This week I have mostly been....


Trying to 'calm down' a bit more, in the interests of my health. 


After a little health scare last week which saw me in A & E and back at the doctors for ECG's, I have taken a step back to look at my lifestyle. 


As a Mum of three boys; one teenager about to leave school and twins who are about to turn three, I have accepted the increased pace of my life and just thought it is the 'norm' to be a stress-head. 
Perhaps I do try to do too much in trying complete as much as possible in the day. 


So, I have made a few tiny changes to the way I structure my day in an attempt to make some more time for me to be creative and to balance the amount of time I need to spend looking after my family, pets and home with time spent on myself. 


1. A nice hot soak in the bath with candles and a good book or magazine, once a week.
2. The twins nap time is not an opportunity to clean the bathrooms. It is my lunch break. 
3.  I will ask family for help when I need it, rather than trying to cope single handedly.
4. 10 minutes of yoga in the morning and 3 to 4 exercise sessions per week. 
5. Less caffeine, more herbal tea. 

Also taking inspiration from The Dalai Lama

A to Zen of Life 

Avoid negative sources, people, places and habits

Believe in yourself

Consider things from every angle

Don't give up and don't give in

Everything you're looking for lies behind the mask you wear

Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their riches

Give more than you planned to

Hang on to your dreams

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it

Keep trying no matter how hard it seems

Love yourself

Make it happen

Never lie, steal or cheat

Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values

Practice makes perfect

Quality not quantity in anything you do

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer

Stop procrastinating

Take control of your own destiny

Understand yourself in order to better understand others

Visualize it

When you lose, don't lose the lesson

Xcellence in all your efforts

You are unique, nothing can replace you

Zero in on your target and go for it

Source: Dalai Lama

New Frog Gallery


I've set up a new page to share pictures of your beanbag frogs - pop over and take a look! http://thepeartreeboutique.blogspot.com/p/frogallery-send-in-pictures-of-your.html


It has been set up so we can see what your beanbag frog is getting up to in their new home. Send a picture of your frog getting out and about, relaxing at home or off on holiday. Tell us a bit about your frog - what is their name? What do they like doing? Where do they sleep? 


You can send your pictures to sam@thepeartreeboutique.co.uk


I'm really looking forward to hearing about all those frogs out there! 

This is a very old and grubby frog that my twins have adopted. He is called 'Red' and spends a lot of time hanging out in the trailer on the back of a trike, hiding in the fridge and jumping around. 

Sorry for the lack of blog recently. I have been unexpectedly forced to slow down this last week after a trip to see the doctor. So I'm trying to take things a little slower, look after myself a bit more and not get so STRESSED!!


So, in the meantime I have been doing a bit more sewing and appreciating my time creating. So just a quickie today to share with you a few of the things I have been making recently.


First up is a new cushion, inspired by spring. It features a velvet rabbit that I have also used on some lovely bags for little girls.

Then I have been stocking up my Folksy shop http://folksy.com/shops/ThePeartreeBoutique

with more beanbag frogs. These always sell well and are my oldest design, dating way back to early 2002 when I was at college studying Art & Design. 

I had an order for one in a particular colour recently for a little boy who had lost his Freddie Frog and was having trouble sleeping without him. I sent pictures of fabrics to him via email and he chose exactly the fabrics he wanted for his frog and I made it up for him and sent it in the post. A couple of days later, I was dashing around when I noticed my phone bleeping in the kitchen with a voicemail. Imagine how thrilled I was to hear Connor telling me how thrilled he was with his frog and thank you for making it for him! Well, that just made my week! 

That's why I love making - you just can't measure the feeling you get when you create something for someone that lights up their world. 

This is Freddie Frog #2

Love is in the air...

I've been working on two commissions this week, both in the name of love!


The first is a cushion celebrating two years of marriage and details three dates, significant to the happy couple. A two year anniversary is traditionally marked by giving a gift of cotton.

The second cushion is a wedding gift in a different style to the first, the brief being a modern design using black, white and silver. 

I've wanted to try out some silver embroidery thread for a while, so this project gave me the perfect opportunity. I found it worked especially well against a black background. 

Photos to follow, I can't find the data lead...again!!

Brrr it's finally cold!

It's not felt much like January lately. I went out for a run this week in a light weight t shirt and wasn't even chilly. So it was really quite nice to experience a bit of winter weather!


I got out my cat draft excluder to cosy up the hallway. He looks very comfy there doesn't he? These went down really well last year and I had requests for a bengal print as well as the cream version. You can find these on my website http://www.thepeartreeboutique.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=40&product_id=65

The twins have been itching to get outside and the frost has meant that our garden is actually a bit more solid rather than the mushy mud bog it's turned into over the wet winter. 

Red noses and rosy cheeks! 

When they came back inside, we made some bread hedgehogs and turtles and ate the warm bread while cosying up on the sofa. 

When they went to bed for a nap, I was frustrated to find that our internet connection was down again. So couldn't carry on with the orders I had planned to, but decided to get to work on a project that I've been meaning to have a go at for a long time now. 

A Patchwork Cat!!

When I was at junior school we were asked to paint a picture of a patchwork cat that the teacher had bought in for us to see. I worked really hard on that picture and was really pleased with it. It inspired me to have a go at making one and this is my first attempt. Needs a bit of tweaking I think. The shape needs improving, the ears need to be more symetrical and I need to design a face to embroider on. 

But despite the imperfections, the boys have really taken a shine to him too and have named him Scraps! I now need to make another one as his is in demand and becoming the catalyst for many a fight! 

Running ahead of the pack

I've been running my Facebook page for just over a year now and consider myself to have moderate success in my sales and customer interaction. I know I don't have a fraction of the number of 'likers' that some of  my fellow Facebook crafters have following their pages, but I try not to use this as a measure of success. Slow and steady seems a much more preferable way to market my business at present, especially as my two youngest are still toddlers and this limits the amount of time I can spend sewing.

A few years ago I spent some time with a small business mentor, gaining an insight into turning art into a business. He thoroughly recommended spending the time building your reputation before starting to pump away at marketing and sales. As the old saying goes 'your reputation precedes you', although you must absolutely make sure that it does so in the right way! A bad reputation can be very difficult to shake off, and yet annoyingly, a good reputation is like glass and shatters easily.


I guess this has stayed with me and I try to put quality and craftsmanship ahead of quantity and trends.
I have very definite likes and dislikes in terms of style. I couldn't tell you how this is defined, but I know when I see something if it makes my grade or not. I try to stay true to this and wouldn't want to offer an item that I wasn't happy with as I see my art as an extension of me, my personality and my creativity. This can be hard of course, as I offer a bespoke service for customers to have their own design ideas incorporated into pieces. Quite often I am faced with creating a piece with colours that I just don't consider to 'work' or fabrics that I would prefer not to work with. This is for me, a challenge in some ways, but also a fantastical exercise in working with the creative ideas of others and coming together to produce a collaborative piece that is beautiful and means a great deal to the person who will receive it.


Taking the time to experiment with new ideas and perfecting them is all part of the job. It's most definitely worth it in terms of your reputation and artistically, many of my best ideas have occurred during second or third attempts.
Unfortunately, this has it's downside. Facebook has become so fast moving and there are so many craft business start ups that the joy of posting pictures of your creations starts to fade when you realise that after pricking the seed of an idea months before, working and re-working it has cost you valuable time and someone else has had a remarkably similar idea to you! This isn't copying - how could they have known what you were working on and vice versa? But it leads me to question the source of my inspiration; has my subconscious inspiration-radar picked up ideas from other internet sites, publications and social media sites that have eventually led me down the particular path of this idea? Evidently someone else has picked up some of the same elements along the way and we have both arrived at a similar point.
Maybe I should cast my inspirational net further afield. Maybe I should be quicker off the mark and make sure I get ahead of the 'pack'. Oh for a bit more uninterrupted time to work on my creations!!

The Neglectful Blogger

Monday 26th December 2011


I have neglected my Blog for a long time now. So long in fact, I was shamed by my log-in to the Blogger site that informed me that the last time I posted a blog was August. *blush*
I had started out with such good intentions of posting weekly, thoughtful and perhaps even inspiring blogs. And then they fell the way of January diets and pledges of thrice weekly gym sessions.


Well, I must make amends. And if I do it now, it won't seem like a 'New Years Guilt Effort'. Ha!


Project: Christmas Gifts for Special Friends


I really want to share pictures of a project I am very proud of. Ta - Da!!!

I made these cushions with my three girlfriends in mind, as handmade Christmas gifts that I hope conveys my love of each of them.


They were loving crafted from quality cotton drill, embellished on the bottom panel with a penguin made from cotton fabric and appliquéd onto the orange drill. Quite a fiddly job as the penguin is only 3 inches tall, but worth it as he really brings the piece to life.

The middle panel bears the text - title and authors (or recipients names). After a week of practising with free motion embroidery and various fonts, I came to the conclusion that my hand is not quite skilled enough to pull off the specifics of this font which I think is essential in getting the look of the vintage text. So, I printed the text on using photo transfer paper which I think looks ok.
I hope to expand my skill set in the new year and re-visit my brief exploration into silk screen printing. I love this craft and the freedom it lends to textile work, in offering an unlimited palette of prints and colours to fabric. I didn't spend nearly enough time at college exploring this media, so I am hoping this year will afford me some opportunity to 'faff about with inks'.


The top panel is adorned with a variation on the shape featured on the paperbacks of penguin - this reads Peartree Press.


As with all my work, the finish has to be clean and neat. The hems pressed, buttonholes neat and inside seams over-locked to prevent fraying and to ensure the inside is as pleasing to the eye as possible.
I was very lucky to have been given a tin of vintage sewing thread last year and this is where I found the perfect shade of orange for the cotton drill. I think I would describe it as 60's orange! The hem seams on the envelope opening blend in with the fabric, thus not detracting from the clean, unfussy look I wanted to achieve.

The design is instantly recognisable as being inspired by Vintage Penguin Paperbacks and one for me that evokes nostalgia of a summer break spent running around fields, climbing trees, playing lawn games and delving into bookshelves crammed with penguin books, for a paperback treat to while away an early waking in a strange house.


Reading totally eclipsed my youth. I was reading independently by the age of three and my appetite for books was insatiable. Thankfully I had access to many at home and my wonderful Mum would supply me with a mountain of stories to read in bed, made endless trips to the local library and encouraged my thirst for words by any means she could.


I hope to pass on my love of reading to my three boys, along with a slight 'incline' towards a fabulous vintage style!
Clearly my eldest son already has the reading bug. Christmas has seen him holed up in his teen bedroom of red and black with a stack of young adult novels, boxes of biscuits and sweets and some new cd's of rock/metal persuasion. I confess to being quite jealous of all those care-free hours, whilst I have been cooking, cleaning and generally slogging away at Christmas.


My youngest two cannot yet read for themselves, although they do try. I sometimes hear them telling each other an abridged version of stories we have read together, always ending in a flourish of 'THE END. Shallwereadanotherone?' Too cute!


Although I will always try to encourage my children to read the books I have loved, I know they will probably see my choices as old, unfashionable or out of touch and prefer to chose their own.
I will perhaps leave a few books just 'lying around' in the hope that they will find some appeal in the cover or title. Just as I did when faced with a boring early morning and shelves crammed full of seemingly identical orange and white covers of musty smelling papers containing a few of the words that have shaped my world.