Buttonberry

Competition Time!

If, like us, you’re fans of the gorgeous Kellie Wulfsohn’s work (you may recognise it better under the “Don’t Look Now” banner) then you may already know that she is celebrating 2 years of blogging. To mark this milestone, she is being super generous and doing a lovely giveaway - check it out on her blog. To add to that, if you fancied purchasing one of her patterns –  then you get a chance to be entered into the super special part of the competition to win an original piece of her work in the form of this beautiful cushion. We URGE you to give it a go because at the worst case you’ve bagged yourself one of her beautiful patterns! Get to it girlies, we hope one of our lovely customers wins!!

Good Luck xx

One of your five a day...

Hello!  Do you remember us? Sorry we've been a bit "spare" with the ol' blogging of late.  Honestly promise that we've had good reason and hopefully by the end of this post you'll forgive us because we're giving stuff away!  We're not proud - we are happy to buy your friendship!

We've been busy restocking (a way of making "having a ball shopping for new stuff" sound professional and not nearly as much fun as it really is!)  See how well we did it?  See? 

 

Whilst shopping, we picked up this bolt and literally cuddled it for most of the day. 

It is just glorious.  What is it with vegetables on fabric?  We just love it!  Anyway, an executive meeting was held over the purchasing of this particular fabric.  Which is to say Lisa and I stood for a while in the aisle and I whined and pleaded and she asked for good reason and examples of what we would use this fabric for.  Thankfully my capacity for whining is greater than Lisa's capacity for listening to it so the bolt has come home with us. 

As we've been absent for so long we thought we'd bribe you back to liking us by offering a little competition.  Why don't you leave us a comment with your ideas of what you'd make with this fabric and we'll pick a winner next week.  We'll send the winner a half metre with our compliments so you can start to put your idea into practice!

For now though, we better get back to playing with all this new fabric.  Sigh...

Drum Roll Please.....

...because we have a winner!  Yey!!!

Thanks so much to all of you who left us feedback on our new look - good and bad, we're glad of it!  Thank you thank you.  We've had storms which means problems with internet connections which means we resorted to the old fashioned - pulling out of a hat (not a hat as such, more a bowl really) method of selecting our winner and without further ado, we're sending congratulations and this fab Moda project bag to Silvia Broekhuis - yey!  (Silvia we have mailed you...)

Sorry if you didn't get picked but we'll do more competitions we promise.  In the meantime, we thought you might like to see what's been keeping us so quiet this last week or so...

As you may or may not know we've braved heaving seas (check out this view from our cabin on the way out)...

...made slightly more bearable by this view of the inside of our cabin...

After a relatively incident-free car journey (Lisa knows this to be a lie..) we made it and well what do you do when faced with this lot?

Easy really, you fill up loads of these...(this is just one of many!)

And because having so much fun is so terribly exhausting, you stop for plenty of these

We were terribly lucky when we got there to be able to see - in real life - some of Yoko Saito's fantastic quilts.  Here's a couple for you to marvel at...

Now the reason Lisa is looking so astonished here is that close up, the background of this quilt is made up of teeny tiny squares - see?

So we've had a terrible weekend as you can see, but we've braved it and we're back!  Tough job eh?

Botox 0, New look without surgery 1

Well after a lot of deliberation, umming, aahing and going back to our (very pretty) drawing board - here it is, our 'budget' facelift without even having to leave the house!

Now since it is such a big change we thought we would trial it for a little while to see how we  & you like it ('cos you're all very important to us)! We need to know if there are any urgent reports of 'cross eyedness', we're fully aware that this is a serious condition, after playing around with polkas for a couple of weeks! It isn't to be sniffed at - honestly we're sure it even has a technical term - here at BBHQ it is simply known as googly eyes (we even had a bundle in it's honour)!!

Now around here we'll use any excuse for a competiton and since we have gone and given ourselves a little makeover, we think one of you lucky readers deserve something too! As you probably all know next week we're off to our supplier  - it's terribly hard work buying fabric and gorgeous things all day (honest) - but since we are surrounded by gorgeous things, what better place to find a lovely gift? All you have to do is leave a comment, we'll buy the gift and use our super random generator thingy to pick one of you to be the recipient on our return :)

So anyhoooo without further ado, welcome to a new look - behind-the-scenes - Buttonberry, we hope you visit often and enjoy listening to us country girls ramble while we work full time & run our business  - just for the love of it :)

Lisa & Emma

xxxx

We've won....

a 'Make my Day' award!!

Now fancy that, we're not winning types but we're over the moon that Jo at 'Blissed out' let us know we make her day - and pleased as punch our ramblings cheer some one up out there in cyber space!

Problem is Jo has now set us a challenge, we simply cannot hog this honour  - it must be passed on & shared. We all do it, don't we? ..... laugh, ooooooh & aahhhh at a blog entry without letting the author know how lovely it was to read - well it ends here & now!! *waves arms, revolution styleeeee*

The rules of the game are that we can only nominate 10 blogs for this prestigious title (boo hisss), which to us seems a little unfair since there are soooooooooooo many we love - however we're good girls so we'll stick to the rules - So in no particular order here are the blogs we can't go without.....

http://allsorts.typepad.com/  - For Jenny B's fabulous colours, inspiring posts and wonderful tutorials!

http://twostraightlines.typepad.com/- We love Courtney & her fabulous decorating blogs - And Clio is the identical twin of Lisa's kitty, Nero!

http://karkovski.typepad.com/ - For Kristina's illustrations and love of Mooooomins!!

http://portabellopixie.typepad.com/ cos you know there'll always be a song to read by, Sandi's photos are just fantastic!

How can i not nominate http://tsktsk.typepad.com/, our gorgeous wallpapers alone are enough to make us smile everytime we turn the BB PC on!!

What would we do without the Sew,Mama,Sew! blog? kristen and beth do a fabulous job keeping us entertained and we just love their style!

http://monda-loves.blogspot.com/ We really love the Mrs Monda style and unique projects that appear on the blog in all medias, truly inspirational!

http://bunnyhill.blogspot.com/ well it's obvious we love Anne  as we're always raving about her patterns, but her 'bunny tales' blog deserves a mention too as we just love seeing behind the scenes!

http://www.paperseaside.blogspot.com/  We love Eleanor's blog, for the fun daily musings, the oohs and aahs at her paper creations and for her kitties!!!

http://hollyholderman.typepad.com/holly_blog/ So many love holly's blog for her witty musings and fab designs, so we can't be wrong, and we're never wrong!

Thank you Girlies, you all Make our Day!!!

Emma & Lisa xxx

Ps. Thank you to all of you who read our blog and leave such lovely comments!!

We have a winner!!!

 

Wooooooooo we have a winner!  Using our own special high-tech random number generator (bits of paper ripped up with numbers written on them in the bottom of one of the many unfinished bags laying about the place) the number 4 came up.  The person who left comment number 4 is Saraeden so congratulations to you Sara - you've won!!!  We'll mail you for your address and pop one of these in the post to you straight away!

Thanks to all of you lovely people who have given us a pat on the back for our new pattern and we're sorry you didn't all win!  We will make sure that we do some more competitions soon so watch this space!

Drumroll please....(and a competition!)

.....our first pattern has landed!!!!!!!!  Oh it's taken far more cutting, pasting (literally, with glue and scissors) than you would think for such a small thing but it's turned out beautifully and we're delighted! I really hope some of you out there might fancy making it as I think we would burst with joy if we saw some of your gallery photos of our own little baby made up by someone else!  Anyway, it's there, it's waiting, over to you (only if you wanna, no pressure!!)  To celebrate this momentous occasion, on top of the tea and jaffa cakes we've been quaffing, we thought we'd give a pattern away!  Do you think this is a bit big for our boots??.... Anyway, leave a comment and we'll draw a winner on Friday.  Good luck!

The Birds and the Bees....

Before I begin this post, let me give you a lesson I learned the hard way: if you have been anywhere near a wine glass then it is foolish to agree to make an entry for a County Show.  Note it well - I think it will stand you in good stead for the future!  Anyway, the background to this project is that I stupidly ignored that lesson and this is the outcome. They say necessity is the mother of invention but desperation is a pretty good matriach too!   This is my entry to the Suffolk Show in the class for "a soft toy featuring a garden bird or animal".  I had ideas above my station and wanted to do all sorts of fancy things with butterflies but it didn't work out.  Lesson number two: know when to walk away from soft toys.  So with less than 48 hours to go for the entry to be counted I came up with this.  It's supposed to be noughts and crosses (see that little quilt - it's a board - see??) but with birds and bees.  I must say that when I submitted it via the WI in Burstall (yes I have them to thank for this!) they were a little unsure.  We weren't too sure whether it would even get judged.  Who cares thought I - I love it and we've all played with it so it must be ok, even if it gets hurled out with "nil point".  Well as it happens, it didn't get hurled out, it did get judged and look LOOK - second place!!!  By HALF A POINT!!!  I'm so so pleased with this result.  I've never entered a competition like this before so to get placed is just lovely.  We're now in the process of making a pattern for the website and I can see all sorts of seasonal variations ahead.....(never again though, never ever again....)

We have a winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who posted a suggestion for the bundle name, after a lot of deliberation(we liked so many!!) we decided that Letty's 'Rhapsody in blue & brown' just fitted the colours perfectly & it made us SMILE!

So THANK YOU Letty for getting us out of a little jam there and giving our bundle a name it deserved! We will be emailing you for your postal address so that we can send you your yummy 'Rhapsody in blue & brown' fat eighth bundle prize!

Emma & Lisa xx

Competition Time - What's in a name?

Recently we launched our first bundle range, for this we mainly used the fabric range names (Celebrate spring, Queen of the Ranch etc...) however one concotion of Moda's Uptown and Chelsea Boutique ranges has us flummoxed!!

We have temporarily named it 'Choccie Turquoise Bundle' but it really doesn't do the lovely colours justice! So we have decided to throw it out there to our lovely public, whoever comes up with the best name will win four fat eighths of the newly named bundle as pictured above.

Good luck!