As we are all much more bound to home with time on our hands and dwindling spirits, we thought we'd try and help keep everyone busy over in our VIP's group on Facebook by offering weekly prompts to help spark your creativity. Our prompt this week is "kindness" as it seemed the most apt place to start.   So if you're a member (only open to existing customers and proof of purchase is required to enter) then head on over and post your cards to the group with the hashtag #kindnessprompt   If you're not a member yet head on over and answer the questions and join our friendly community where we share lots of projects made with products from our store.

In that spirit, I thought I'd spread a little kindness of my own so I've made some cards using Waffle Flower Crafts' Plant Kindness stamp set for friends I should be seeing this month but now won't be able to - we can't get together but we can still let people know they are in our thoughts.  I'm sure old fashioned mail is going to be the highlight of the day for lots of folks in the coming weeks!

In times of stress, I turn to colouring - a nice detailed image can have me lost for hours.   So I stamped the image out 4 times and set about creating a set of cards - changing up the colouring slightly as I went along and learning as I go (so I like the blue best as that was my last and the pink least as that was my first!)

I coloured with a mixture of markers - Altenew and my copics - they blend really well together, over a couple of evenings whilst watching the TV.  I'm really pleased with the two tone cacti once I got the blends right.   The sentiments are from the same set just stamped in Versafine Claire Nocturne.

I'll be doing more mass production this week too so I have plenty in my stash to keep in touch with friends throughout the social isolation period.  We're looking at ways we can do more to stay in touch with you all too - watch this space for news soon.   Talking of news....

NEWS FROM THE STORE

The only new stock we are expecting this week is the latest stamp and die release from Altenew along with VERY SMALL QUANTITIES of the washi tape release from earlier in the month.

This may well actually be the last new stock (or restocks) we get for a while.   As everything comes from the USA and many areas there are already closing "non-essential" businesses, it is going to be hard to get anything into the country.  

Also - the pound has dropped so hard against the dollar that if we did order any stock at this point, we would have to raise prices to cover our costs - we will swallow the losses on Altenew but it would be economic suicide to make large purchases right now as our sales are down due to the recession caused by the virus.   We have to be careful of every penny to ensure we still have a business when we come out the other end of this nightmare.  

We do still have LOTS of stock available - so there will be items that are new to you even if they are not "new-new" and every penny spent means we will have more chance of buying the newer stuff in the future, so please do support us if you can.   As with all retail - it's not great for us, and we appreciate your support now more than ever but completely understand the inability of most people to buy anything but essentials (and as essential as stamps are to us most of the time  - you can't eat them or even wipe your bum with them!)   Hopefully we'll still be here when money starts to flow again and will build the new releases back up as soon as we are able.

Tara x