Saturday 29 November 2014

Budgie Tea Towel samples and Spoonflower Offer

2014 November 29 budgie tea towel calendar 2015 hazel fisher creations spoonflower photo 3My budgie calendar tea towels arrived from Spoonflower this week :)  They’re printed on fat quarter sized pieces of Linen-Cotton Canvas.  I’m really pleased with how these have printed.  I usually work on quite small scale pieces, so making a design large enough to fill a tea towel is big for me – these are 10 inch budgies!!
I just need to trim the fabric and sew the hems, then they will be ready to give as Christmas presents.
2014 November 29 budgie tea towel calendar 2015 hazel fisher creations spoonflower photo 12014 November 29 budgie tea towel calendar 2015 hazel fisher creations spoonflower photo 2Now I have some samples of this design I have been able to make it available to buy from my Spoonflower shop.  It’s great timing as Spoonflower have just announced their last special offer for the year – there will be a FREE SHIPPING day on Monday 1st December!  The offer applies to all fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap orders (US and non-US destinations) and runs for 12 hours from 8am EST - that's 1pm in the UK.
Free Shipping Day

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Have you heard about the new EU VAT rules for digital products?

There are new VAT regulations coming into force in January that are going to have a big impact on small businesses who sell digital products to customers in the EU.  I only heard about this just over a week ago, but have noticed in the last few days word has been spreading and today #VATMOSS has been trending on twitter.

I have been reading as much as I can about the new rules to try and make sense of the changes.
It’s complicated, but from what I have read, this is basically what I think the changes mean:
  • From 1st January 2015 VAT on digital goods will be payable to the country the buyer lives in, not where the business is based.
  • Digital products include eBooks, music downloads, apps, guides… as well as things like digital craft papers and party printables (which I design and sell) and pdf patterns.  So this is going to affect a lot of small businesses on places like Etsy.
  • If you sell a digital product to someone in the EU you will have to register for VAT in that country.  This applies not only to sellers from EU countries, but to anyone who sells to the EU – so US based sellers will be affected too.
  • VAT thresholds (the amount of money your businesses makes before having to register for VAT) only apply to the country you are living in.  So you would have to register for VAT as soon as you make a single sale to another EU country.
  • Rather than register separately for every single EU country you sell to, you can sign up once to VAT MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop), but to do this in the UK you would have to register for VAT.  Which in turn would mean you would have to apply VAT to every single product / service you sell and submit VAT returns quarterly.
  • Physical items are not included in the new rules, so the normal Distance Selling rules would still apply.  If you only sell physical items you would only have to register for VAT in the UK if your turnover was more than £81,000.
  • If you are in the UK you can continue to sell digital products to customers in the UK without being affected (normal VAT thresholds would apply).  You can sell to any non-EU country and not be affected.
  • Selling through another company who handles the invoices, not you, would mean you wouldn't need to register for VAT - eg: selling an eBook through Amazon, or craft designs through Crafts U Print.

My conclusions on how this will affect my own business – registering for VAT would mean a lot of extra admin for me and it is not something I want to deal with at the moment.  I have read that some people might stop selling their digital items altogether.  This isn't something I will be doing, but it looks like I am going to have to stop selling my digital products to customers in EU countries (but I will continue selling my digital products to UK customers and non-EU customers).  After January 1st, if anyone from an EU country wants to buy my digital items I would either have to send them a printed copy or send a CD with the files on in the post – which unfortunately will cost my customers more and not be as quick as getting a download by email.  Fortunately I will be able to continue selling things like my postcards, cards, envelopes, baker’s twine etc as normal.

If you are from an EU country (not the UK) and are thinking of buying any of my craft or party printables I recommend you do so before 31st December 2014.  If I find any other ways around the new rules I will post updates on my blog.


There is an online petition you can sign, to encourage Vince Cable to intervene here: https://www.change.org/p/vince-cable-mp-uphold-the-vat-exemption-threshold-for-businesses-supplying-digital-products

Useful Links
I’ve tried to summarise the information I have read, to the best of my understanding, but I am not an expert so if you think this affects you too, here are some links for more information:
HMRC will  be holding a twitter clinic on Thursday 27th at 3:30 - 5pm.
There are a couple of threads on Etsy too: here and here

I have written a new blog post An Update On the New EU VAT Rules, since the rules came into force on 1st January.

Monday 10 November 2014

Spoonflower contest results, 2 for 1 on Fat Quarters

2014 November 10 spoonflower contest teatowel calendar contest results budgie illustration hazel fisher creations 1
I’m so pleased at the response I had to my budgie tea towel calendar entered into last week’s Spoonflower contest!  I hoped that people would like it, as my other budgie designs have been quite popular, but it was still a lovely surprise to receive so many favourites for it on Spoonflower as well as messages from people who liked the design.

There were so many gorgeous entries to the contest with designs on a wide range of themes, I noticed that several of the designs I voted for made the top ten, you can see them all here.  I eagerly waited for the results to be posted and was excited to see that my design came 15th out of 205 entries, with 316 votes – thank you if you voted for my design!  It is by far the highest one of my designs has ranked in the contests and so close to my dream of being in the top ten :)

All of the tea towel calendars were designed to fit onto a fat quarter of Spoonflower’s linen-cotton canvas.  Spoonflower currently has a special offer on fat quarters – buy 2 for the price of 1The offer applies to all fat quarter sized fabrics, not just linen-cotton canvas.

2014 November 10 spoonflower 2 for 1 fat quarters
I have taken advantage of the offer myself to buy some of my budgie tea towels plus 2 fat quarters of Kona cotton, one printed with my Christmas with Love design and another with my Spring Pink Flowers.  The budgie tea towel design will be available for you to buy from my shop soon, but unfortunately it isn’t for sale yet as I need to receive the samples of it first.  You can still take advantage of the 2 for 1 offer to buy other designs from my shop though.

I finally got around to using some of the fabric I ordered a few months ago and made this cushion cover…

2014 November 10 butterfly cushion cover spoonflower fabric hazel fisher creations 1I love how bright and colourful this cushion looks on my sofa.  The front fabric is my butterflies design, printed onto Linen-Cotton canvas and the back is some lovely Aqua coloured Essex Linen which I ordered from Fabric Rehab.  I ordered a fat quarter of each to cover a 14 inch cushion (and had some fabric left over).

2014 November 10 butterfly cushion cover spoonflower fabric hazel fisher creations 3
The back of the cushion fastens with 3 vintage buttons from my collection – they were the perfect match for this fabric!

2014 November 10 butterfly cushion cover spoonflower fabric hazel fisher creations 2
I haven’t decided exactly what I will be making with my new fat quarters yet.  I’m thinking of making a little zipped pouch and I would love to try patchwork sometime too.  What would you make with a fat quarter of fabric?

Sunday 2 November 2014

Spoonflower Tea Towel Calendar Contest – my budgie entry

2014 November 02 budgie tea towel calendar spoonflower contest hazel fisher creations
I haven’t entered any Spoonflower contests for a couple of months, mostly because I have been busy with other things. The tea towel calendar theme was one I had to try though as it’s something that will only come around once a year! I decided to create a design with budgies on, as my budgie designs are some of the most popular ones in my shop, plus I really enjoy drawing budgies! They’re fun birds to draw because of their different characters, colourings, and markings.

Voting has been open for a few days and it has been so lovely to have received so many favourites on the design already and some lovely comments too. If you like my design I would really appreciate your vote!  You can see all of the other entries here and vote for your favourites: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=276

Saturday 1 November 2014

November Free Printable Calendar

I wasn't sure what theme to choose for November’s calendar, so had a look back through all my surface pattern designs to find something which I hadn't already used for the calendar this year.  I decided to use the pattern made from my drawings of vintage buttons but gave it a new look by changing the colour scheme.  As it’s autumn here, I used my Autumn Shades set of baker’s twine as colour inspiration – I hope you like it!

2014 November 01 free printable calendar hazel fisher creations
You can download the PDF here and you can view and print the calendar with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The calendar is A4 in size, but you can scale it to fit different sized paper if you prefer.  You can print onto any type of paper you like, for best results I recommend using your printer's highest quality setting and a good quality paper.

Please note this calendar is for personal use only!  You can print it as many times as you like for your own use but you may not redistribute it in any form (digitally or printed).  You may not modify the calendar or claim it as your own.  If you would like to share the calendar on your blog, Pinterest, facebook etc please include a link back to this page (not the download link).  Thank you!  I hope you enjoy using it :)