Mother's day special offer

If you're stilling looking for the perfect gift to treat your mum this Mother's day, I have a great selection of gift ideas in my online store. I am running a special offer for all purchases over $30 before Mother's day. Spend over $30 on products in one transaction, and receive a free small teardrop candle valued at $16.

To redeem your free candle, either specify in the checkout notes which fragrance you would like, or I will email you after purchase to ask which you would prefer. Then you have to decide whether to treat yourself or your mum with it!

Available in Rose, Frangipani, Orange, Rainforst, Passion and Sweet Lemongrass fragrances. Offer available in both the online and Felt stores, and ends 13th May 2012.

Grand opening sale

I have been working some exciting new goodies, and I would like to make some room for them. Along with that, it's almost the end of the financial year, and I'm not looking forward to having to count everything. In order to make this a little easier for me, I have set up a new online store so you can help out. The more candles you buy, the less there are for me to count!

To make this even more attractive, I am having an opening sale with at least 20% off everything in store. There are also some clearance items and discontinued products, so make sure you get in quick so you don't miss out.

I have added some teacup candles to the shop this afternoon, and also discounted the ones in my Felt store. So there's no excuse not to stock up on gifts, or for splashing out on a little treat for yourself!

The new studio

As candle making can be a rather messy activity, it is not something I do in the office with my computer and other things around (not to mention the carpet either!). The Garage at our new house is an L shape, so there is a nice little nook to set up all my candle making equipment and store all of the materials.

I tidied it up a couple of weeks ago, and took some pictures to share with you.

Lots of storage is important because all equipment and materials seem to keep breeding. I'm all almost at the point now where I know where everything is now. This garage has a handy well placed window – great to open for ventilation, and lets in natural light. The radio serves a dual purpose – it's power button is jammed on, so the only way to switch it off is at the wall. I plug the hotplate into the same outlet with a double adaptor, so I know if it is switched on or off by whether I can hear the radio.

This is where most of the action happens – as you can imagine, the hotplate is a fairly integral part of the candle making process. I think some people use gas to heat the wax, but for me that would be a disaster waiting to happen!

At my old place, I had to scrape the spilled wax off of the painted concrete floor, which wasn't a lot of fun. As the concrete in this garage is rough and unpainted, that just wouldn't work, so I was on the lookout for some old lino. My brother-in-law had this piece leftover from his house, and it works perfectly, and makes the studio look much nicer.

Mum has been having a cleanout, and gave me some bit and pieces of mine, including my old shop I started with my cousin when we were 12. Looking back through this has left me in no doubt of my true calling! I might have to take some pictures and put them up...

Next weekend I will be off on a wee road trip to Lake Tekapo for the Lake Tekapo NZ made Fete which I went to last year. If you'll be there too, do come and say hi.

Swannanoa Country Fair

This weekend brings my first market for the season, the Swannanoa Country Fair on Sunday. There will be over 130 craft and trade stalls, a monster white elephant, lots of kids rides and games, helicopter rides, silent auctions, a petting zoo and lots of food and drink stands. Something for the whole family!

It is only 10 up Tram Road at Swannanoa Domain with plenty of free parking. Entry is by a $5 donation per adult, children (15 and under) free, and includes a lucky programme. This event is a fundraiser for Swannanoa School.

Remember to bring along your old candles to recycle, and receive your choice of a 10% discount off your purchase, or a free tealight candle of your choice.

New Year, new office

Happy new year, and as it's been so long since the beginning of the year, happy Waitangi day as well! January has been pretty action packed for me – moving into our new house, then unpacking things and figuring out where they should all go.

In our old place, I had a small study, and part of the spare room upstairs to work and store all my work and candle paraphenalia. As getting between the two was quite awkward, I ended up working off the kitchen table a lot. Now I have a proper office space, and we have a seperate spare room, which is much better. It's taken me a while to work out where everything is going to go, but things are slowly falling into place.

This room has lovely big windows, so it's very light, but also rather difficult to photograph properly, so please excuse the quality of the images.

My workspace, with my desk for all the computer stuff, and my old trestle table for candle finishing, and packing etc. The little shelves at the end of the table are what I use on my table at markets, and when they aren't being used for that, they make good storage. I bought some of the little boxes that go with them to make it super easy to transition them from 'storage' to 'market' mode.

After spending so much time re-covering my old couch, it deserved pride of place. It's also nice to have a spot to relax and read, or whilst coming up with ideas.

This cabinet used to live in the lounge, and hold the fish tank. After twice being tipped over in subsequent earthquakes from the water sloshing about, and smashing the tanks, it has been retired as a fish tank stand. It's new job is storing all my candles, and as a place to test the prototypes.

I won this print 'Pause" a while back from Ana Aceves. I finally got it framed recently, so I can hang it on the wall, and it looks great!

My office is never this tidy – I wish it was. I had to 'hide' a few boxes of extra things I'm not sure what to do with yet out in the hall so I could take these photos. I did leave a few behind though, just for authenticity. Next week, I will aim to make my new candle making space presentable, and put up some photos of that as well.

Milestones and a Merry Christmas to you

Yesterday, I was working through my pre-Christmas to-do list. I had just sent my Christmas newsletter out to subscribers, and then moved on the the next item on my to-do list, the end of year blog post. There were a whole lot of marigolds growing in the front yard of a broken house that I had wanted to take a photo of for a while, and I thought it might be nice to use that for the post. The flowers had taken over entire front yard, on what used to be a concrete pad – you can't even see that now! I thought it was a nice symbol of how nice things can happen in the face of ruin. So I walked down to get the photo, then came back, uploaded them from the camera, found the image I wanted to use, and saved it to my blog images folder.

Then came the familiar wobble of an impending aftershock, so I got up and opened the door. It got worse, so I decided to go under the dining table, which involved getting past the chairs while everything was madly shaking, so ended up with a couple of bumps to my legs. As I live on the western edge of the eastern suburbs, the power always goes out here when there is a decent shake, so I wasn't able to make a start on the post, or do anything else on my 'work' to-do list. So I went outside to do some gardening, but after the second slightly larger jolt, decided it might be a good idea to just give up for the day!

So... this year that has already been quite interesting, just keeps on going. I remember looking back last year over a rather eventful year, having no idea how much more eventful this year would be. Who knows what next year will bring!

In that post I said I hoped to build my business into a sustainable source of income for myself. This hasn't been an easy task, but in the last two months I have managed to achieve that milestone. That is, bring in enough money to cover my costs, and pay myself my modest token salary. Now I hope to continue that and hopefully build on it in the new year. A big thank you to everyone that has supported my business this year, in any way, even if in a seemingly small way. It all counts, and I couldn't have done it without you, especially through such challenging times.

As this city has faced some major events this year, I have also had a few milestones myself. I recently turned 30, which isn't a major milestone in itself, but I do feel I have achieved quite a lot in those years. We have also recently purchased our first house, which we move into in January. This is really exciting, and even more of an achievement when one of you is self-employed – banks don't really like lending on little starting out incomes!

So over the break I will be busy sorting and packing everything up, as well as a trip to Nelson to visit my family, and a trip to Wellington for a wedding. I won't be closing my Felt shop per se, but there will be a delay on posting orders. Any orders placed between now and the end of next week will be posted on Friday 30th December, and any placed after that will be posted on the 9th January.

So wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and hoping my fellow Christchurch citizens don't get too shaken up over the holidays. See you all again next year!

All I want for Christmas Market

This weekend will be my last Christchurch market (but not my last market, I still have three more of them lined up!) It is the All I want for Christmas market, held on Saturday from 10am - 4pm at the Shirley Intermediate school hall. It is organised by the lovely ladies from the Craft Collective who brought us the two markets at Goodbye Blue Monday last Christmas, and the Monster May Market earlier in the year.

I will have some owl candles with me – if they don't all sell on Felt in the meantime! I also have a special on tin candles at the moment if you but three of any one size. Three small tins for $40 (save $8), three medium tins for $50 (save $10) and three large tins for $60 (save $12). The essentials are three small for $45 (save $9), three medium for $55 (save $11) and three large for $65 (save $13). A great way to stock up for Christmas, or yourself. I am planning to phase out the small and large tins, to streamline my stocks a bit more, so this is a way to help clear them out. I will also have some other specials, so I have less stock to move in January. Though as I need to fit everything all onto one table (after getting quite used to my two tables with the outdoor sites!) I won't be able to put a lot out at any one time, and will rotate it throughout the day. Feel free to ask to see what I don't have on display.

The Women's refuge will also be there, and will have a drop of box for gifts for the children for Christmas. If you would like to bring something along to donate, please leave them unqrapped, and here a some ideas for items to give: new toys and books for children, model making kits, colouring in books, jigsaws, puzzles and games. There will alway be a raffle to raise money for the Women's refuge also.

My remaining three markets after this are:

Kiwi Christmas Market: 5pm - 9pm, 14th December at Westland High School, Hokitika

A Christmas Cracker: 12:30pm - 5pm, 17th December at the Baptist Church back room, East Belt, Rangiora

Methven Farmers Market & Christmas Craft Market: 9:30am - 12pm, 18th December at the Heritage Centre, Methven.