Emele's Blog

Last week I was on the Etsy forums, in the European Street Team, and found the London based seller/crafter Piktoland. I headed over to her shop and fell in love with the alien designs. Saw that she made bookmarks as well as cards but only had girly bookmark designs not the aliens soooo I sent Tania a convo and 48 hours later the bookmark was made, paid for and on my doorstep!

Cute huh?! Nope it’s not for me… Danny had been going on about me having a nice bookmark and him not having anything (we’re both bookworms!) so I ordered it for him as a suprise cos I’m a such a nice girlfriend!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you can keep upto date with all the news and gossip that's happening at and around Emelegifts! Click on the link, subscribe using the buttons at the bottom of the blog or enter http://www.emele-blog.emelegifts.com/feed into your feedreader.
Thanks for visiting and don't be shy, leave me a comment or two any time! -- Emily

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

The Saturday before last we went for a little walk by the river in Calne. Call me a city girl but I don’t recall seeing baby ducklings before, perhaps my childhood memories escape me! I’m almost tempted to say they are cuter than kittens, I could have sat watching their antics all day!

~

I didn’t even know that I was just a few minutes away from such a picturesque little place. Sure I’ve been into the somewhat grotty town… But never down to this part of the river before. I was extremely excited to see the pretty little bridges and even the unhealthy green part of the river… Picture oppotunitues!!

Tags: calne, ducklings, ducks, river, wilshire

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I had some new work printed last week and was very excited when I got the parcel back from the printers.

~

My two newest favorites which I hope everyone else will also love are… (drumroll please!) “Dandelion” and “Tuscany” both are in 8×8 format and available from my Etsy (international) or Folksy (UK only) stores.

Tags: dandelion, decor, etsy, folksy, greece, Photography, prints, tuscany

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Time for one of those posts where I cram in the latest news and happenings that aren’t quite enough to blog about on there own but look very random mixed in together!!

-

Paris – We’re going in September not July. Basically I didn’t book the flights for July because I got caught up with car buying (and all the costs related to that!) so then when I was ready to start booking flights and a hotel I realized the flights had doubled in price and that we would be paying as much for the flight as the hotel. I didn’t like that. So I said ok don’t panic… We’ll go to Paris in September and Dublin in July. But then I had a panic about money and thought I better save “Dublin Money” to put into the “House Fund – Van Fund – Everything else Fund”. Sooo Paris flights are now booked 10th-13th September which means we’ll be away for my birthday Hotel yet to be booked…

-

Craft Fairs – Have I spoken about these plans before? I want to go craft fair crazy during the winter to get as much £££ in as possible (for 2012 Euro travel) when everyone is gift shopping for Christmas. I have my eye on 3 so far (Yes I know 3 won’t get me very far but it would appear the bestest ones are booked up a year in advance and the smaller ones haven’t thought about fairs yet!) There is one in Bath that me n Danny will hopefully check out at the weekend. Then there’s another close by which I just need to gather the money for. And the 3rd one in November I have applied for

-

Ebay – I’ve opened my own account there. Yep, I know I’m probably the last person in the world not to have had an ebay account! Maybe I might have a go at selling the photography there one day but in the meantime I’ve gone on a buying frenzy. Packaging supplies and a new set of camera batteries. All so verrrry exciting!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I’m happy and excited! After 5 long months at Etsy I’ve finally made my first sale. Yay

I knew I had to be patient, everyone told me I had to be patient but it was hard… Especially when others would get sales within 1 month of opening their Etsy store!

Interestingly this first sale has come after I raised my prices during the week…

So to anyone reading this who may be in the same situation that I was… Be stubborn, don’t give up, believe you will eventually make that sale, keep listing and promoting, consider raising your prices and umm don’t give up!!

Do you want to see which print sold? Ok here it is…

Cactus Spikes… One of my earlier shots but still a fond favorite.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Living here, in Wiltshire, the garden critters are slightly different to what I’m used to in Crete! The birds (crows, blackbirds, a pheasant called Phil, doves and some unknown species!) are fed a wonderful diet of seed, bread, chips… Even spaghetti on occasion!! (Danny has seen a bird fly off with a beak full of spaghetti trailing behind!)

This putting down of food also encourages ratty to make an appearance, plus a fox is making nightly visits. Yep, it’s like living in some kind of nature reserve!! Luckily my cats have caught enough rats in their time for me not to be freaked out by seeing a huge rat in the garden – I call them organic rats since they live in the fields rather than down a sewer.

Now we do actually have a cat here, a stray called Ru or Rufus who has been encouraged to come in and take a nap on the beds. But Ru doesn’t seem to be much of a rat catcher. He will catch and eat rabbits (which is slightly gross) but rats – Nope he doesn’t seem to have the skill like my best boy Lloyd who’s in Crete (if he was here in England he would catch that rat and carve it up within seconds!!).

But anyway – Last week I thought I better try getting some garden critter photos. The crows wouldn’t land while I was out there but the dove and blackbirds seem friendly enough.

They aren’t very good pics, not upto my usual standard if I do say so myself but in theory if I sit outside long enough and am quiet enough and practise enough I will eventually make progress… Although I think Phil the Pheasant will be quite a challenge! He’s usually gone before I even reach the back door!

Tags: birds, england, garden

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

We have a new blog design! I’ve been working on it in the evenings, tweaking the design to get “bits of me” into it… Such as the camera and monkey which you saw before, as well as the lizard and cupcake down the bottom, also the roll of film down the side. All thanks to deviant art brush makers I’m quite impressed with myself though!

Now the only problem is, on hindsight of course – and because I don’t think things through too well before I start…. The design is a little on the narrow side. Which is causing issues with my image heavy posts (the older ones atleast, I quickly went and tweaked the newer ones!) So I will need to attempt to fix that at some point, not too sure if it’s possible to widen the design at this late stage.

Also some other bits n pieces need a little tweak such as the background with paperclip for the different sections – Not too happy with the color at the moment, also think they need to be made smaller and the font colors and sizes oh and the top links which I’ve just realized don’t work. Oops.

But for the most part – We are there (and it’s all working)!!

What do you think?

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•