Some pictures of the fabric...

Hello again,

I just thought I would quickly upload some images of the printed fabric. They are shown with a ruler next to them so you can get an idea of the image sizes;

Badger Fabric

Hare Fabric

Hedgehog Fabric

I have also just received twenty limited offer 'buy one ticket, get one free' coupons for the Country Living Christmas Fair running from 7th - 11th November at the Business Design Centre in London, so if you would like one, then just send me an email with your name and address to info@whinberryantler.com. It will be the ideal opportunity to get all your Christmas presents sorted without that horrible last minute panic.

W&A

New Website and New Products.

All things web-based have been quite busy for Whinberry & Antler the past few weeks. The new website has now been launched with new products available to buy online- tea towels and tote bags all made in the UK using British made cotton (still keeping it all about 'made in Britain'). I must say a huge thank you to my friend, Gareth Davies, who has helped me enormously in re-designing and re-building the company website, which now runs much faster and is available on all things Apple.

www.WhinberryAntler.com

Hedgehog Tote Bag

Badger Tea Towel

You will also now be able to find Whinberry & Antler on notonthehighstreet.com as the shop has now been published. It's been really good to take the opportunity to edit and refresh some of the text for W&A as well as take some new product photos. Soon to come will be the adult and children's aprons once I have taken some good photographs of them.

http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/whinberryandantler

So progress is steady and things are certainly moving forward nicely, it feels like W&A has grown and developed a lot since the company was started only ten months ago! I'm spending tomorrow printing fabric on the roll so I will be able to make that available to buy online once I have built a stock up.

Thanks for taking the time to read another post about W&A progress, I hope you like the new products and stay tuned for more!

W&A

Badger Badger Badger Print Print Print

Well, it has taken a fair bit of tweaking the custom made screen printing table, but we have finally printed the first batch of Whinberry & Antler fabric!

It feels like a little milestone has been met, and I'm really pleased with how the fabric turned out. This week I shall be printing the Hare and Hedgehog designs onto fabric and then shortly after it shall be available to buy by the metre from www.WhinberryAntler.com.

Badger Badger Badger fabric drying shortly after being hand printed.

In other news, a very good friend of mine has redesigned the W&A website so it will be viewable on ipads and iphones alike and will run at a much faster speed! I have also been editing photographs for the W&A  shop on www.notonthehighstreet.com, so hopefully that will go live soon too. I will be sure to blog a link to it as soon as it is up and running.

Thanks for reading,

W&A

New W&A products added to Etsy and Folksy

Well, it has taken a little bit of time, but I have now uploaded the tea towels and new rectangle cushion designs onto Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/whinberryantler) and Folksy (http://folksy.com/shops/WhinberryAntler). I am undecided yet as to whether to carry on printing the tea towels in colour or to just stick to all imagery being printed in black, as quite a few people suggested at the Country Living Fair. What do you think?

Green Hedgehog and blue Badger tea towel

Maroon Deer tea towel

New rectangle Deer cushion

Close up of the new rectangle Hedgehog cushion

Busy and Exciting Times

Well, things have been very busy here at Whinberry & Antler. I certainly need to blog more often as I have lots to tell you, but I will try and break it up with some photos.

Firstly, I have now booked for the Country Living Christmas Fair which will take place from the 7th-11th November later this year. Whinberry & Antler will have a slightly bigger stand this time and you will find us on the main Mezzanine, which is a great spot for us. I am sure I will have to expand my little team this time as I have a feeling that things will be very busy indeed.

I have also been editing new images for the catalogue and for a web based company called Dalani (Dalani.co.uk). W&A products are on sale with them on until the 1st May in the UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Poland. I really like the text they have given to go with each product- it's nice to see what other people come up with when they are describing W&A products. I should have lots of sewing and printing to keep me very occupied very soon!

One of the new Cotton Tote Bags featuring Deer design

I also went along to a charity fundraising event last week organised by MFG Solicitors in Telford to help raise money for Age Uk Shropshire Telford & Wrekin Diamond Appeal. I set up a table of Whinberry & Antler products, as well as donating a W&A Welsh lavender bag to the raffle prizes.

The Whinberry & Antler table at the Charity event held organised by MFG solicitors and held at the Rybrook Mini dealership in Shrewsbury in aid of Age Uk Shropshire Telford & Wrekin Diamond Appeal.

Whinberry & Antler products are also part of an exhibition organised by local wildlife artist, Rory McCann. The xhibition is on for one month at the Shropshire Wildlife Trust Centre. You can find out more details by following the link;

 http://www.shropshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/WhatsOn/events_pages/Drawing+inspiration+from+nature+-+Exhibition


In other news, I went to visit a company, Digital Ceramics, in Stoke last week in relation to developing a new range of British designed and made ceramics for Whinberry & Antler. It was really great to look around their small factory and workshops and I am looking forward to working with them to build up the Whinberry & Antler home ware range. My plan is to make sure I have the ceramics completed to debut at the Country Living Christmas Fair. Watch this space....!

New Whinberry & Antler Stockist

A selection of Whinberry & Antler cushions and lavender bags are now available at Cotton Duck Interiors (www.cotton-duck.co.uk), based in Holsworthy, Devon. One Badger cushion was very quickly snapped up, which was excellent news!

I have also just sent my image and text off to Vogue, to be featured in the article 'A Royal Abode', which will hit the shelves in June. Very exciting.

This is the cushion to feature in Vogue Magazine in June. I made this cushion to order for a lovely lady I met at the Country Living Fair who wanted two to give to her friend as a birthday present.

In the meantime I am back to building up new stock and designs. Bye for now.

The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair Experience

Well, what a whirlwind week it has been!

I am back in sunny Shropshire after an amazing time in London at the Country Living Magazine Fair.  I arrived last Monday with the van to drop everything off, and decided to leave the actual setting up until Tuesday. Arriving at my empty stand made me realise quite how small it was! But I think it was actually a great set up as it was open on one side so that customers would be able to see my display really easily. I also paid for a single spot light which was angled into the corner and it made a huge difference.

The Whinberry & Antler stand shortly after we moved in.

I had a great time with my brother Seb (www.sebingham.com)setting up and designing the W&A stand.  We tried to keep things quite simple so that the products would take centre focus. I was really pleased the finished look of the space and I really must say a big thank you to Seb for his help, especially as he is coming to the end of his graphics degree and is busy enough with that!

The finished Whinberry & Antler stand. We thought it would be a good idea to have aprons printed with the W&A logo so that we would be part of the brand too.

The fair opened on Wednesday, which was the longest day as there was also the gala evening, so we were open from 10 am - 9pm. It was very nerve-racking as the first set of visitors started to appear, but once sales were being made (the first product sold was a badger cotton bag) I got into the flow of chatting to people and making sales. I found that people were really interested in the processes involved with making the imagery and really liked that I made most of it myself. Sourcing all my materials from within the UK was also very important to my customers. I also had help from my brother's girlfriend Kat on the first two days, she was really excellent at helping me and I will definitely be hiring her services again in the future!

The simple white shelves worked well being staggered and different lengths, I think it broke the wall up and made the display more interesting to look at.

All the products sold very well, but I can easily say that the hare was the most popular image. I also had a lot of trade enquiries which was great, so I need to spend the next couple of days getting in touch with the people who gave me their business cards. Over all I had an amazing response to the Whinberry & Antler products which was so reassuring and has really boosted my confidence in what I am doing. I must say a big thank you to all the people who stopped to chat and give me some feedback!

The main hall in the Business Design Centre on Sunday morning (this is only half of it- it's a pretty big place)

By the end of the week, I had sold about 75% of my stock, so I probably got that about right, as I didn't want to end up with empty shelves. Break down on Sunday was pretty chaotic. Three hours to take everything down, pack and be back on the road, with nowhere to park your van whilst unpacking. The stress of this was not helped by the council sending in a fleet of traffic wardens at about 4pm either. Luckily we escaped before getting any tickets, but many other exhibitors were not so fortunate.

Overall I had an excellent time and really did learn a lot. Nothing went wrong or got left behind- I think this was largely down to all the list making in preparation. I got to meet other much more experienced exhibitors who offered me an invaluable amount of advice and I must thank them too;  Twig (http://www.twiguk.co.uk) , Deliart (http://folksy.com/shops/deliart), Zinnia (http://www.zinniashoes.co.uk) and My Aunt Agatha (http://www.etsy.com/shop/MyAuntAgatha) to name but a few.

So, what's next? Well, I will be booking to go back to the Country Living Christmas Fair with some new designs. I am also going to push with getting my products into shops now. Also, stay tuned for a Whinberry & Antler cushion making an appearance in Vogue magazine!


Lastly (but by no means least), I must thank my parents, Jackie and Nigel, for van hiring and driving, helping me with sales, helping with break down, and just generally for the huge amount of support they have given me. I really could not have done it without them.