It was a hard days work today to build the stand. But with great help of my dad, I’m very proud of the result. I find it a happy place where I love to meet creative people the next days.

Hope to see you there!

xx Petra

It was fun and ‘gezellig’, so good to meet the bloggers I read in real life, and meet some new bloggers as well.
Thanks, Ladies for a fun afternoon! (ChezChouke, PrentjeMaakt, Zilverblauw, Enigheid and life stuff)

En vanaf nu heb ik het voornemen om zowel in het Engels als in het Nederlands te schrijven op mijn blog. Ik heb zoveel verzoeken gekregen om ook in het Nederlands te gaan schrijven, dat ik besloten heb het te gaan proberen.

Ik heb een ontzettend leuk weekend gehad op de Creatieve Hobby- en Handwerkdagen in Den Bosch. Ik stond daar met een stand voor mijn webshop byPetra.
Eline was er ook twee dagen om haar werk te promoten, en een heleboel bezoekers vonden het ontzettend leuk om haar te ontmoeten en degenen die het boek ‘Eline’s Huis‘ kochten, konden het zelfs door haar laten signeren.

Ik heb veel geleerd en erg leuke mensen ontmoet tijdens de drie dagen beurs. Gelukkig kreeg ik hulp van mijn zusje en vader en moeder. Mijn moeder is mijn beste verkoopster ooit, zonder haar had ik nooit zoveel omzet gemaakt :-) En mijn vader heeft de mooie rekjes voor mijn klossen lint gemaakt, en mijn zusje zorgde ervoor dat de verkopen elke dag goed geadministreerd werden. Het was een echt familie bedrijf, en ik vond het ontzettend gezellig zo met elkaar te werken.

Elke beursdag gaf ik drie workshops, waar je lekker aan de knutsel kon met de materialen die ik verkoop in mijn shop. Ik vond het ontzettend gezellig, dus dames bedankt dat jullie dat met mij gedaan hebben :-)

Ik voel me moe maar erg voldaan, en ben alweer plannen aan het maken voor het najaar ;-)

I had to make some workshop examples, and I wanted to make a colorful bunting to decorate the stall. I just finished the bunting tonight, I had spent a lóóót more time on the labels for the workshops then I thought. Working with paper is a bit out of my comfort zone.

Coming Thursday the stall needs to be setup. I’m so happy Eline will help me with the styling, she styled all the pictures of the Eline’s Huis book herself, and here you can see she does a pretty good job with her home too.

Eline will also join me at the fair on Friday and Saturday. It will be hard work, but I think it will be fun too! My mum and sister are helping me all three days, and a lot of internet friends are coming to say hello.

If you want to come and say hi, and do a little shopping too, you can find me in the Peelhal at stand number 408 of the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch. You can download a PDF with the floorplan of the Creatieve Hobby- en Handwerkdagen.

It feels so funny and exciting to see my name in a magazine :-)

The first one this year will be the ‘Creatieve Hobby- en Handwerkdagen‘ in Den Bosch on March 18, 19 and 20. On those days you can also attend one of my mini workshops, making fabric hearts or pimp carton lables.

On Friday and Saturday Eline Pellinkhof will join me in the stand, as I will also have all Eline’s Huis materials and off course the book available.

If you would to make a chance to win free entrance tickets, go over to the website of knipmode.nl this offer will run till March 7th.

I’m looking forward to meeting you in Den Bosch :-)

Last Saturday was the book signing of the ‘Eline’s Huis’ book with Eline and all the other ladies that worked on the book. It was so great to meet Eline’s fans and we also signed some books ourselves.

Gepke did a great job welcoming everyone in her shop. I met some great inspiring people and it was a joy to meet family and friends of everyone who worked on the book, they were all so proud :-)

For me it was a bit overwhelming from time to time, then I just sneeked out for a bit of fresh air. And I loved Gepke’s shop, full of nice things and inspiration, I certainly will go back some time!

To read more (in Dutch) about this exciting day, and see some more pictures, please visit the blogs of Eline, Frences and Gepke, it’s a joy to read their stories.

I felt so proud and excited when I held the real book in my hands last Monday. This summer I have been working on my contribution to the Eline’s Huis book, and now to see it for real, in print,  it’s an indescribable feeling.

If you would like to own your own copy, you can get it in my store, together with the accompanying products that have been developed with the book: fabric, ribbon, buttons and stamps. In the book a few of my shops ribbons were used too, I created special packs for that you can buy in my webshop.

I want to share some of my favorite projects in the book. It has 100 pages in total, so many more ideas and inspiration can be found within :-) These fabric flowers are a book project too, I made a bit smaller version, so they would fit my grandmothers vase. The fabric baskets on the middle picture, are from my hands. As well as the crocheted edges, shown in the top left picture.

If you’d like to create a fabric basket together with me, you could join one of my workshops. The workshop price includes the book, 0,5 m of ‘Eline’s Huis’ fabric in the color of your choice, a fat quarter linen fabric, a fat quarter dotted fabric, and al the haberdasheries you use. If you already own the book, you can sign in for the workshop with a reduced price.

I want to thank you all who has given me feedback on my first business cards try-outs. By comment, filling in the poll or even face2face. It really helped me making the decision how to go for the ‘real’ version.

I have chosen to make two versions, one to hand out to friends and potential customers and such, and an other version to hand out on business occasions like trade markets. I found out that for trade markets I need a version with my full details like mail address and phone number.

For the friends and customer version I used MOO mini cards with 15 different prints. Next time I will use different pictures, I’m not 100% happy how they turned out. I will also add the tag line ‘Workshops, stoffen en fournituren’ next time. But the idea to have a bunch of those little cards I like very much :-)

With the business version I’m totally happy, I have changed and added some pictures, and also the back side works really well I think.

So thank you all, I will definitely come back to you when I need help again making creative decisions.