Welcome To Womanhood!

A few weeks ago i was chatting to the lovely Samantha from Funky Goddess and a few friends on twitter about my Daughter, who is 12 years old.

A little bit background info! My daughter is hearing impaired, she has moderate sensorineural hearing loss which was undiagnosed until she was 7 1/2 years old. Now due to the late diagnosis she is not as developed mentally as a "normal" 12 year old.  So one evening i was chatting and had got a bit upset at the difficulties she faces.


I get a lovely message from Samantha at Funky Goddess saying about her "Welcome to Womanhood" and she was so lovely she sent my daughter a gift box!


We have been quite busy over the last week or so with the end of the term but tonight we managed to have a sit down in her room and have a look!!

Do you think she was a little pleased?

We had a lovely little chat and she tried to read the booklet but have told her if she wants to ask any questions she can.  I think it will be a great help when she starts her periods.  Her favourite was the Eyemask as you can see.

She said to say thank you to Samantha she absolutely loves it! 

If you have a little girl who is 11-12 years old Gabrielle and I both highly recommend this fantastic gift box.  She also does lots of other gift boxes including welcome to motherhood, so head on over and get yourself a fantastic gift box!

Thank you again Samantha!

When Silver Birch Crafts Met Theo Paphitis

Having done my press release i thought i would share with you the amazing day Maryann from One Stop Pamper Shop and I had.

When we arrived at the Small Business Sunday (#SBS)  Inaugural Event at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham, we were welcomed by the lovely people at Ryman's Stationery who sponsored the event and immediately felt at home.  We were given our name tags and went straight up to the Meeting Room where there hundreds of businesses all chatting and networking.  The buzz in the air can not be easily described, it was electric! Not only were we going to be having a speech by Theo Paphitis himself but to meet the Ladies and Gents that we chat to on Twitter was just as exciting.  I quickly found Kelly And Kev from Piddley Pix who i have chatted to for a long time and have had quite a few of their artwork on display at home.  After having a quick chat with them, we walked round trying to find other people we chat to.  Next meeting was with a lovely lady called Martina from Sparrow Primitives which was lovely as i have spoken to Martina for a while now on Twitter.   While in the meeting room we managed to meet up with Fiona from Coombe Mill and met some very lovely local people too which was amazing!

While we were milling around and chatting the man himself, Theo Paphitis arrived and was very luckily able to say Hi and shake hands with Theo.

Thankfully Fiona from Coombe Mill managed to catch this photo.

At 1.30pm we were all invited to go through to the conference room where we were busy tweeting and still trying to find people.  We are all still very surprised we didn't crash Theo's twitter page and twitter itself!

After a quick introduction by Kypros from Ryman's Stationery, Theo Paphitis arrived on stage to a huge round of applause.

After chatting to us for nearly 2 and a half hours (was supposed to be 1 and a half hours) and enduring lots of banter and laughter, it included a question and answer session with Theo, where he was very open and honest about where he started and how he achieved the success he has had with Ryman's Stationery and lots of the other businesses he is involved in, some through Dragons Den!

We were also introduced to Chris from Metal Frog who has created a fantastic website especially for #SBS Winners which can be found here Theo Paphitis sbs. It gives all the past winners and a few tips from Theo himself about entering #SBS

After all the chatting we had the chance to have a Official Photograph with Theo, which considering there were 300 businesses in attendance at the Event it was no mean feat!  We managed to catch up with a few other lovely twitterers while we were waiting, including Susan from Dottie Designs, Sam from Funky Goddess who if you have a girl coming up to an age of periods is a fantastic idea and gift!

Below are just some of the photo's that were taken on the day officially and non officially!

Press Release - Leighton Buzzard Based Small Business meets Theo Paphitis!

4^th April 2012

Leighton Buzzard based firm received a business boost from TV Dragons’ Den star Theo Paphitis.

In June 2011, Sarah Smith, owner of Silver Birch Crafts, tweeted Theo about her business during ‘Small Business Sunday’, an initiative set up by Theo that runs weekly. As a result of this Sarah was one of the 300 business who went up Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham to meet the Dragon’s Den Star.  Sarah Said “It was a absolutely amazing day, not only did we have a inspiring talk by Theo, which was only meant to last an hour and a half, he chatted to us for nearly 2 and a half hours and answered questions from us with humour and inspiration, we also got to have a quick chat and a photo taken with the Star.  I was very lucky to be accompanied up to Birmingham with my friend Maryann who is also a Small Business Owner and runs a company called www.onestoppampershop.co.uk in Colchester, Essex.”

Theo re‐tweeted Sarah’s message to his 230,000 followers and as a result, www.silverbirchcrafts.co.uk has gained a considerable amount of followers and extra orders for their business.

They are also profiled on a new website www.theopaphitissbs.com that is exclusive to Small Business Sunday winners.

Sarah also said, “I’ve only been in business for 2 and a half years and creating all my bags and personalised gifts in a spare room is very hard work.  It is great to have support from Theo because it’s been tough trying to raise our profile and Theo has recognised the hard work and helped spread the word about what we do to his followers.”

Anyone looking for a re‐tweet from Theo should tweet him about their business on Sunday

between 5 PM and 7.30 PM and include the hashtag #SBS. Six lucky businesses are retweeted every week and then invited to enter their profile on the new website. This is done free of charge and the new website is sponsored by Ryman Stationery, where Theo is

Chairman.

Silver Birch Crafts, 25 Meadow Way, Leighton Buzzard, Beds  07530 283835

For further information, photos and product samples, please contact Sarah Smith

07530 283835 or email Sarah on silverbirchcrafts@ntlworld.com

For further information about Small Business Sunday please visit www.theopaphitissbs.com.

Silent Sunday

Silent Sunday

Silent Sunday

A Year in Silver Birch Crafts - 2011 - Part 2

Apologies for not posting this yesterday, having a bad week! But thank you for everyone who read my last post. Hope I didn't bore you :)

I entered March with lots of enthusiasm the Yellow Spotty Bags were still selling well. A friend of mine asked if I would be able to create a recorder bag for his Daughters Recorder and wanted it personalised. A week or so later I created just a small Recorder Bag so that she was able to take her Recorder to school and not loose it!!

March continued with a great pace with new additions to the Yellow Spotty Range including these great little Party Bags which not only are great for party's but for just putting little tiny special things in! I speak to a lot of people on twitter who are huge fans of my Spotty Range, and I knew one lovely lady was looking for party bags for her little ones birthday party. So what better way to help a great friend, who owns/designs and runs with her husband Piddley Pix, but also to help little me out with a review of my Spotty Party Bags! So off they went and I was so happy to receive a fantastic Review from Kev and Kelly. So with March ending and my Daughters 11th Birthday approaching very quickly, I created the lovely and tactile Cushion Covers. On the eve of my daughters birthday up went her Personalised Birthday Bunting and she had a great day!

Now April is always a funny month for me but 2011 saw me reach the grand old age of 35 (eeeeeek) I never thought for one minute that at 35 I would be running my own business let alone loving every single minute of it and feeling such a warmth from all the fantastic Reviews that I receive, makes every sleepless night (dreaming up new ideas) so worthwhile! So sales were going really well on the Yellow Spotty Bag side, and I was developing more and more of my Unique Bags, was asked on twitter by a friend for a custom Messenger Bag! well I couldn't say no!! The lady choose the fantastic Robert Kaufman Playday Spring fabric and when I sent her pictures of this Unique Messenger Bag she was thrilled with it! I also added more Facecloth's to the personalised range, including a very lovely Yellow Spotty Facecloth. Since the original Yellow Spotty facecloth I have added a pink and blue version. I also added another item to the Yellow Spotty Range Spotty Bunting!

May arrived with a steady flow of sales through out the month, The Yellow Spotty Bags were still going well and with the phone sleeves they were flying out the door, not just on my website but at the Fair I attended regularly over in Tring, Hertfordshire. I also sold one of my first Embroidered Mini Cushions which was amazing! The lady also came back for a 2nd a few weeks later! May was a quiet month for creating new items because I was really busy with the Yellow Spotty Bags and adding to my current ranges.

Hope you are enjoying reading my year of Silver Birch Crafts 2011, will be back in a couple of days with part 3, June - August, which shows you that because of the success of the first 6 months of the year, I was able to push and further my ranges as well as adding new ones!

Sarah

A Year in Silver Birch Crafts Life - 2011

One of my New Years Goals this year is to blog more! So I thought a great way to start is to tell you what has happened with Silver Birch Crafts over the past year.

January to March

Hopefully over the next few days I will be covering the year but Part 1 is January to March

So January arrived, very quickly, in itself it is not usually a very busy month business wise, but for Silver Birch Crafts started off the year with such a boost it was a shock! With 24 Sales in total, mostly because of the Yellow Spotty Bags which I had launched at the end of October. The very First Yellow Spotty Bag was done as a custom order for a very good friend of mine called Dannie who has a fantastic range of crocheted goodies over at Booties By Dannie who if it was not for Dannie I would never have made the bag let alone listed it on my website. Also in January I emailed a lovely lady called Louise who owns and runs Baby Signing Mummy to ask if she would review my Yellow Spotty Bag! She agreed and on the 13th January did this fantastic review of my Yellow Spotty Bag. So January ended up being a really fantastic month!

February arrived and with it the snow! The Yellow Spotty Bag sales continued and the thought was to widen the range. So after being emailed by a gentleman about a personalised spotty bag. I thought fantastic this will be a great addition and created a bag especially for "Zaki". I also designed and created the Yellow Spotty Gym Bag which is great for small things, I already had the range of Gym Bags and added this to it. By now I was making Spotty Bags by the batch, now when I say batch it doesn't mean that I was making huge batch's but small ones and taking care to make sure each and every Spotty Bag are unique. When making the bags the flap and under the flap are the same colour sequences, but the back and both sides are as different as I can make them. When putting the spots on I tend to "chuck" them on and see where they land!

When March arrived I wanted to develop the some of my other ranges further, so I added the Make Up Bags and Brush Rolls to my Website, these are a lovely little addition which I am hoping to develop further in 2012. The sales of Yellow Spotty Bag continued even though I thought they would slow down. During March I added the Toy Bag to the Yellow Spotty Range.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the first part of A Year In Silver Birch Crafts Life 2011 I will be covering April - June tomorrow!

Sarah