Vintage style crochet roses

Everything is coming up roses at R&C HQ at the moment!

I spent a lovely morning at a shopping centre earlier in the week with a friend, and we spent a long time browsing in the Cath Kidston shop, and in particular looking at fabrics to be used in another project. I brought home some swatches to see how they would look at home and I’ve fallen in love with one called ‘Trailing Floral‘ in blue.  Isn’t is beautiful?

The gorgeous roses in the pattern inspired me to create a vintage style rose crocheted wreath. The wreath is made of twisted clematis which gives it a lovely old-fashioned feel and it is decorated with crocheted pink roses and leaves. I think it would be lovely anywhere in the house or as a decoration at a vintage themed event.

I popped around to my lovely neighbour and borrowed her front door for the photo – isn’t her front door colour fabulous?

Millie

Keeping tiny heads warm!

My little girl has just reached the age where she is interested in dolls – everytime she sees one she shouts “Dolly!” So, as a surprise I bought her a ‘My first Baby Annabell’ by Zapf and she was so excited! We’ve called her Poppy.

The weather has been very cold in the UK recently so I thought Poppy needed her very own Ruby and Custard pink monkey hat! I made it after my little lady had gone to bed and when she came down in the morning Poppy was waiting in her buggy wearing her new hat.  Obviously it meant we all had to put our monkey hats on too and soon we were off on a walk wearing matching hats.

It was so much fun to make a tiny little monkey hat that when I got a request to make a little pink owl hat for another little girl’s dolly I jumped at the chance! Here is Poppy modelling it before it goes off to its new home 🙂

Millie x

Spring flowers ready for Easter

I love Spring – after the grey of Winter I get a real thrill from seeing the new shoots in the garden and the jolly yellow daffodils, delicate snowdrops and dainty pansies.

To celebrate I have been crocheting lots of Spring flowers and creating lovely heart-shaped hanging wreaths. There are two sizes, large (26cm across and deep) and small (16cm across and deep) and I think they are perfect for brightening up any space ready for Spring and the promise of Easter.

Millie x

A special pink monkey

I’ve just finished a special monkey hat for a gorgeous little girl called Ellis. Her parents bought a pink owl hat and she wore it to a photo shoot and the pictures her were just gorgeous.  So in return for permission to use a couple for my Notonthehighstreet.com shop I agreed to make her a very special pink monkey hat – a very fair exchange in my opinion!

This little monkey is in pale pink, ice blue and purple.  I hope she likes it! 🙂

Millie x

Roses and Daisies

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;

My world has been filled with roses of late – crocheted roses ready for little flower headbands. Each headband has little handmade crocheted flowers and leaves on an adjustable crocheted headband which is secured with Velcro (to allow for different sized heads) and is finished with seed pearls and beads.

I am due to attend the second ‘Handmade with Love’ craft event at Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells on Saturday 13th April and this is part of my plan to build up some much needed stock for the event.

With the craft fair in mind I decided I needed to tackle the issue of how I was going to display the headbands and I came across this jewellery stand in Sass & Belle and thought it would be perfect. So here is my repurposed flower headband display! I’m really chuffed with it!

Millie x

In case you are curious about the opening sentence of this post it is from a poem called ‘A White Rose’ by John Boyle O’Reilly. It’s one of my favourite love poems x

A White Rose’
The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips

John Boyle O’Reilly

A blue and chocolate brown stripey owl

I’ve just finished a special order for a young lady I met at the ‘Handmade with Love’ craft fair in Tunbridge Wells a couple of weeks ago. She chose a lovely blue owl hat for her cousin and had been saving her pocket money up so she could buy one for herself. But, her lovely mummy emailed me and explained that she had been saving up for a blue owl of her own but she wanted to buy it for her as a surprise!

The young lady had originally wanted a blue owl hat but didn’t want to be exactly the same as her cousin so I was asked if could I do something a bit different for her in blue and her favourite chocolate brown. Well, I love a challenge so I came up with a brown and blue striped design just for her.  It has a lovely jumbo flower at the ear and sparkly blue eyes.

I really hope she likes it!

Millie x

A Cath Kidston inspired sock monkey

I have had a very longstanding love affair with Cath Kidston.  I love the vintage feel and the colour palette used through their products –the gorgeous clashing colours alongside muted shades make my heart sing!

I took a little time out from making Christmas orders this week to crochet something for my little person.  You know the phrase, ‘the cobbler’s children are always the worst shod’? Well that applies in my house too and my little girl didn’t actually have a handmade hat of her own. So with the cold weather now upon us, I thought I would make her a very special sock monkey hat in colours inspired by Cath Kidston.

It’s in my classic sock monkey style but I made the flower extra big in this one.  She is very pleased with her new hat 🙂 What do you think?

Millie x

Ruby & who? How I picked a business name

Ruby & Custard! Why? Well, why not?  I love the colour red and I love custard…?

Seriously choosing a name for a business has got to be one of the toughest decisions. There are so many things to think about!  It’s taken me weeks and lots of different ideas and I’ve eventually gone back to almost where I started.  Ruby & Custard. And I love it.

So, if you’ve got a business idea bubbling in your mind but you have no name for it, or if you just fancy choosing a name for an imaginary business, here are the things I have learnt that might help you pick a business name:

Does the Ronseal approach work for you? If you can get a business name that describes your company and what you do, then that is brilliant. If anyone can decipher what you sell just by looking at the name then half your marketing is done for you! I sell handmade items for children that are traditional with a twist. They’re mostly crochet but I do other stuff too. I desperately didn’t want anything that would pigeon-hole me.  ‘The Crochet Hat Company’ sounds rather grown up to me and implies I do nothing but crochet or hats.  And I do.  I have a lovely old school friend, Avril, who makes cakes (which are pretty impressive).  Her business is called Avril Makes Cakes.  Genius.

Consider what mental image you are trying to evoke.  Everything I make is practical but a lot of fun.  Ruby & Custard would not be suitable for a funeral directors or something serious, but I think it works for me.  I hope it makes people think of childhood through the custard connection and that the name sounds cheerful. You may find that some words are lovely but just have strange connotations.  I love the name Violet but a (very talented) friend has written a book called ‘Domestic Violets’ (available on Amazon in case you are interested) and that is now all I think of.

Check no one else has had the same bright idea.  If someone else has already called their business that then you should consider whether people will get confused between the two.  If the ‘other’ company does something very similar or does something that you would rather not be associated with then it’s probably worth reconsidering! In the UK you can check the National Business Registry to check out names of businesses.

Is the web address available?  At some point in time you are probably going to want a web address – either to have a business website or just so you can have an email address with your company name on it.  There are lots of web suffixes available including the common .com and .co.uk (.org, .net, .info, .biz) and only you can decide how important the suffix is. If your business is going to be predominantly online based, like mine, then I thought having .com was very important. The National Business Registry also displays what web addresses associated with your proposed business are available and not available.

Try not to pick something difficult to spell or something that has lots of different ways of spelling it.  Particularly important if you are setting up a business with an online presence.  Occasion. How many ‘c’s and ‘s’s….? If words have lots of different spellings it may be worth thinking about that too. Caitlin is the girl’s name with most different spellings apparently. If people have to try lots of different spellings to find you they may lose interest before they get to the right place.

Crowd source. Ask people for ideas! You may get a nice surprise.  Ruby & Custard came from a conversation with two of my lovely friends. You may well end up with lots of suggestions that you really don’t like too but that could be just as helpful.

Pick something you really love. Try your ideas out on friends but, if you really love it, then go with it.

So, Ruby & Custard is my business name, and I hope you like it as much as I do!

Millie x