It’s been so salesy here lately that I thought I better share some photos of what I’ve been up to behind the scenes.
Back in October I was making my own stickers for the Halloween mystery bags and these are the finished ghosts. It’s been a bit of a learning experience figuring out my Cameo (I wrote a whole post about it on SCK) but so many fun possibilities. You can get more surprise stickers in the winter mystery bags too.
I started sharing my to do lists on Patreon occasionally to remind me that I do get a lot done each week. Also because I wonder how much of it makes any sense to anyone but me. Usually I make a list for each week but this one was just for an especially busy Friday!
The wider shot from taking product photos is almost always hilarious so I try to remember to take one. I didn’t want to put any more holes in the walls so I had to build a tower of subscription boxes to make this work. You can see the cropped and edited version in my birthday calendar listing. My favourite ever of these is from taking photos for my book – you can see it in this exclusive Patreon post with other book secrets.
That space has now been cleared for my Christmas decorations! I put them up really early this year because I wanted to and with everything going on in 2020 we might as well do things that make us happy. I think this is the first time ever I have put the tree up before receiving any Christmas cards. I need to take some photos of my mantelpiece too.
I’ve mostly been busy with orders and new products so everything is piling up messily in my studio – my desk is really the tidiest part as I need it for packing orders. Sorting everything out is a big job for once my shops are closed (next week!)
I feel like I have finally figured out a good system for order shipping now. Since I started offering pick & mix deals and a choice of pin backs, the evening before shipping day generally involves gluing lots of things together so they’ll be dry the next day. Those badges are actually fridge magnets and have been surprisingly popular this year.
My packing plan involves sorting all my printed order sheets by what mailing box/envelope they’ll fit in, then stacking everything in reverse order so the actual packing goes really fast. This was my pile after Black Friday and took all morning to set up!
You can watch me pack an order in my very first Instagram Reel. I really want to make more once I have some time to spare. One of the small things I really miss in our weird year of 2020 is the Royal Mail parcel drop off counter. They’re only open for very limited hours now so I’m back to using the postbox and putting these boxes through 2 by 2 is extremely tedious! I do really appreciate all your orders though.
We’ve also reached that time of year where it’s starting to get dark by the time I go to the postbox (like 3pm, it’s Scotland!), which means the Christmas lights are on. They turned them on a bit earlier this year and I’m very grateful for that as it really cheers everything up, especially when I can’t go anywhere else.
I haven’t been out of Helensburgh since August so I’m very happy to live in such a nice place. It’s going to be a weird Christmas this year without my family or many of our usual traditions and experiences, but I’m just glad to be doing okay and looking forward to some time off.
I have a few more posts planned including some recent purchases and my end of the year recap, plus a 2020 zine so look out for that.
