating, but I also look at it as quality control, if I can advertise it then I am happy for it to leave this home and go up in someone else's home.  The hard part comes with promoting, not only does it take time, but I find that part of it is selling myself, something I'm not very good at.  I'm lucky I have had wonderful feedback from people and that helps me keep putting myself out there and I also have a little elf helper on social media who really makes a big difference too.  Becoming a member of the Professional Crafters Guild was a huge step though, it was the point of me letting people know I work hard at this, I am proud of what I make and you can put your trust in me, and in return the guild was there for me for support and to help me to grow.

Currently sell my work via Etsy, Facebook, my Website, a lovely couple of shops where I rent shelf space (one here in Worksop and one in Holmfirth) and direct to customers, I will be at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park Christmas Fair this year again with my products, I count myself to be lucky to be a crafter, I have found a way to challenge my imagination and feel proud to have made customers happy with the creations I have made them.

Right I better get back to it, the Cat is tapping his paw and if I don't get back to work he'll make me stay back.


Spratt’s Designs PCG Feature Page

www.spratt-designs.co.uk
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SprattPrints
www.facebook.com/sprattsdesigns

Meet a Member: Beadie Eyed Edie

Who is Edie?  Edie was a cat I had the pleasure of having in my life for 18 years and the inspiration behind the business name 'Beadie Eyed Edie'.  Back in 2010 my business Beadie Eyed Edie was born as a platform to sell my art and crafts. Having moved down to Essex from the North East of England to live with my now husband, I started looking for a creative past time I could do in the restricted space of our then one bedroom apartment. With no room to get out the sewing machine or my existing large stash of textile and craft goodies (which were away in storage), I returned to my love of beading and jewellery making.  Beadie Eyed Edie was purely jewellery in the very beginning but as soon as we moved into a house I started to add my passion of textiles to the business, it is after all what I trained in and  where my true passion lies. I must admit I am a total craft addict and I want to try EVERYTHING! I may have been to art college to study textile design specializing in embroidered textiles, but a lot of what I have learned  happened long after leaving college. I continue to nurture the skills I have gained as well as constantly wanting to learn more. I believe it is a priority in business to always look for ways to progress.

  Although Felting is something I touched upon at art college I never gave too much time to it since, focusing mainly on machine embroidery. I decided to practice and experiment with needle felting and discovered it is really just a tactile version of painting. I love being able to blend and layer colours, there is really no image you can not create with felt that you could with paint. My natural tool for drawing for a long time has been the sewing machine, with most of my work done freehand (no fully drawn out  image) I move at a crazy speed when I get started! So combining felting and machine embroidery happened, at times embroidering on needle felting is a nightmare and I break a lot of needles! I think the results are worth it though.

If I am needle felting, embroidering on fabric or indulging in one of my other many crafts I am inspired by everything around me. Nature is a big inspiration for me and you can see from my work I love flowers. I wish I could say I was a gardener but really the weeds in my little garden are as much of a love as the plants we have added ourselves! I also love to felt and paint seascapes, the northeast where I am from has an amazing coastline and I use photo references I have collected over the years for ideas.

My work does not stop when I switch off the sewing machine or put down the felting, my brain never switches off from it all.  I am always taking photos of things I see, sketching, making notes, browsing photos online and I even wake up in the middle of the night thinking of new ideas. If I decide to take a little time out I just find myself doing something creative, like an up-cycling project or a bit of soap making. If I have ever thought I might call it a day on the textile art, I realize I could not if I wanted to as it is a total addiction and passion.

I think the hardest part of running a creative business is all the non creative necessities. As well as being able to come up with ideas and follow them through you need to be good at promoting yourself, managing the financial side of things, navigating your way around social media, creating a website or finding the right person to do it.....and so much more! I currently sell my work via Folksy, Facebook and direct to customers. I have sold work via shops in London, Norfolk & Newcastle and love the face to face contact with customers at craft fairs. I still get a buzz from thinking someone has my work hanging on their wall at home or are walking round wearing my jewellery!

www.beadieeyededie.com/
www.facebook.com/BeadieEyedEdie/
twitter.com/BeadieEyedEdie

Helenka White Design celebrates its 6th anniversary – It’s been a rocky road.

The other day I noticed that my jewellery business Helenka White Design turns 6 in September. I actually had to check my FB page to find out the exact date I created the page! The exact day is the 7^th.  The first incarnation of my website followed in the same month or in October 2010 (I honestly can’t remember). 

Like most crafters I started selling when friends who received jewellery from me as a gift suggested I should sell my designs.  I got interested in jewellery making in 2007 when I joined an evening class to learn silversmithing for a year and I finished it with a City & Guilds certificate. I also got married that year and in the run up to our wedding I made my own tiara and gifts for my bridesmaids. I occasionally made jewellery, but not for sale. 

As working with silver is not cheap – and if you sell it you need to get it hallmarked as per law – and due to my chronic shoulder pain I focused my jewellery designs on bead work in the first few years working with semi-precious stones, seed beads, Swarovski crystals and other materials. 

And then I discovered polymer clay. I first took a day course with Alison Gallant after reading about her in Making Jewellery and got hooked. Alison has become a friend of mine too and I also wrote an article about her course for Making Jewellery (amongst other articles I have written). It’s a fantastic medium to work with as it’s so versatile – you can mimic semi-precious stones, sea glass, wood etc. It lends itself for making colourful pieces and it’s surprisingly light weight when you’re wearing it. Since discovering polymer clay I have attended 3-day long workshops and met famous artists such as Donna Kato (who invented her own clay brand Kato Clay and has written 2 seminal books about polymer clay) and Bettina Welker. 

My website underwent two more makeovers, with last year’s one being the website I always wanted. Because I love animals, especially cats, I decided to niche down to cat jewellery. Of course I also make other designs. I created my own logo, because why outsource something you can do yourself? 

I also started sculpting with polymer clay last year and have now a whole range of animal sculptures on the website. I find sculpting way more challenging than the jewellery as so much can and does go wrong. And given the small scale it is often tricky to get it right. I keep developing new sculptures and taking notes and photos as I go along – mainly with the view to teach how to make them eventually.

Six years seem like a long time in business, but it hasn’t been easy – and I still have to break even or make a sizeable profit from the venture. I have learned the hard way what works and more importantly what doesn’t.  I have learned how soul destroying craft fairs can be and that ETSY is not the right marketplace for my one-of-a-kind pieces. I also learnt to use giveaways only occasionally and that you need to really budget strictly for ads. This and the coming year I am focusing on PR for my business and will continue developing new products such as journal covers, more sculptures – and I want to get back to working with sterling silver and PMC. A kiln is still on my wish list and if things work out I can keep one in our newly tidied and painted garage.

My three tips for making your business work:

• Be authentic, original and true to yourself – if you don’t want to make run-of the mill popular things- don’t. Leave the cheap Disney rip offs to others.
• Be super patient. For some people success comes quickly – but who knows why. Maybe they had more money to invest in the business? Your time will come. 
•  Make sure you really enjoy what you’re doing. Unfortunately running your own business means you spend an awful lot of time on admin and marketing. So finding time for the actual craft is important and enjoying your craft is vital. If you feel you are losing your mojo – you might want to check out my blog post on how to get it back.  (blog link: http://www.helenkawhitedesign.com/jewellery/15-things-you-can-do-to-get-your-creative-mojo-back/ )

Helen White  - www.helenkawhitedesign.co.uk