so I made a cake.

I think this yummy cake is a Pinterest find although I can't find the pin now. But it is fab for lazy holiday mornings when you aren't really in the mood for whipping up a full English or some 'Special Eggy Bread' as we call it in our house (that's a whole other post in its self!)

The best thing about it is that you can make it when you have a spare half an hour between wading through the chaos that is your house during the summer hols (if your house isn't scattered with toys, grass, wet towels, random pens without lids and probably quite a few raisins like ours then you either don't have kids or you need to share your secret!)

I made ours today because we went out last week for a lovely walk in the fields a few mins from our house with Daisy the Dog and took a pot to collect blackberries. We did this last year but didn't think about it until late September so most of the good ones were gone. This year though we got in early and within about half an hour we had a good haul and in Jack's case a black and red face. They have done a few little treats after dinner for the boys sprinkled with a bit of sugar but today they either needed eating or binning.

I have made this before, the recipe called for blueberries but I thought I would try it with and blackberries and it seems to have worked. I think I remember the original recipe saying that it even works with frozen fruit, but it is nice to feel a little bit smug knowing that you picked the fresh fruit... for five mins you can pretend you are the perfect mother :)

So... the recipe. All the measurements are in cups I'm afraid. I have a set of cups that I inherited from my mum so I just use those but you can always find the conversions here (good old Delia) if you haven't got any.

Serves 6-8
½ cup salted butter, room temperature
2 tsp. lemon zest or more — zest from 1 large lemon
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups fresh blueberries (or any other fruit that you feel like trying, frozen or fresh)
½ cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Cream butter with lemon zest and 1/2 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined. Meanwhile, toss the blueberries with ¼ cup of flour, then whisk together the remaining flour and baking powder.
3. Add the flour mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk. Fold in the blueberries.
4. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan (or something similar) with butter or coat with non-stick spray. Spread batter into pan. Sprinkle batter with remaining tablespoon of sugar. Bake for 35 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. If necessary, return pan to oven for a couple of more minutes. (Note: Baking for as long as 10 minutes more might be necessary.) Let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

I hadn't heard of buttermilk before (but that just might be me) but I found it pretty easy to get hold of in Sainsbury's or Morrisons down here.

Enjoy lovelies, let me know which fruits you try it with.

Claire xx

Can I use my logo as my blog/web header?

I get asked this a lot, and I mean A LOT so don't worry if you are one of the people who has ever wondered this. Basically the answer is pretty much no... but I feel mean just saying NO and I do sometimes feel like people may think that I am just trying to get extra money out of them because they may not completely understand what the difference is between a logo and a banner or header.

A logo is essentially an image that is used to identify your business. It consists of a combination of colours, graphic elements and font and with it you are creating an image that your customers can get to know, trust and recognise immediately.

It doesn't have to illustrate or represent every aspect of your business, for example people who make cupcakes, jewellery, sock monkeys and frying pans ( I'm exaggerating slightly but you get my drift) don't have to have an image of everything they do on their logo. It just needs to give your customer the right impression of your business and be about what YOU do, not be a representation of what is in fashion this year or look like a competitor's design. Don't forget, if you do well then you will still be hopefully using the same design in 10 years time so you don't want it to age too much. Where logos are concerned the simpler the better and a good catchy tag line will do wonders for encapsulating the feel of your business.

So now you have your logo... its attractive, its eye catching and best of all its yours!

So what is a web header and why can't I just use my logo instead?

A web header is what goes across the top of your website, is long and thin in size and shape and usually consists of your logo, a tag line, possibly your contact details or even media icons like facebook, twitter etc. Here is where you can start to add a little bit more design to your site. Expand on the logo design to create a web banner that is exciting and eye catching. If you make bunting, then add some. If you make cakes, add some of them. If you make hand made hanging hearts whack some of those on there! A web banner can be used to set the overall feel of your website.

You can't use a logo design for this because unless your logo is long and pretty thin you are pretty much trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, your logo will end up either squashed and distorted or the top and bottom will be cut off and you will end up with just a bit of the middle.

Ok, fine I hear you say, I understand what's what now, so why can't you just design me a web header without me having to shell out for a logo design as well?!

Well as I said, a blog or web banner usually consists of your logo or business names and other bits along side it. If I designed a web header for someone for £30 I am essentially giving them a logo design for 1/3 of the price of what I usually charge. My prices are based on not only the time it takes to create the logo designs which are all drawn from scratch and don't contain any stock images, but also the time I take getting to know what each of my customers wants and needs from their design,and then time researching and sketching so that I can give them the best designs I can. I don't think it would be fair to charge some people £90 for a service and then let others have it for £30... plus, I can't really feed my forever hungry boys on that I'm afraid :)

I hope that has cleared things up a little bit and hasn't got too heavy or sounded like I was being nasty or trying to make anyone feel silly. This is what I do so I should know what I am talking about but when it comes to icing a cake or knitting a hat I wouldn't know where to start and I'd leave that to you lot... the experts at what you do. Thanks for reading, comments greatly appreciated.

Claire x

It's June....

So I AM doing a photo a day for June, its going to be a pretty big month for me so I think I'd like to record it.

Day one: Morning!

I had big plans for my first day, I was going to take him down the beach once we had dropped the bigger one off for school and get a gorgeous photo of the Solent while the morning mist was still around... but this little monkey had other ideas! Falling asleep at 6 pm as soon as you come in from nursery = getting up at 6 am with a whole lot of bounch in your step. Poor old Rex the Rabbit!

Claire xx

I've got the skills to pay the bills... I hope!

So after years of dreaming about it I have finally done it! As of the 15th of June I will officially be a freelance designer and Illustrator. I can't wait! I am also a little (read alot of a little) nervous! EEEK! I keep swinging from excitement to sheer terror! What if, after a year of pretty steady growth my little baby business suddenly bombs and I have to go back to working for someone else with my tail between my legs?! I just have to keep telling myself that I can do it, in the words of the Beastie Boys ' I've got the skills to pay the bills!'. So may exciting things are whizzing round in my head, big plans to take my business from little part time venture to something that can actually support me and my family. I'm so proud that I have managed to get this far with it, if I can manage with with two kids and a part time job having every day to create means that the sky is the limit! I've just opened for new orders after a little bit of time off to recharge my battery and live life a bit, find me inspiration again and feel really creative for the first time in a while. I think the time off is exactly what I needed to make me realise that going full time is the best thing for our little family. It means I can plan my days around my boys and the husband so that family time can really be family time. Oscar is going to nursery two days a week and Jack has his clubs on those days after school so that is 16 whole hours of child free time a week to really crack on with the important work stuff so that when they come home we can do the important family fun stuff. Jack is such a creative little monkey and I want to be able to encourage that as much as I can and give Oscar the opportunity to find out what he loves as he grows. Being the second one he is coming on so quickly already to keep up with his big brother, he loves reading ( obviously use that term loosely lol) books, harrssing the rabbit and sticking his fingers in the dogs bowl. Sounds like a perfect little gentleman already! I am going to have to plan my week down to the last second I think, because I do have a tendancy to get a little distracted... a few hours a week for admin, a set time of day for responding to email and a day a week where I write a blog post...I've got big plans for my little blog. I'm not a brilliant writer (i tend to waffle... you have probably guessed that!) but hopefully I will get a bit better with practice. I want to use it as a place to share our little adventures, share recipies, creative ideas (usually all found on Pinterest) and just be a little record of how much better life is now that I have taken this huge leap that is promising so much... I hope it delivers and hopefully you will all enjoy reading. I'm going to start with the June Photo a Day challenge from the brilliant Fat Mum Slim, I'll post it here, on Facebook and on Instagram and maybe it help me to get in the habit of blogging. You can follow me on Instagram at @mrslever and on facebook here.     So tomorrow's the first day, I'd better get off to bed so I can be up bright and early to take the first one! Claire xx p.s HOW is it June already?

A look back at my first year in business and some tips for the newbies.

As the saying goes, 'You can't judge a book by it's cover' but unfortunately people always do. Your logo has to say so much about you, your business, and what it is that you do in the first few seconds and if this isn't right then you have lost them before they have even seen what you have to offer (no pressure there then!)

When I started my little design business last year, if I'm honest the first thing I thought about was the logo. Maybe that's just me because that is what I do. I design things and I like to make things look pretty and organised.... although if you saw our bedroom tonight you may not believe me (seriously, piles of clean clothes everywhere waiting to be folded and put away, but that will have to wait, I've got work to do)

Honestly, even before I thought about pricing or anything else at all practical, I was thinking up lovely names for my business that reflected me and my life and imagining all kinds of lovely little images... it was doodles galore at my desk for a solid week! To be honest when I started out a year ago, I knew I had the talent and the ability to design logos, and my background in illustration and graphics and work in advertising behind me gave me extra confidence in those abilities, it was more the running of a business that I didn't have any idea how to do and I kind of dived in head first.

This was my first logo and at the time it reflected my style and me. My boys, my husband and our little home are the most important things in my world and I wanted that to show because that is who I was doing it for. That is our little front door of our cosy little Victorian Terrace in Portsmouth which Tom painted black because I thought it was much more stylish then yucky stained red wood. That is the wreath that I made myself which hangs there from spring to the end of summer when it is replaced by the autumn one and obviously a Christmas one in December. I loved it then and I still do.

The thing is with this logo, as time went by, and I designed more and more for different businesses, my style began to change. I spend stupid amounts of hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration, be it colour combinations, shapes, fonts or just even photos that might inspire me (usually when I can't get to sleep at 2 am because my head is buzzing with ideas) I started to move away from the hand drawn style that I started with and became much more about clean lines and colour and text. As this happened my logo just didn't seem to work anymore. I did still use the odd bit of hand drawn stuff but on the whole my drawing has become much more computer based and I create things on screen instead of paper.... It was time for a re brand ( and a reprice but that's a different blog post) This is fine for me because it's what I do, I could redesign my brand at any time, it was just a case of finding the time to do it.What if I couldn't do it for myself and I had rushed into a logo, had one designed for me when I wasn't entirely sure of what I wanted and then discovered 6 months down the line that it wasn't right and had to use more of my hard earned cash to get another one done?

I have had quite a few people come to me over the last few months who have been in the same situation I was in when I first started out. Its sort of a "OMG I am doing what I have always wanted and starting a little business doing what I love, I want it all sorted NOW" kind of a feeling ( I know because I am the most impatient person in the world!) and you want everything up and running as soon as you can. You lie awake at night imagining lovely designs and inevitably, as it does in wee small hours, your mind wanders until you end up miles away from where you started. My advice to anyone in this situation after this first year in business is wait a little bit and get to know your business and what you really want from a design for it. No one expects a brand new business to have everything sorted from the word go, especially if its something that you are doing part time or as a hobby that develops slowly.

Don't get me wrong, I am still learning as I go, but from what I have learnt in my first year there are a few things that I am going to be asking my customers to think about when they come to me for a logo for their new little baby.

If you are one of those people (and don't worry if you are, it DOES NOT make you a bad person or in any way shape or form silly and unfit for business, it just shows how excited you are and how much passion you have to put into your new project) then have a little look at these things to think about when starting a new business, it might help you work out what you want from your business branding when you are ready for it:

What does your business do or sell?
Who are you competing with?
What don't you do that your competitors might? (not a bad thing, just something to consider)
What makes you stand out from your competitors?
Where are you planning to take the business, is there room for growth and change as the market demands it?
Who is your ideal customer?

Three to five words your customer might associate with your business?
What does your business name say about your brand as a whole?
Where is your logo likely to be used a/now b/ in the next 6 months to a year (a logo designed specifically as a facebook profile pic will not necessarily work on a business card, don't forget, we can start with a simple design as the basis for your branding and go where ever you want to with the rest of your business branding.)

All these questions will give you a better idea of what you want for your business as a brand. It gives your designer a good idea of what you do, where your business might go and what the logo needs to say. Don't forget, it might be your baby and you might love pink and purple butterflies, but pink and purple butterflies will not tell your customer what your business does if you are starting a men's clothing brand.

Don't rush in to choosing a designer either. Shop around, ask other businesses for recommendations and I know that as a start up cash will probably be tight but PLEASE don't go for the cheap option because no one who charges pennies for a design can afford to put in the time or effort that you need. I know I would say that but consider how much time and effort you put into your work, be it a handmade item or a cake or jewellery, a good designer should put in that much effort for you. Think about how important your business image is to you and then find a designer that cares just as much as you do and is willing to take the time to ask these questions and understand you and your business before they do your work.

I hope this has helped anyone who is just starting out to work out what they are all about before rushing into anything, I promise a little bit of work now will save a whole lot of hassle later on.

I launched my new printing service!

The Print Room is the newest part of Design@No.11. My aim is to provide a really good quality print service with good quality products that will show off your business to it's fullest potential, but that won't break the bank.

My business cards are 400 gsm card stock compared to a lot of  the larger companies that only use 280 gsm so they feel fantastic in your hand and scream quality and style. All my prices are inclusive of VAT and postage within the UK so when you get a quote, that is the price, no hidden costs further down the line.

I'm running a little giveaway to let as many people as possible know about this part of my little business. To enter all you have to do is share this photo on your wall and tag Design@No.11 in it. Send your likers over to say Hello if they want to. Then leave a comment on my blog below and you will be entered into the draw. On Sunday evening (Sunday 12th at 7.00pm) I will give everyone a number and use a random number generator to pick a winner.

That luck person will win either an A5 flyer or postcard design (it is up to them) and 250 free printed A5 flyers or postcards. (Winners outside the UK will be required to pay for postage I'm afraid.

Good Luck everyone and get sharing :)

Claire xx

Day 5 of a Photo a day for Feb

Day five of a photo a day for Feb was entitled "10 am"

This was my usually smiley and giggle little man at 10 am and pretty much all day.. I don't think he was very impressed with his first trip to Ikea.

More proof, if it was needed at all, that he is most definitely Daddy's little man :)

Happy Monday, I will be back later with today's post - 'Dinner'

Day 4 of a photo a day for Feb....

Today's title was 'Stranger'... Well my Jack just gets stranger and stranger! :)

well actually I didn't have a spare minute yesterday.

So Day 2 of the photo a day challenge and I have already failed... ooops! I was a bit behind on everything yesterday, you know one of those days that seems to whizz by in a blur of rushing around not getting very much done at all.

Yesterday's photo was entitled 'Words' and these are three very exciting words in my life at the moment, they hopefully mean the start of a whole new exciting chapter for my little business in 2012, and I am pretty chuffed with my little logo as well :)

coming soooooon.....

Day 3 in the photo challenge was 'Hands' which had to be all about these chubby little monkey fingers.

Oscar discovered his hands at about 16 weeks old and is facinated by them, he can sit for hours and stare, giggle, gurgle and coo at the shapes he can make with his own fingers and I could sit for hours watching him. This week he has also learned to wave which he generally reserves for whenever Jack walks in to a room as his big brother is by far his fave person in the whole world.

Night night,

I am taking a photo a day in Feb!

I have been looking for a nice way to start my blogging again but life has been so busy at the moment that I haven't had a second to breathe and stop to think about what people might even be interested in reading. This morning I saw that thevery talented Jen from Pikelet Workshop had set herself a challenge to take a photo a day in February. Well, I thought, that sounds like a really rather lovely and fairly simple idea. That is what I will do soooooo..... Here is the 1st of Feb's photo - My View Today

I'm at real work today and the view here is pretty depressing some times so I have taken my view first thing and the view I wish I had all day :)

Why not have a little go yourself? I would love to see everyone's photos every day.

Happy February!

P.S the original idea came from FatMumSlim, pop over and check out her lovely blog.

I created a new design page on a whim which has now run away with its self! :)

I have been meaning to get on here for ages and write a post (do all my posts start like this?!) but thanks to the amazing start I have had with http://www.facebook.com/DesignatNo.11 I haven't had a second to do anything else. AT ALL!

My last post at the beginning of March was to announce the winners of my launch competition and since then the weeks have flown by in a blur of logo/banner/business card design and a fabulous amount of support from so many of my lovely likers! Thank you everyone so much!

The problem is I am now 25 weeks pregnant and while I am absolutely loving the design side of my work I can't stay up late enough any more to fit in the crafting side, which I really love, as well as being a mummy to Jack and working full time and (attempting to) keep the house tidy so something has to give a little bit.

So I've decided that from now on I will have 3 slots for design jobs a week (sometimes 4 depending on the size of each job) and will book people in for a slot as and when they get in touch. I hope that's not going to put anyone off and hopefully no one will have to wait more then a week or so for me to get started on their designs but we will just have to see how it goes. If anyone else has had to adopt a waiting list system like this and has any tips they would be very much appreciated!?

But I just wanted to say a big thank you again to all of my lovely customers for trusting me with their business in the first place and recommending me to others as well, I never thought it would all take off as well as it had!

Claire x

And the winners are...

Thank you to everyone who entered my little launch competition! And now to announce the winners, I drew names with the help of my glamourous assistant







And the names of the three lucky winners that he drew out of his fireman's hat were...






And




Well done ladies and so sorry to everyone who didn't win! My lovely logos are still quite reasonable though if anyone is interested in contacting me about one. All prices and packages are on the info part of my Facebook page.

To my lovely winners, please email me at spareminuteproductions@hotmail.co.uk with your ideas/requests. Anything you can give me to help with getting an idea of what you want would be lovely!

Thank you! Claire xx


Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

i did what i said i was going to do... eventually!

Some time last week I was having a browse around some lovely blogs I know and came across this brilliant idea for a "To Do" list for the kitchen from Little Birdie Secrets.

I am the least organised person in the world and between working full time, being a mummy, running a house and 2 businesses I do tend to forget things every so often. I am also slowly succumbing to the curse of pregnancy forgetfulness to the point where my husband will say something to me and half an hour later I will swear blind that he has never said such a thing to me in his whole entire life (can come in quite useful though!!).

This weekend I finally got around to making my kitchen to do list when I a spare half an hour on Sunday night. I've had a bit of a creative block the last few days but I still wanted to actually make something and this fit the bill.

What do you think?

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

Tom has been working away this week so we got a rare family weekend and decided to make the most out of the sunshine at the seaside. One of the things I love most about living on the coast is being able to shoot down the beach in the rare few hours of winter sunshine we get and be home in time to be nice and snug when the inevitable rain arrives in the afternoon!



Jack has his first sleep over last night!! Only next door at his best friend Tyler's house, but I think that is enough for the two of us, we spent the evening listening to them all running around and screaming and wondering if we would get a knock at the door at 2 o'clock in the morning from our little baby wanting to come home... But he's getting so big, "4inapril" as he keeps reminding us, and was absolutely fine, and up bright and early with the others (screaming and thundering down the hall) at half six!

So off we went this morning with a grumpy little man who hadn't had enough sleep for a lovely seaside walk. We went down the see the cannon fired across the harbour at midday and then walked along the beach to the local fish market and bought some gorgeously fresh fish for lunch.


Jack loves going because all the the crabs and lobsters are in a massive tank for him to see and he likes to stare at the bug fish eyes staring right back at him. The boys had a big bag of mussels and I had to make do with some (still very nice) Cod loin and just a dunk of the mariniere juice cause of being knocked up! Just one of the many inconveniences of pregnancy, good job it's worth it in the end!









Now were all snuggled up on the sofa to watch England beat the French in the rugby! Have a lovely weekend everyone x


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

who wants a brand spanking shiney new logo for their business!? All for FREE!

To celebrate the launch of my exciting new Design service I am running a competition for 3 of my lovely likers to win a logo design for their online business.

So how do you win such a brilliant prize?! All you have to do is comment below on my blog and next Wednesday the 2nd of March at 7.00pm I will select the winners from all the comments and will post them on Design @ No.11's Fabebook page.

Good Luck and thanks for entering!

Claire xx

I launched Design @ No.11

Today sees the exciting launch of my new design service Design @ No.11...

...my lovely new design service where I will be offering everything from Business Branding and Design to Invitations for Weddings, Birthday Parties, Hen dos, as well as Birth Announcement Cards,Change of Address Cards and anything else my lovely customer would like from me.

As everyone who is a fan of my Spare Minute Productions page knows I love to be creative in any way I can. I have a degree in Illustration and my day job is working fro a local children's charity here in Portsmouth called The Elizabeth Foundation as a graphic designer. I use Adobe CS5 alld ay everyday and so Photoshop and Illustrator are my main tools but I love to hand draw things and then mess around with them on the computer. Such a varied work environment means my style can be adapted to suit any business.

As an online buisness owner myself I know that the thought of having a logo and business stationary designed for you can be a really scary and often expensive option. I am lucky enough to be able to do my own but I wanted to offer that option to others at a reasonable price so have put together a few pricing options:

One off buisness logo design £20.- This includes an initail email cosulation to let me know what you would like and what your business is about/how you would like to be presented. I will then design a logo from the information you give me and will email it to you to be used as you would like.

Logo Design Service £35 - This is the same as the one off design process but I will send you 3 different logo designs to chose from. We can also tweak these a little if there is part of one you like and would like it added to another design for example. I will then email you your chosen logo design once it is complete.

Additional Items £10 -  This includes postcards, business cards, folksy/etsy/online shop banners, letterheads, compliments slips, letter heads, or anything else you would like to order. Feel free to email me images of your products if you would like these to be included in your design aswell. I am happy to use an exisitng logo if you already have one but will charge a £10 design fee for this.

Anything else you would like to commision me to do, please do get in contact, I am always up for a challenge!

Claire x

We have got a picture frame at home that we have had since we moved into our first flat five years ago and found out we were going to have Jack. We were out one day and Tom picked up a black box frame in Cargo, we had all kinds of plans for it, we were going to put Jack's scan piccture in it, his hospital bracelet etc and make a little memory frame of his first few weeks.... turns out being a first time Mum and finishing your degree at the same time is quite alot of work and I never got round to it, so it has sat empty in our spare room all that time, waiting for the perfect project which I have FINALLY found!

I was having a friday afternoon blog reading session when I came across this brilliant idea from Little Birdie Secrets. I'm no way near organised enough to use the menu planner BUT I do love a good To Do List! It makes me calm, I know its sad, but it does!

So this weekend, along with cleaning the house which is all of a sudden filthy, and doing my Spare Minute Productions  orders, I am going to have a go at making this bad boy, will post pictures once it is finished!

Will leave you with some pictures from our night time trip to the beach on Wednesday night. It wasn't exactly what I had been dreaming of all day long (no sun at all, just the moon) but any trip to our special part of the beach is lovely with my boys! The lack of sun didnt seem to bother Jack because he still pulled off his shoes and socks and went for a paddle (and had to be carried back to the car and stripped off from the waist down because the waves got the better of him!)



i window shopped!

In anticiaption of pay day tomorrow I had spare five minutes to have a look around Folksy and Etsy for some supplies to inspire me. Its a beautiful day here in Portsmouth (we havent had many recently!) and so, even though I am stuck at work, I'm feeling inspired to make some lovely, bright, happy bits to go with the weather.

I've wanted to do a wreath that could be personalised for a bedroom door for a while and these gorgeous lillipop spotty buttons from Big Fish on Etsy are just the inspiration I need (along with about a million other things in the shop!!)

So these will be in the shopping basket tomorrow as a little treat, and keep an eye out for a bright and colourful bedroom door wreath, coming soon!

In the mean time I will sit at my desk and dream about spending the day down at the seafront with my boys in what Jack calls "Mummy and Daddy and Jack's special place"!

Spare Minute Productions Design Service was born!

I've been thinking about launching a design service for other online businesses for a little while and, after spending some time on my own bits, I have decided to go ahead and do it! *little nervous wobble*

Im sure lots of you out there are very creative and are able to do your own bits but for those who aren't quite as  handy with a computer I am now offering a design service that can be tailored to your needs and, I think, is fairly well priced. I know alot of people are put off by the thought of spending hundreds of pounds to pay someone else to do their design for them and end up with something that they arent quite happy with.

My service is completely personalised to you. If you have loads of ideas but just arent quite sure how to bring them into reality, or you completely draw a blank when you try to think of how you want your business to look I can help. I can include pictures of your work, or just take a look at what you do and create an idea from the feel of your shop... the sky is the limit!

I can offer:

Shop Avatars
Shop Banners
Business Cards
Postcard
Compliments Slip
Invoice Slip
Letterhead
Logo
Shipping Label
Stickers

There will be a £10 design charge plus and additonal £5 per item from the list above.
The £10 design charge includes conversations about ideas via email so that I can get a clear picture of what you might think you want (or dont want) I will then do an intial design which I will send to you for approval or changes. Up to 4 changes per customer (unless these are very small changes like wording etc.) Once design have been approved you will receive a high res version of your items for printing, use on your website etc.

Please contact me on my Facebook page or email Spareminuteproductions@hotmail.co.uk if you are in need of some lovely designs!

My shop's Spare Minute Productions designs might inspire you a little bit. Alot of  my images are quite bright and colourful so I wanted to keep my backgrounds quite simple, but I can go as spotty, dotty bright as you would like!

Postcard - ideal for popping in with your orders to say thanks to your customers

Folksy Shop banner

have gona a bit dotty!

I picked up these lovely polka dotty new plates and bowls yesterday from Next and have gone a little but spot mad in the last few weeks so i thouught I would have a look round folksy and etsy and find the best of the spotty stuff to share with everybody!

First up, this gorgeous valentines banner from Sugar Owl Design which is absolutely gorgeous and I would probably keep it up all year round.

then this cute little treasure pot from  joyelizabethceramics, she has got some absoltely lovely little ceramic bits in her shop!

This little cutie from Manic Muffin Totes is much better then my littlwe owls, I will have to have a practice!

This sweet little purse from Grace and Firefly is perfect for keeping loose change, cards and keys in on a night out, and I love the pink and brown combo.

and i couldnt blog about dots without featuring the work of Andrea from Polka who makes the cutest brooches, keyrings, bags and bag charms. You wont find anything like these anywhere else!

Right, I'm off to get on with some work, I need to make a sock bag for the boy. He's got an awful habit of taking his socks off while he is watching TV in the evening and then leaving them lying around so they get lost, I am forever searching for two socks to make a pair in the mornings!  So I'm hoping this will solve the problem..... we will see! And then some spring stock to make myself feel a little bit warmer, at least the sun is shining today!