Lovely & Lovely

Out with the old & in with the new!

2012-02-05T11:51:00.000Z

Happy New Year! A little belated but heartfelt nonetheless.

I can’t believe its February already, 5 minutes ago we were watching fireworks in Copenhagen on New Year’s Eve...what happened to January?

Well we haven’t quite spent the first month of the year in total hibernation...we have been coming up with new baby vest designs & combinations – our vests are now 100% organic & fair trade cotton & we’ve dyed & printed them ourselves with environmentally sound dyes. We’re really pleased with the finished products...what do you think?

There are lots more new designs in the pipeline so do keep checking back!

We’ve also been through our stock & put loads of it into our sale so that we can clear the decks a bit & go shopping crazy at the Spring trade fairs, the first of which is tomorrow!

Snow permitting we’ll be travelling to Birmingham tomorrow to trek around the NEC & ogle all the exciting new products on display. As always we have an idea of what we’d like to find but the most exciting part is always coming home with something unexpected that we’ve just stumbled across.

Hopefully we’ll have lots of new & exciting things coming very soon & we’ll be making a concerted effort to blog more regularly so you can see what’s going on.

We reckon 2012 is going to be great!

What do you think?

Camilla & Emily x

Making the most of our last festival of the year!

2011-08-25T18:34:00.000+01:00

We thought we'd finished our festival run this year & then we were asked at the last minute to take over the pitch of our friends Amy & James at Mamacha at Beautiful Days. We ummed & we aaahed & then we wondered if we could afford it & then we worried about how to get everything down to Devon & then we thought...who are we kidding??? This is the chance to do another festival, ofcourse we're going to go!

So we hired a trailer, packed it as full as we could& set off to drive to Devon. Did you know that as soon as you hit Hampshire the road gets really hilly, but we soon got over the indignity of being over taken while chugging up the hills at 25mph by caravans, horse boxes & lorries & really enjoyed our trip. Even though we only saw 2 Eddie Stobart lorries on the way down! Have we mentioned before that we count Eddie Stobart lorries when we're travelling...no? well we do, you should try it, gets addictive :)

Oh & we saw Stonehenge! There's a really cool view from the road!

We over came some other challenges on the way down too like pulling into the car park of a service station only to realise that there was no where to turn round with a trailer & then having to drive through the MacDonald's drive thru in order to get out! And then we got there & set up & had a totally groovy weekend. Can you see how teeny our stall looks? It looked bigger from the inside though & then we did some really cool adjustments for the rain with tied up gazebo walls & gaffer tape!!!

Where we were was outside the main arena in camping but we had lovely (although slightly nuts) neighbours in the RSPB boys & the Geo fossils who looked after us beautifully all weekend & even let us borrow their daughter to keep us company when we got a bit bored!(love the fact that Luke is trying to keep his coffee in his glass as he jumps)

We had a great weekend!

Beautiful days is the Levellers' festival & they open & close proceedings. There is no sponsership, branding or advertising & yet they sell out every year! There is a glorious mix of people & this year there was some awesome music! (We're sure they always have awesome music but this was our first time)

Our highlights include: seeing Adrian Edmondesn & the Bad Shepherds who were really really good inspide of Aid's self depricating commentary, Tim Minchin who is an absolute comic genius, the light bulb moment when we realised that the festival probably takes it's name from that really famous Levellers' song: What a Beautiful Day! & watching the firework display that closed the fesitval illuminating the aforementioned song (fireworks will always be cool!) We're gutted that we only heard the end of Gogol Bordello - reported to be the set of the festival the two songs that we heard were fabulous! We're definitely getting their album!

There were gorgeous sunsets & happily it didn't rain as much as it could have...

The best thing about festivals is the people you meet & the random strangers who will help you when you need it as we discovered when the starter motor on the Lovely van broke just as we'd loaded everything...if not for the very kind man who bump started us (backwards down the hill, very cool!) we wouldn't have been going anywhere on Monday!

Just incase you were wondering we made it all the way to Oxford before we had to stop & switch the engine off...then we parked (ie broke down) at a petrol station in Headington while we waited for Nigel the RAC man to come & get us going again. We made it home by 8.30, 5 & a half hours after we set off thanks to the kindness of strangers & the RAC!

A Lovely Outdoor Summer

2011-07-06T10:24:00.000+01:00

You know it's summer when suddenly all the events you do are outside, come rain or shine! So far this year we've been really lucky & only had a few showers to contend with, unlike the poor souls at Glastonbury. It's festival season here at Lovely & although we don't do many yet they're definitely a high point in our year.

First up was the Riverside Festival in Charlbury a free music festival on an almost Island on the banks of the River Evenlode in Oxfordshire. I (Camilla) had to do this one by myself but I had such friendly neighbours & great customers that I didn't have any time to feel lonely. Sleeping in the Lovley van was a touch uncomfortable though so next time a mattress will be needed!

Highlight of the weekend? Arriving with no expectations & leaving with a nice fat money belt!

The following weekend we went to a village fete in Bradenham & set up in the grounds of the National Trust run Bradenham Manor. It had rained too much to allow the stallholders to drive round to where our pitches were (honestly I think the Lovely van would have lost it going down the hill & probably made a lasting friendship with one of the very large trees) so we were all unpacked into trailers & driven round by the Estate workers & their landrovers. It was again an unexpectedly brilliant day & the weather couldn't have been nicer, although packing up was a little sweaty!

Highlight of the day? Having a run on our fleecy blankets when I had been tempted to leave them at home!

And then it was time for one of the absolute highlights of our year, Cornbury Music Festival. This year it was held in the grounds of the Manor at Great Tew & what an absolutely stunning location it is! We arrived on Thursday to find that our pitch was located infront of a huge tree which hosted an enormous patch of stinging nettles under it's spreading branches. Unfortunately the pitch 'measure outerers' had only measured forwards rather than upwards & totally failed to take into account that if we raised our gazebos we were in danger of either snapping the branches of the tree (which I suspect the estate wouldn't have been too happy about) or ripping a hole in the top of our gazebo (which I know we would have been cross about!) so rather than run a stall only suitable for hobbits, we made sure noone was looking & moved ourselves forward by 1/2 m & carried on setting up.

All in all we had a fabulous weekend, we were so pleased with how the stall looked:

were really excited to have proper lighting this year & loved how our lanterns & hatstand looked at night with their respective forms of lighting:

We had lovely neighbours:

and great helpers:

And generally just had a lovely weekend...oh & the sales were great too!

So here we have it two very tired but happy Lovelies now getting ready for this weekend's trip to Camper Jam at Weston Park in Shropshire. Em is printing more Camper van baby vests as we sold out over the weekend & I am admining & doing all the extra little bits that go with packing up to go away for a weekend. We leave tomorrow morning, we'll let you know how we get on...watch out Camper Jam, you're about to be Lovelied!

The Lovelies & Brother!

Camilla, Harry & Emily x

Keep your curiosity sacred!

2011-06-14T09:30:00.000+01:00

now available to buy from our website, we're really excited to be stocking Oh Comely Magazine! There's a lot of reading in there for a very modest £4 cover price & the emphasis is on interesting quirky people rather than money & what it can buy you...we approve!

What do you think?

The Crafting Magazine Revolution

2011-05-27T11:09:00.000+01:00

We're loving the Crafting magazine revolution! There are suddenly loads of them & they're an intriguing mix of retro crafting & new ideas. The very best of them leave you desperate to try making some of the projects that are so temptingly protrayed in their pages & stand up to being read again & again during (sometimes very frequent) coffee breaks.
I (Camilla) admit that my current favourite is the new Mollie Makes magazine, I love everything about it from the quality paper pages & cover (according to a friend in the magazine printing trade it's also really expensive) to the interviews with crafters from around the world & the crocheted apple covers project - completely frivolous & utterly gorgeous!

I'm also enjoying Handmade Living & Making & was intrigued to read the new Craft Seller magazine although it seems a little naive (one day someone will write an article about starting your own business that gives you all the negatives aswell as the positives). However the most exciting thing about reading these craft magazines is when we see items that we sell advertised on the pages. For example reading through Homestyle Sewing we saw the Tilda Springtime Tins £14.90 available on our Lovely & Lovely site under Miscelaneously Lovely http://www.lovelyandlovely.co.uk/page22.htm

Sewing in No Time £14.99 & The Perfect Handmade bag £12.99 both available on our Lovely Fabrics site: http://www.lovelyfabrics.co.uk/page2.htm

Anyway for whatever reason you pick up a magazine, we hope you enjoy reading it!

Bye for now

Camilla & Emily

Having a Lovely time at the Fairy Festival

2011-04-29T18:15:00.000+01:00

Over the Easter weekend we had a fab time at the Magical Fairy Festival in Canterbury!We both got our faces painted - Em is here in pink & Camilla is here with the blue face!

Sparkle, photographed here is an amazing face painter! She even painted wings for the Fairies & Pixies on the stall next door to us, Trixie Belle here getting her wings painted & the finished articles below:

& Trixie Pixie, a red & orange Pixie with her wings!

A photo of our stall with our brand new round

Fairy Bags!

& last but not least our absolutely brand new little person t-shirts!

Can't wait to go to the next one! We made lots of new friends, this is certainly one of the friendliest fairs we've been to; the gorgeous weather & beautiful city of Canterbury certainly helped make the weekend.

Busy being Lovely

2011-04-19T21:51:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy time at Lovely HQ, we've had new stock delivered which all needed to be photographed & added to the website,

we've been venturing into new territory with an Easter Fayre in Fulbourn nr Cambridge which was a roaring success and Em has been printing like a demon & has completed these new (& very gorgeous) Baby vest & mini bag sets & is half way through a marathon t-shirt printing experience which means that t-shirts for little people & man t-shirts will be appearing very soon to keep our ladies' t-shirts company...phew!

We've also booked lots of events & hopefully one of them will be near you...all our fairs are listed on the come & see us page of our website http://www.lovelyandlovely.co.uk/page25.htm but here are just a few for your diaries: The Magical Faerie Festival in Canterbury this coming weekend Easter Saturday, Sunday & Monday, http://www.magicalfestivals.co.uk/, lots of Fairy themed goodies & some of the nicest stallholders you'll ever meet, Harrow May day fair at the Harrow Museum lots of Medieval fun & lovely stalls, we've also been accepted back to Cornbury Music Festival 1-3 July now a three day event at The Great Tew Park in Oxfordshire http://www.cornburyfestival.com/ & can't wait there's some great artists coming & we're breaking new territory again the weekend after & heading up to Shropshire for Camper Jam http://www.camperjam.co.uk/ a weekend for Camper Van enthusiasts & generally good fun people, it looks like a great family event & we're going in a group with about 4 other stalls & are anticipating a great weekend with maybe a bit of selling on the side!

And there's lots more!

Right I'd better get back to it there's lots to do...today I will mostly be working on Fairy bags & Em will be t-shirt printing & embellishing, photos coming very soon!

Hoping you had a Lovely day x

Lots of Lovely New Fabrics & Buttons

2011-03-16T17:29:00.000Z

This is always one of the most exciting times of our year when the fabrics & etc that we ordered from the Spring fair start arriving...

We have Blue Elephants in a row from the Australian designer Melly & Me with her very first fabric range;

And Pink Owls in a Row Ribbon from the Life's a Hoot Collection

Buttons in gloriously themed colours

And some essential plains in great colous from the Kona Solids range!

We can't wait to start using them! Ooh what shall we do first...any ideas?

Fair Trade Fortnight

2011-02-28T18:24:00.000Z

We are celebrating fair trade fortnight with a free gift! Every fair trade purchase from our website between Monday 28th February & Sunday 12th March will receive a free Fair Trade Mushroom Brooch!

There's so much to choose from on our website that you're bound to find something - what about a Nepalese felt Flower Fairy Hat?

Or why not get a start on your summer wardrobe with a Cotton Dress (they also look really good layered with jeans & a warm cardy!) We've got lots of gorgeous fair trade gifts too from Felted Keyrings to Glass Star Lanterns to Embossed Painted Heart Strings...

It's also the perfect opportunity to launch our very beautiful brand new 100% leather handmade bags!

Come to our website for a good old browse!

Lovely has a blog!

2011-02-22T18:01:00.000Z

One of our New Year's resolutions this year was to start a Lovely blog & although February isn't exactly super quick off the mark we always count it as the proper beginning of our year as two of our main trade fairs are in the first & third weekend of Feb. We had super fun at both of them & as ever were tempted to spend too much money on Lovely things!

At the gift fair we had a proper spending spree & can't wait for the rest of all the new things to come in...our card games & felt Flower Fairy Hats, keyrings & hair bands came last week:

but we're still waiting for British Woodland Creature eco-torches & wind-up Bumble Bee & Butterfly torches & some more exciting things to come in!

And yesterday we went to the Craft, Hobby & Stitch fair where we went crazy over buttons, ribbons & fabric!

More about all these lovely things very soon!

Camilla & Emily