Greetings Cards

It's a week away from Christmas and the year seems to have disappeared in a flurry of university visits with my daughter and then returning for interviews - it's been a really delicious whistle-stop* tour of the UK that's left me with lots of time to wander around new places, although sometimes I have also just chosen to sit - on one occasion, looking out to sea from the window of our B&B (totally dreamy), and on another in a cafe eating toast, wondering how she was getting on and feeling she'd found the perfect city to live in, too heavy-shouldered to continue exploring because of my new coat, which is lovely and warm, but so weighty that after a few hours of walking, I begin to feel like I'm giving a toddler a piggyback...I find it almost impossible to believe this is actually a thing, but people, think about the weight of your coat before you buy). The year has also disappeared in writing, reading, sewing, cutting fabric, working. And eating scrambled eggs in my favourite coffee shop should probably have a category all of its own too. Blog posts not so much...I'm not sure what's happened there...

Anyway, one of my favourite pieces I worked on this year was a re-creation of Liberty London's shopfront (hopefully more details on that in another post) and it had such a lovely response on Instagram, I decided to get that, and a few of my miniature hand-sewn designs, printed up as greetings cards. After a lot of sampling, my cards are finally here, just in time to catch the Christmas post (at least in the UK if you place your order by midday on Thursday 19th...overseas, orders will most likely arrive to welcome in January after the start of the new year). You can find them on Etsy, here.

Each design is printed onto gorgeously thick vellum card stock, with a border that makes it as suitable for framing, as for sending. The cards come with a recycled-paper envelope, packaged in compostable cellophane (or naked if you prefer).

And then on the reverse, there are a few construction details and a tiny version of the image on the front. If you have an eagle-eye when it comes to fonts, you might notice I'm using the same ones Pamela Norman chose for my book - her work on designing my book's cover and inside still delights me, and I like that it's now finding its way into my other projects - thank you, Pamela :).

These cards were a bit of an experiment for me, but after mentioning them on Instagram last night, I've had a few orders on Etsy today and have felt my heart bob at the sight of each one (thank you if you're one of the lovely orderers). I've also been delighted to have a few shops offer to stock them - if you're local to Tunbridge Wells, you can find them at Pincushion Pantiles, which is so worth a visit as Jenny's shop is just bursting with good things - Tana lawn, Merchant & Mills linens, handmade goodies, and a huge range of fabrics, books and patterns. I also have a stack of cards wending their way to a new shop in America that I'll tell you more about in new year, once they've arrived.

Anyway, I hope to be around here more in 2020, but for now, I'm wishing you a most lovely end to the year,

Florence x

* I realised on typing this I had only a vague idea about the whistle-stop's origin, but having researched it, have found that at a little-used station, a train would sound its whistle to signal its approach, so the station master could wave it down if needed. On that basis, I now see it really works best in a political context, which seems to be how the expression was first used...although how much you'd want the politician to stop depends on your allegiances...you may actually just prefer to stand on the platform waving particular ones through as quickly as possible...