The lovely Tia from Who Ate My Crayons created the fantastic badge for us to celebrate!

]]> http://www.teamgorgeous.co.uk/blog/?feed=rss2&p=923 0 http://www.teamgorgeous.co.uk/blog/?p=888 http://www.teamgorgeous.co.uk/blog/?p=888#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:46:09 +0000 Alison http://www.teamgorgeous.co.uk/blog/?p=888

How are your Christmas preparation’s going? I have to admit the tree is up, but I have yet to write a Christmas Card and have only 3 present purchases to my name so far!

So with that in mind I have been looking through giftwrappedandgorgeous.co.uk for some inspiration and have come up with a few things that my mum, best friend and brother would like (yes the golf picture is the one for my brother before you ask!).

Shaker Style White Distressed Vintage Heart Cupboard £65.95

This beautiful Shaker Style cupbaord is from Willow & Brown Country Interiors, our newest Partner Company to the website.

Shell Charms Bangle Stack £105.00

The Shell Charms Bangle Stack is by jewellery designer Annette Given.

Personalised Sportsperson Retro Poster Print £29.95

Footballer, Cyclist or Golfer, this personalised Sportsperson print is by Firebird Design.

Click on the products and take a look around their boutique’s for some fabulous Christmas Gift inspiration!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Alison x

P.s. – go on admit it, you’re singing along to Andy Williams aren’t you…!

Sculptor, Martiens Bekker will be building a tree from discarded pieces wood salvaged locally from a house reconstruction and an old barn.

Most of Martiens’ art is spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment, he saw a huge amount of wood being taken from a house and an idea was seeded, taking root as his latest art instillation.

His aim is to make people aware of the ‘worth’ of the materials we use to make our lives comfortable and how when we upgrade our comfort, our environment pays the price.

Visitors can pledge their support by donating a leaf in their name which will be added to the tree. All the funds raised will be donated to Port Isaac community school to be used for a local tree planting event.

Martiens hopes to start his project early July and aims to be finished by the end of August. The tree will be built on the Carlumb Farm, St Minver, Cornwall PL276RG, next to the Art Café and Farm Stall.

Some of you may remember those lunchtime tv shows years ago where you could learn step by step how to paint various scenes and objects using little tricks of the trade so to speak.  Well this is similar, great fun and you feel as though you have really achieved something at the end of it.  (Although in my case anything resembling a chicken was a bonus especially when our L commented ‘Nice picture of a cow Mummy’!)

For more information and lots of lovely things to see and take part in click on this link

http://www.coea.co.uk/cgi-bin/download.cgi 

Someone who really does know how to paint a chicken is Team Gorgeous Member Dawn Critchley of Dawn Critchley Designs!

Chicken Screen Print £20.00

Tea Cosy Chicken £25.00

Tea Towel Chicken £9.99

Chicken Note Cards £4.00

As you can see Dawn’s designs are contemporary farmhouse chic which suit more modern kitchens as well as tradtional.  I might feel a tad squeamish though using this rather splendid oven glove to remove a roast chicken from my Aga!   Nevertheless Dawn’s full collection of farmhouse country kitchen home accessories look fabulous and make a great and unique Christmas Gift Idea.  The hand printed cards are also a stylish and clever idea for Secret Santa’s in your work or office. Amanda x

Oven Glove Chicken £18.00

After a visit to the monthly Cornwall Entrepreneurs’ Circle meeting it became very clear that not only was I a complete numpty at time management but also embroiling myself in jobs that it would be much more cost effective for the business if I outsourced someone else to do it!

So from now on things at Gorgeous HQ are going to change!

Then the lovely Natalie arrived from the Midlands to look over our books but of course she had to partake of a Cornish Cream Tea before any book keeping work was done!

Natalie Enjoying A Cornish Cream Tea In St Mawgan!

Our Monty dog certainly got his numbers right this week.  He spotted a tasty little number in the shape of a Labradoodle on Watergate Bay Beach & tried his best to be her number One!

Monty Chasing The 'Birds'

Yesterday was so warm it felt like a summers day but sadly we know summer is long gone.

Amanda x

Hello Gorgeous!!

The re launch of Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous to announce that we are now focusing more on providing PR and Media Coverage for our partner companies went off with a bit of a fizzle rather than a bang!

This was because sadly my husband’s Mum, Joan, died last week so we didn’t really feel like celebrating much.

But, knowing how much Joan loved a party, we decided to go ahead anyway and although we were more subdued than usual we met at the wonderful Cornwall Fifteen Restaurant at beautiful Watergate Bay.  This is one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants where he teaches young people the art of becoming a top chef!

Amanda & Karen From 'Just Bunting'

Leanne Having A Pensive Moment!

Leanne has been doing some research into the press coverage we have secured for our partner companies’ products and put together some basic stats as follows.

Case Study

One of our partner companies who joined in January, Sparrow Primitives, has had 15 (more now actually!) press publications for her products which works out at approx 1.6 publications per month.
We discovered directly from the horse’s mouths aka the magazines themselves, that each single product ‘appearance’ in for example a gift feature or emporium is worth at least £500!!
So for some of you who have had 2 or 3 images in the same publication we are talking about £1500 worth of press coverage which is amazing!!

Autumn Leaves Shabby Chic Country Style Shelf Sign Blocks £23.49

Louie & Pete Cat & Mouse Primitives £16.99

We all know that magazine advertising is hugely expensive, especially if you want to be published in top magazines or in the weekend newspaper magazines.  I have attached a file which shows just how much it costs to do this at this point in time and please make sure you are sitting down before you read it because it will shock the pants off you J!!

From my own personal experience and from speaking to others, I know that customers are more likely to buy something if it appears in a magazine’s ‘Top Gift List’ or ‘Emporium’.  This is because it is seen to be endorsed by the magazine itself.  What better endorsement of your products is that!  I know the endorsement is rather ‘loose’ but it is there nevertheless.  And guess what?  It works!  Sparrow Primitives sales with us have gone up considerably this month since having their products appear in the press.

So how do you share the same success as Sparrow Primitives?

All Because Two People Fell In Love £21.49

Well I am sure Martina will be the first one to agree that it takes teamwork between ourselves and a partner company to really work together to make things work.  Fantastic photography is key, closely followed by great product descriptions, high quality products, amazing customer service and a rather large dose of persistence.

It is a proven fact that PR is 3 times more effective than advertising and Word Of Mouth even more effective so what better combination than having your product appear in a top magazine’s top selection of products?

Beware £21.49

It is not, however, a foregone conclusion for overnight success and any PR person worth their salt will tell you that PR is an investment of time and energy and takes time.  Sure there are some PR companies who will run massive campaigns to launch companies and/or their products but they also charge massive prices.

When we first started up Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous we did a lot of research into the cost of PR for ourselves and the most basic package was going to cost us at least £300 per month.

Two By Two £23.49

Unless we did it ourselves……………

DIY PR is great when you have the time and know what you are doing.  It’s not easy but I wholeheartedly agree that business owners themselves are the best people to do their own PR if they so wish as they are usually hugely passionate about their business.

What we offer is almost like the ‘poor person’s pr’ lolls!!  The behind the scenes admin work, the hard slog of checking images, key words, making sure journalists receive the images, building up relationships with journalists, etc etc  The list goes on and on!

It’s not just a matter of pressing a few buttons and making ourselves £millions although that would be rather nice!

So why do we do it?  Well believe it or not we get a buzz from you getting featured and we love to see the sales coming in.  Your success is our success and vice versa.

Dear Santa ...Christmas Shelf Blocks £21.49

Up until now our charges have worked out at a minuscule 26p per day for a two year membership!!  So needless to say, neither Alison nor I have been able to take a wage and have ploughed any profit straight back into the business.

But long term this cannot continue both from our own personal points of view and that of the business.  The bigger the business the hungrier it gets and the more it needs.

So with this in mind from 31^st October 2011 our fees are going to increase to reflect the work we do. but will still be easily affordable for the talented designers we want to work with.

Warm Wishes

Amanda

My Dad & Our L!

Cufflinks are a favourite for Dads and these days you can get some really cool and different ones for him to show off at his office or ‘club’.

Silver Fingerprint Cufflinks £79.00

Scrabble Cufflinks £9.99

Coffee Time Cufflinks £15.00

My Dad likes what he calles a nice ‘picture’ for the wall and he pleasantly surprised me recently on a visit to Padstow’s Art Galleries with his growing eclectic taste in real art rather than something he spotted in one of the local charity shops.  (This is a source of continuing embarrassment for my Mother!)
Dad’s favourite Art tends to have a sense of humour along the lines of this fabulous ‘Dad Loves…’ print by Artylicious.  I can think of a few things to put in this  which would embarrass him….. moo haa haa!

Personalised 'Dad Loves' print £27.00

Of course all Dads love chocolate and if you are like me and have an alterior motive then you can always buy him your favourites knowing he will share them with you!  Well!!  He used to read my comics before me!  To make sure it was suitable he said.  Hmmmmm…….

One In A Million Chocolate Coins £33.95

Dads do like to smell nice and one of my Dad’s tricks to chat up young ladies is to tell them he likes their perfume.  The old rogue!

Black Tie For Men Hand Crafted Soap £4.85

If in doubt about what to buy for your Dad you could always put together a hamper of bits and bobs including some of the lovely soap above.

Of course all Dads are someone’s Daddy and us girls have them wrapped round our little fingers no matter how grown up we are.

So love you Dad & I promise I will buy you an extra special birthday pressie this year!

Amanda xx

'We Can't Take Breaks But Lunch Is Provided'

To tell you the truth I could quite happily have stayed in hospital all day as it was rather nice to be served with tea and biscuits and NOT feel guilty having a ‘little rest’!

Amanda xx

London Print On Reclaimed Wood £149.00 by Coulson & MacLeod

This week saw me travelling  ‘up country’ to London where I attended a business workshop hosted by the highly acclaimed businesswoman Rachel Elnaugh www.rachelelnaugh.com

It was quite an adventure as I headed for Covent Garden accompanied by Niki McGlynn, who is a very well respected Homeopath and who very kindly allowed me to stay in her lovely home the night before.  This was a Godsend as although I have travelled the world, navigating my way alone round London is still a daunting task. Niki makes the most amazingly gorgeous, soothing and effective balms simply called ‘Niki’s Balms’.  To buy some of Niki’s balms you can visit her website   www.nikisbalms.co.uk and I highly recommend the rose balm!  After being an Oil of Ulay girl for years I am now totally converted!

The venue for the Business Magic Workshop is the rather gorgeous B.Hive founded by Lynne Franks, Businesswoman, Author, Speaker & Broadcaster.

The B.Hive is a fabulous new concept in womens’ business clubs and you can find out more about it and its founder here
http://www.bhive.co/

Needless to say that in such a beautiful enviroment it was easy to concentrate and focus on our business, especially with the support of Rachel who put me through my paces, and the lovely ladies (and chap) who opened my mind to so many new ideas.

The main conceptual change to appear was that we should seriously consider moving Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous forward through the media.  By working with Rachel I came to the conclusion that some TV coverage combining a Kirstie’s Home Made Home type programme with a shopping channel approach may just work for some of our partner companies and their products.

So I put down the intent to do this, kept my mind open and literally within the next 24 hours I found and made contact with a company who I had already heard of in a different area who may just be able to make this dream happen for us.  Then the next day I received a telephone call completely out of the blue from a researcher at ITV requesting some products to use on a new Food & Travel programme being screened in Spring 2012!!!

Is the Universe trying to tell me something?  I certainly hope so.  And as we move forward this week to attend the Mumpreneur UK conference where we are shortlisted for best online business 2011 we feel we are being drawn more and more to  the media to help make our business work for us and for our partner companies.

Ladybird Princess Dress & Costume by Anna Marie Childrenswear £22.80

Brave Dragon Knights In Shining Armour!

We hope the Dragons are suitably impressed by this fabulous print put together by Sarah from Photo Fairytales.  You can see other images by Sarah in her Gwag boutique http://www.giftwrappedandgorgeous.co.uk/photo-fairytales_8681-products.asp

'My Life' Poster Print £34.00 by One Hundredth Word

Heart & Soul Necklace by Dream of Silver £49.00

Birdsong Luxury Gift Wrap Collection With Instructional DVD by Amberburge £45.00

Pink Lazurine & Amethyst Necklace £60.00 by Ruby James Jewellery

In the photo directly above is a piece from the Ruby James Jewellery Collection.  Unfortunately we don’t have an image of the actual necklace being shown to the Mumpreneur UK Team and Judges but the above necklace gives you an idea as to how exquisite her designs are.  Ruby James is no stranger to celebrity customers and her designs have adorned the lovely singer Jane MacDonald amongst many others.

Last but not least we wrapped the gifts for Mumpreneur UK in some beautiful gift wrapping paper designed by Rachael Taylor whose range of textile homewear and accessories can be seen in her Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous Boutique

Etched Floral Gift Wrap £1.25 per sheet by Rachael Taylor

I will keep you posted on how we get on at the Mumpreneur UK Awards!

Warm Wishes

Amanda xx