·         Temptation Gifts in Berkhamstead for Best Independent Retailer of the year – South and Wales and Gift Retailer of the Year 2008
·         Celebrations in Carlisle for Best Independent Retailer of the year – Midlands and the North
·         Rossiters of Bath for Best Department Store Retailer of Gifts
·         The Bottle Kiln for Best Gift Retailer of Jewellery
·         Bents Garden Centre in Warrington for Best Garden
·         House of Beauly in Beauly for Best Visitor Attraction Gift Shop
·         Fraiche in Derby for Best Retail Display Window or In Store
·         Lynn Tait Gallery in Leigh-on-Sea for Best Retailer Initiative
 

Blue Eyed Sun designs, publishes and sells design-led cards to some of the best stores in the world and we are very pleased to supply such wonderful shops. Well done to all those nominated for these fantastic awards. In a series of articles on our website we will be interviewing some of our customers who have recently been nominated for awards and getting their top tips to help your shop to be able to stand out from the crowd.

The Greats were launched by Progressive Gifts & Home magazine in 2003, in recognition of the tremendous contribution that retailers, both large and small, make to the success of the gift industry. Now in their sixth year, The Greats are established as the premier awards event of the year. It brings together the entire industry for a night of celebration. The Greats recognise and celebrate not only the top independent and multiple gift retailers regionally and nationally, but also the new breed of gift retailers as well as outstanding retail employees. The 2008 Greats Gift Retailer Awards were a huge success and took place at The Royal Lancaster on May 22nd 2008 at The Royal Lancaster. For more details visit the awards website at www.thegreatsawards.co.uk     

These luxury handmade cards are made on top quality 300gsm board and are sized overall at 160mm square. All cards come cello-wrapped with a pearlescent envelope. Priced at £1.70 each trade (£4.00 RRP) the designs come in sixes.   

Blue Eyed Sun is a highly successful small business now in its eighth year of trading. Its brands include the Gift of the Year award-winning SUNCATCHERS cards, best-selling handmade card ranges: KALEIDOSCOPE and BRIGHTON ROCK, and their unique handmade GLASS ENAMEL cards. They sell to design-led shops across the UK and around the world. Customers include: John Lewis, Paperchase, Cards Galore, Harrods and Fortnum and Mason.  With fast turnaround of orders and friendly service as standard and agents across the country, this range must be seen.
 
Blue Eyed Sun Trade Sales Only:
01273 823003 

Blue Eyed Sun designs and manufactures quality design-led handmade greetings cards in Brighton, England. We distribute wholesale greeting cards to the retail trade in the United Kingdom and around the world. Please note that we do not sell to the public. 

For Valentine’s 2008, Blue Eyed Sun have launched 11 new handmade card designs in their BRIGHTON ROCK range and 12 gorgeous designs in their best-selling handmade KALEIDOSCOPE collection. These design-led handmade greetings cards are each individually hand-glittered in lovely thick sugary glitter. All of these wonderful handmade cards are 160 mm square, come with a colour co-ordinated pearlescent envelopes and are cello-wrapped and bar-coded. Available in sixes to retail trade stores only, these beautiful handmade cards are stocked in some of the best independent card and gift shops around the world. With fast turnaround of orders and friendly service as standard and agents across the country, this range must be seen.
 
Blue Eyed Sun

http://www.blueeyedsun.co.uk/spring.html

Blue Eyed Sun designs and manufactures quality design-led handmade greetings cards in Brighton, England and distributes them wholesale to the retail trade in the United Kingdom and around the world. Please note that we do not sell to the public.

 In July he successfully completed the London 10K in a time of 51 minutes raising £630 for Marie Curie Cancer Care. This time he completed the Brooks Brighton 10K and fundraised for local charity The Rockinghorse Appeal which helps thousands of sick children every year. To support Jeremy’s efforts with a donation, please visit www.bmycharity.com/jeremycorner 

Blue Eyed Sun have launching a lovely new range of handmade cards called VELVET. Available to contemporary shops looking for extra special handmade cards, there are 80 gorgeous handmade designs covering all major occasions including birthdays, numbered birthdays, weddings, new babies and Christmas.

This contemporary handmade card range features beautiful watercolour drawings, with each greeting card individually hand-glittered and sprinkled with sequins. All VELVET cards are 160 mm square, come with a colour co-ordinated pearlescent envelopes and are cello-wrapped and barcoded. Available in sixes, these beautiful designs RRP at £4.00. With fast turnaround of orders and friendly service as standard and agents across the country, this card company is a must have for your shop.

Blue Eyed Sun designs and manufactures quality contemporary handmade greetings cards in Brighton, England and distributes them wholesale to the retail trade in the United Kingdom and around the world. Please note that we do not sell to the public.

Telephone Blue Eyed Sun on +44 (0)1273 823003 or visit www.blueeyedsun.co.uk/velvet.html

Have you ever wondered; how does an aspiring card maker go from practising their hobby at the kitchen table to seeing their creations on the shelves at Paperchase or even Harrods? With hugely successful companies like Hallmark around, you’d be forgiven for thinking such ambitions were pie-in-the-sky. Not so it seems. With more and more ranges of handmade cards appearing in our shops the future has never looked rosier for the independent makers with original ideas. Even people who never saw their crafting as anything more than a hobby have found themselves propelled into the industry by the huge demand for quality hand made cards. We’ve talked to three such crafters who’ve taken their hobby to the high street and discovered the secrets behind their success.

ALL FIRED UP

Brighton based card company Blue Eyed Sun was started two years ago by artist Jo Kirby with her partner Jeremy Corner. Their designs feature water coloured backgrounds with exquisite enamelled decorations, each one fired by Jo herself. You’ll find them on sale in top-end stores like Selfridges and Fenwicks, but making a living wasn’t something Jo initially set out to do, and the business emerged through a series of ‘happy accidents’.

“Since I was a child I’ve made cards for family and friends all the time, but it was very much a hobby,” says Jo. She discovered by chance their commercial potential: “A friend and I were running a tiny second-hand clothes shop in York. We wanted to utilise every available surface, including an interior door that we decided would be great for displaying cards. The trouble was we didn’t have any money to buy any stock, so I made some instead. They ended up becoming the best selling things in the shop!”

Originally a jewellery making technique, enamelling is the art of fusing glass onto metal, and was a hobby Jo’s father introduced her to when she was young. “He had a kiln that he would sometimes get out on rainy days,” she recalls. “About twenty years later whilst clearing out the loft he discovered the old kiln, and was about to chuck it out, but fortunately at the last minute offered it to me.” Having created some similar cards to the ones she sells now, Jo observed that of all of her designs it was these that attracted the most comments.

DOWN TO BUSINESS

With the shop eventually closing for various reasons, Jo moved to Brighton and in 1999 decided to go into business selling something she could make. “There were lots of possibilities but in the end cards were what I chose.” Her initial step was to take a range of cards to shops around Brighton to get some opinions. “We also had an appointment with the card buyer at Fenwicks who gave us loads of good advice.” Having taken the comments on board and revised the designs, Jo and Jeremy were ready to enter the marketplace, and the first collection by Blue Eyed Sun was launched at a trade show called Top Drawer in May 2000. The venture has blossomed rapidly into a thriving small business that now sells to shops across the UK. While the backgrounds are mass printed, the trademark enamelled motifs continue to be fashioned and fired by Jo.

Although Blue Eyed Sun is relatively new company, it’s not taken long to make its mark. If you don’t know the name, you’ll definitely know these luxury greetings cards. For everyone who toddled round the last season of shows feeling the stands all looked a bit ’samey’, Blue Eyed Sun’s Glass Enamels stood out like a shining beacon.

I confidently expected to find Jo knee deep in enamel jewellery and discover that cards were just a side line she’d expanded into. Not a bit of it. She does sometimes make jewellery apparently, but since she also creates decorative prints, stained glass and even wedding gowns from time to time, it was clear that handmade cards are what she has chosen to build her business.

It seemed unlikely that Jo had just stumbled across these multi-creative talents as on adult, so I asked her if she had always been arty. “Yes, art was my best subject at school, right from the start” she said. “My parents really encouraged it and ignored the fact that art isn’t usually considered the best career move.”

Jo’s parents were both artistic though and that always helps. “Dad’s talent lies in design, while my mum is on excellent craftswoman. Brilliant at needlepoint” Jo added. In fact, Jo’s dad often gave impromptu art lessons on the dining table and occasionally allowed Jo to use a small, portable enamelling kiln he had for creating glass enamels on copper, but more of that later.

Suffice it to say, that Jo enthusiastically tackled as many art subjects as her school would allow and when it come to choosing options for 0 levels, she attempted to take art, crafts, textiles, metalwork and woodwork to no avail. “I wasn’t allowed to do that many artistic subjects.” she said, adding with a grimace, “they made me do French instead.”

After O levels it was on to college “Much better than 6th form where I’d still have had to go to assembly” where Jo took art as an A level and then Norwich Art School to study for a pre-degree foundation course. “Looking back, I was very lucky to have attended an independent art school.” she said.

“I think there are only a couple left now, most are run as port of the local polytechnic.” Jo found the art school very inspiring. “It was in two parts. On one side of the street were several workshops and on the other was a great gallery” she explained. “It was inspiring and really made you want to get on with it.”

The final part of Jo’s education involved heading north to the University of York and Ripon, where she studied art and English for her degree. “I’ve always been interested in English, but in all honesty it didn’t come naturally to me. I enjoyed it and found it quite inspirational, but it was time consuming for me, because I found it quite difficult” Jo explained.

After several years of higher education, Jo emerged without a clear idea of what she wanted to do. “You can feel a little lost on leaving. There’s little guidance on careers and of course it takes a while for most people to Figure out what they want to do” she said.

Having said that, Jo was already making cards for friends and family, but only for fun, and staying in York, she dabbled with a variety of jobs and voluntary work. One of the places that she worked was at York Art Centre, which had a small card section and it was whilst working here, that Jo decided to try and make some handmade greetings cards to sell.

“The first ones I made were for Mother’s Day’ she recalled. “They took me literally days. They were A4 folded to A5 and had stitching, flowers, poetry - you name it!” To Jo’s delight, all of her handmade cards sold by the end of the week and she discovered that it gave her a real buzz, although she realised pretty early on that it wasn’t commercially viable to spend two hours on every card!

Jo subsequently set up a small design-led shop with a friend near the university, selling contemporary gifts, jewellery and selective second hand clothes. “It was so exciting. We painted it all ourselves, and it was tiny, so we used every available inch of space, including the back of the door, where I placed a greetings card rack” Jo said. “We didn’t have much money to buy stock, so I handmade the cards myself and started messing around with different techniques.”

And it was at this stage that Jo’s dad came to visit, bringing with him the little kiln she had played with as a child. Jo instantly began to experiment with ideas. “I played around with little scraps of copper in the enamelling kiln and began making little white glass enamel squares,” she explained. “I wanted to decorate them and after stencilling an enamelled heart on each one, I added them to greetings cards and put them in the shop.”

They sold obviously, and Jo was pleased to find that they commanded quite a good price, which was good, because the shop really needed a serious injection of cash! However, in the end, Jo and her friend decided to call it a day - the effort to return ratio didn’t add up. So the shop was closed but Jo, who always tries to see the positive, said that she found running the shop a valuable experience. “We put in a lot of work, but we didn’t lose too much money and we did learn a lot” she said and then added, “my ultimate personal dream is to have another shop -with a gallery alongside and be able to run it properly.”

On a whim “Literally - I can’t give you any good reason why,” Jo moved to Brighton. “York was great, but I fancied a change and after coming down for a weekend, I just loved it” she said. Feeling that it was a good idea to be nearer London and determined to work For herself, Jo began (as she puts it), messing around with stuff. “I made a few handmade cards, I made stained glass, I also made wedding gowns for a while, which was quite lucrative but not that enjoyable. I wanted to make more unusual creations, but most brides are actually quite traditional” she said.

In the end, Jo realised that, she needed to target her efforts in one direction. “I sat down, and made a list of all the things that I’d done over the years and decided that greetings cards was the route I’d choose” she said. Simple as that! Over the next few weeks, Jo created some fifty handmade card designs and secured a meeting with the buyer at Fenwicks. She was extremely helpful” Jo recalled, “She said the glass enamel cards were really lovely, but advised me to make them for occasions rather than leave them blank.

So Jo got to work at the enamelling kiln and created another 180 luxury handmade card designs to be launched at Top Drawer May 2000. “The show was such a good thing to do. Not only did it pay for itself, but people were so generous with their comments, that I realised that the products were something unusual” she said. Once this slotted into place, Jo said that her entire mind-set altered. All of a sudden, I wasn’t just making a few handmade cards’ I had a company, a viable business.” She went on to say, “It’s been great for my confidence and determination. I enjoy my work and am convinced that this is what I want to be doing. The success of Blue Eyed Sun so far gives me constant inspiration to push both myself and the company further.”

This new-found determination has had a positive knock. on effect in other areas. “I still make prints” Jo said, “which is actually what I trained to do, and I sell them during the Brighton Festival in May. The psychological change that has occurred means that I am now far more confident about selling my work at a realistic price” she added.

Nonetheless cards are uppermost in her mind. “I really love making cards, I don’t want to be doing anything else at the moment” she said. “I would one day, love to have a shop of my own and when I’m designing the cards, I always think, ‘would that be good enough to sell in my imaginary shop?’ If it isn’t then it hits the bin.”

Jo currently makes all the components and designs all the glass enamel cards herself. The new collection which will be on show at both Top Drawer Spring and the Spring Fair Birmingham, also features delicate illustrations by Jo, but as she concluded, “To me every single card matters, they’re individual works of art.”

Forthcoming trade shows exhibiting Blue Eyed Sun handmade cards for design-led retailers

Glass Enamel Cards