Tuppy in the Snow

It's beautiful here, so Tuppy and his wife Dolly went out for a walk in the snow.

Changes to Postage Policy at Tuppys

I'm currently in the midst of upgrading my account with Nochex to give me the ability to accept larger payments from a wider variety of countries. It's good news for anyone who is interested in the products I sell, but is not based in the UK, but it will mean changes.

Currently my software is set to a very simple pricing structure - £2 up to £20, then free. However with the introduction of overseas mailing, this is going to have to change. More details soon - once I have worked out exactly what the options are!

Still here - honest!

Aargh! How long has it been since I posted here!

Well, picking up where I left off - those hangers have been a huge hit with you all. I really wasn't the only person struggling to find them :-)

Also new here at Tuppys - I have a range of fabric paint pens now available, they are made by Leeho and I stock the sparkle, pearl and glow in the dark effect pens. Get them here >>

I've also added the Clover Pom-Pom maker to the site. I think it's a fab little gadget - really makes life easier than having to cut out endless rings of cardboard. These are sturdily made out of good old plastic and do a fabulous job. The pack has a pair of pom-pom makers in it, in two sizes. Take a look >>

Felting - you folks are loving the Clover Felting tool aren't you! I can see why - I feel in love with it myself as soon as I saw it. After spending hours at the Ideal Home Show, drooling over the Babylock embellisher and knowing I could never justify the price for the amount of use it would get - my heart leapt at the thought of this. It does exactly the same thing - which is basically needle felting - punching barbed needles through fabrics to mesh them together, but instead of hundreds of pounds, it costs less than a tenner. Of course it's manual, so you have to use your arm a bit - but it's not the biggest hardship really.

Anyway all this gabbing about the gloriousness of the felting tool is really just by way of an introduction to the fact that the sparkle felting fibres have been dead popular too - so much so that I have ordered a selection of new colours to be dyed up for me. They are all hand dyed in Wales by a lovely lady, so they don't come with the swiftness of the plastic mass manufactured goods, but keep an eye on my felting fibre section for the new collection. Felting things are here >>

Argh!

how aggravating. The entire server has gone down and tuppys and tuppys email addresses have completely stopped working. most irritating.

Tuppy's now stocks plain simple wooden hangers

With Christmas just around the corner most of us sewing types are turning our thoughts to what kind of things we can get making for christmas gifts. Personally I had my heart set on making a peg bag to go with a rather gorgeous laundry basket I picked up for a song at Dunelm Mill. I had also pondered making padded hangers for stocking fillers - they're in all the shops but it's so much nicer to make your own isn't it!

So I set off looking for some nice plain straightish wooden hangers I could use inside my hangers and peg bags. It seemed like an easy task at first - if you google "wooden hangers" you get site after site after site offering you a "wide range" or an "extensive range" "huge selection" or "largest selection" and most of them sell already padded hangers, but a plain simple wooden hanger without an extra hanging rail and withough excessively droopy shoulders - no.

I tried ebay with the same results - nice straight wooden hangers are occasionally available second hand when someone's having a clear out, but that's all.

So what did I think to myself? I could have given up - but I wasn't going to let this beat me. I knew the hangers must be out there - every shop you go into seems to be offering gift packs of padded hangers, so someone, somewhere is manufacturing the basic hangers, I just had to find them. And you know what - I did it!

I not only found nice shiny new properly shaped wooden hangers, but I also found ones that come in two different sizes, one for regular hangers, and a smaller one for peg bags. They are due to arrive in a couple of very big boxes tomorrow, so then you'll be able to buy the hangers from me. I've had to buy them in bigger quantities than I originally intended, so buy loads!

My delivery is due tomorrow (15th Nov 2006) but I've just made them available to buy on the website today - my theory is that I won't now be going to the post office until tomorrow afternoon, so I should have the hangers by the time I need to fulfill any orders.

Take a look at my hanger range >>

Tuppy's Vintage

Several people have been telling me about Etsy just lately - so I have decided to dabble my toes in the water of advertising some of my hand-crafted items on there.

Etsy is basically a sort of Ebay for selling hand made goods. Whether I'll have any success with selling things there is debateable at the moment. From my point of view it has some major disadvantages. It's not terrifically usable, or searchable if you are looking to buy products from it. It's primarily an American site - most users seem to be American, so if they want to buy my stuff postage costs are higher - I suspect this also makes my prices less competetive, I believe materials etc are more expensive here so mycosts are higher than many people's there. It's not terribly welcoming to UK users - prices are all displayed in dollars, there's no option to view items from the uk only. And also a lot of sellers only sell to the US, which is not very encouraging to British buyers. Plus, in general I think textile items are best seen and handled before purchase so the internet is not the ideal selling medium.

In many ways I would have preferred to list my hand made items in a section on this website, but I went with Etsy for two main reasons - 1/ because my payment processor on this site only allows me to accept UK credit cards and 2/ at this point in time - people are probably more likely to find my goods on a multiple site like Etsy.

So we'll see. If you want a look at what I'm listing, you can find it at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=96877

New Products on the Way

Well, the ordering is done and we'll soon be adding some lovely new things to the site.

Firstly a gorgeous range of hand-dyed 6-strand embroidery threads - beautiful subtle mixed shades.

To go with those a range of fabric in the same kinds of colours. completely in love with these!

Then for felting fans, a range of hand-dyed fibres - and also some nice kits, one to make a bag, and one designed for children.

Plus, when I get my act in order, I shall also get sorting the silk ribbons into nice variety packs with shorter lengths of a range of colours. Lovely AND useful!

Watch this space.