Hello Everyone!

I didn’t realise it had been so long since I blogged. There has been so much happening here in our little shop. For starters we have been very busy getting everything ready for our stall at the Melbourne Quilt and Craft fair. Boy was that a lot of work!

I was very happy yesterday when the boxes where loaded onto the pallet and shrink wrapped ready for their trip over to Melbourne. When I arrive at the exhibition center it will be there ready and waiting for me (that’s the plan anyway!)

Thank you to everyone who has helped with the preparations the past couple of weeks. For weighing and bagging the brads (over 3000 bags of brads are on that pallet! lol), for helping by cutting 1125m of ribbon in to 1m lengths, for helping to pack the class kits, for writing instructions for the page kits, for making cards for the card kits and finally for stitching our aprons. You all know who you are 🙂 I could not have done it without all of you!

The shop will still be open whilst we are in Melbourne. But the trading hours for next week are 9.30 – 2.30 everyday. 

Now I have some other news…..

In August last year I was handed the keys to my very own shop. We worked hard to make it a shop I could be proud of. At the time we (my husband and I) knew it was a risk to open a shop here in Geraldton. We were doing well selling from home online, holding classes at home and we really struggled with the decision if it would be worth all the extra expenditure for rent, power and working full time….the list goes on. And now the lease is nearly finished so its decision time.

To be honest we are not 100% happy with our location. It was the best we could find at the time within our price range (real estate is really not cheap here in town!!) but we have very limited parking and the building is very old, our shop windows and doors have been broken a couple of times due to the night club being practically next door, the classroom is not really as big as we would like it and there are a few other issues with the shop too, so to re-sign here would not really be to our benefit.

We have spent the last 3 months searching for the perfect new shop. Most that where the right size where astronomical in price, others too small, also no parking etc.

Finally our hunting has paid off. We have found the absolute perfect shop. We are going from 120m2 to 280m2! So we will have plenty of room to prepare for our shows / markets in the future. The classroom is perfect – it even has a kitchenette in it. There is a little office ready for me to move all our paper work and computer in (so much better than doing everything at home) and there is not 1 but 2 toilets in the shop and 1 out the back for staff and to top it off there is parking space for at least 20 cars.

Photos will be posted after I return from Melbourne. (the shop still needs to be painted etc).

Further information regarding our move, new address, Grand Opening Day etc will be given very soon 🙂 (just waiting for the final paper work to come back from the lawyer first)

For the past 2 weeks I have also been on a little CHA spending spree.  Lots of new products due in August and September. Bo Bunny, Prima, October Afternoon, Fancy Pants, Kaiser, We R Memory Keepers, Echo Park and lots more! Lots of papers and embellishments, Lucky we are going to a bigger shop to fit them all in. Photos of these will be loaded in the next couple of days.

Hope everyone in WA enjoys the 2nd week of the school holidays.

Marijke