Spoonflower contest – Beagles

I skipped a week of entering Spoonflower’s weekly contests so that I could focus on finishing some other design work (sorry, I can't show you what I was working on yet!).  If you’re interested, last week’s theme was Spoons and you can see the top ten here, there are some really nice, colourful designs.

It was interesting seeing the results of the Coral, Mint, Black and White contest – there were a massive 674 entries!  So I was really pleased to see my hot air balloon design in the top 100 – it came 54th with 207 votes.  Thank you to anyone who voted for it! :)  You can see the top ten from that contest here.

This week the contest theme is Beagles.  As I didn’t have too much time to work on this one I decided to make a quick and simple repeat using my pen and watercolour illustration of a beagle dog and added a spotty background.  You can see all the other entries and vote for your favourites here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=295

My Etsy shop now has Instant Downloads!

When I last wrote about EU VAT, in January I was still waiting to see exactly what Etsy would be doing before I made any changes to the digital items listed in my shop.  In February, Etsy posted this update on their blog, stating that they would be responsible for collecting and remitting VAT on Instant Downloads for all sellers.  The new system for collecting VAT from buyers is still not up and running as I write this, but Etsy have said that they will be paying VAT due on sales until their new collection process has been set up.  Therefore, I have decided to go ahead with making the changes to my shop!

Since 1st January, I limited the number of countries which my non-customised printables (including scrapbooking paper sets) were sold to, so that I could exclude sales to EU countries (except UK).  I am in the process of changing these listings to Instant Download which has several benefits;

• Etsy will handle the VAT, so I don't have to
• The digital items will be available to buy from all European countries again (yay!)
• The download will be instantly available; no more delays in me sending emails caused by global time differences.  So, hopefully, more happy customers!  As soon as payment has been confirmed, customers will be sent an automatic email with a link to download the files from Etsy.

Although it is quite a time consuming process for me uploading all the files to Etsy now, it should save me time in the long run.  I'm still working my way through my listings, but aim to have all non-customised digital items available for instant download soon.  That will include; scrapbooking papers, collage sheets, digital stamp sets, labels, tent cards, name place cards, bunting and straw flags.  All items with customisable options will remain as they are; I will continue to send emails with a download link for these.

If you are unfamiliar with how Etsy’s Instant Downloads work, you can see this article from their help section here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/help/article/3949?ref=help_search_result

Spoonflower contest – Coral, Mint, Black and White

This week’s Spoonflower challenge involved a restricted colour palette of coral, mint, black and white but you could create a design on anything you liked using those colours.  I chose a hot air balloon theme for my entry.  There seem to be a lot of entries this week – it took a long time to scroll through them all on the voting page!  It was nice seeing what a wide range of designs people produced, there are so many great designs – it will be interesting to see the top ten this week!

You can see all the entries here, and vote for your favourites too! 

http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=293

Ups and Downs with Dragons, Horses and a Guinea Pig

The last week or so has been full of ups and downs for me, which I meant to blog about before now, so I have a few different things to share.  I’ll start off with the ups…

Thursday before last, I had a lovely surprise when I found out that my Dragon design made the top ten in Spoonflower’s Mythical Creature Plushie pattern contest!  It came 6th (out of 149 designs) with 314 votes – thank you to everyone who voted for it!  Wood Mouse Bobbit’s Griffin Kitten design came first – it was my favourite entry to the contest so I was really happy for her to win.  Her design consisted of lots of different parts to create a 3D toy, so it was a very impressive design and looked great made up.
I have ordered a print of my own dragon design and should have it within the next week or two, and will then be able to make it available to buy from my Spoonflower shop.  I’ll let you know when it arrives!

In other good news, I had a new card design released with Phoenix Trading last week.  It features rows of horses with different markings; palomino, piebald etc. so would be great for horse lovers! Here’s a pic from the new catalogue (my design is on the right):

The samples of my horse card design arrived early this morning and I love how the design has been printed on matt card with the horses embossed…

I have been busy working on new designs to submit for Phoenix surveys but I can’t show you any pictures of those yet.  They are for general, everyday cards and Christmas ones.  Phoenix have regular surveys where designs submitted from all the artists are sent out to the traders who vote for their favourite designs.  Phoenix then use the results to choose which cards will be published in the next product release.  Fingers crossed they like my new designs!

As I mentioned at the start of this post, the week had it’s downs too.  Sadly my guinea pig Basil became sick and died last week.  Tuesday involved a trip to the vet for him and then I spent the rest of the day syringe feeding him with painkiller, medicine and special food.  Unfortunately he was very weak and didn’t make it through the night.  I’m missing him very much but take some comfort in knowing he is no longer in pain and we did what we could to try and help him.

To end on something a little better, I have a long list of blog posts planned with some things I’ve been making and baking recently (last weekend was my sister’s birthday so I baked her a fancy cake!).  I should have a bit more time to write about them next week, as my Christmas designs need to be in to Phoenix by the end of the week.  You can expect to be seeing more flower and garden photos soon too – the first daffodils are opening in my garden, announcing the arrival of spring and the weather has been warming up so I have started doing some gardening again.