We’ve had two members of the Letterfest team welcome baby boys into the world over the past couple of weeks. Tom and his wife Tamsin now have a bouncing…
Our Bespoke Pet Portrait gift was featured in a magazine recently and a customer sent us this photo. Only thing is we don’t know which publication it was! Does…
Hannah our mounting and framing guru is never happier than when she’s on one of North Devon’s lovely beaches. Her boyfriend, Rhino (aka James our cardboard expert!) gave her…
Father’s Day is on Sunday 16th June and if you fancy treating your Dad to a handmade gift from Letterfest here are a few ideas… Father’s Day Sketch based…
It was another sunny bank holiday here in Devon this weekend and Travis took full advantage by taking Bob and Wendy and some friends out for a picnic by…
We’ve had two members of the Letterfest team welcome baby boys into the world over the past couple of weeks. Tom and his wife Tamsin now have a bouncing baby Jack who weighed in at a whopping 9lb 1/2 oz and Janine and her partner Darius, who now live in Germany, have a happy baby Moa. Congratulations guys!
Our Bespoke Pet Portrait gift was featured in a magazine recently and a customer sent us this photo. Only thing is we don’t know which publication it was! Does anyone recognise it?!
Hannah our mounting and framing guru is never happier than when she’s on one of North Devon’s lovely beaches. Her boyfriend, Rhino (aka James our cardboard expert!) gave her a new style of surfboard recently and she is so in love with it she asked us to blog about it.
It’s called an Otter Handplane, the perfect thing to add speed when you’re bodysurfing. These lovely handmade boards are made from the off-cuts from the full sized wooden surfboards made by Otter. They help you control your position in the wave and just generally look very cool!
Made in Cornwall by three passionate surfers and woodworkers, these boards were inspired by the designs used in the 1930′s. Using traditional materials combined with modern techniques and refinements, we think they are simply gorgeous.
This is how Hannah’s board arrived, complete with a mini bottle of protective oil and postcard. Lovely.
Father’s Day is on Sunday 16th June and if you fancy treating your Dad to a handmade gift from Letterfest here are a few ideas…
Father’s Day Sketch based on a photograph.
“I Love You Dad” Pebble
Vintage Family Tree Poster with up to 5 generations included and pets too!
Personalised Dad’s Star Slate
Personalise Eye Chart Cover for Kindle
It was another sunny bank holiday here in Devon this weekend and Travis took full advantage by taking Bob and Wendy and some friends out for a picnic by the river Torridge near Torrington. Travis’ friends Dylan and Dudley, the very handsome sausage dogs, and their owners Nicola and David came along for the ride too.
It was a steep but very picturesque walk down to the river near the village of Taddiport but the Dachshunds raced Travis to the bottom.
He lead them to a lovely spot with access to river so he could swim to his heart’s content or romp about in the meadow amongst the tall grasses when he got too cold.
The picnic food proved a real draw for Travis. Mmmm sandwich…
Then it was back to what he does best – looking cute in the water playing with pebbles.
We like the way Travis always holds sticks in his mouth like a cigar!
Bob let out his inner child and did a spot of tree climbing. Travis watched him carefully in case of an accident.
It’s compulsory to eat clotted cream on a picnic in the West Country.
A lovely day was had by all and then it was time to climb back up the hill. Dudley is just pondering this thought in this photo..
Our neighbour at Spirit of Summer Fair last week was Cecily, the most gorgeous capsule dress collection we’ve ever seen. The glamorous and lovely Sarah and Louise who own Cecily were rocking these dresses on the stand every day. We saluted their commitment and were mightily impressed with their resilience, wearing 4 inch Laboutin heels standing on the stall all day! Ladies – you are amazing!
There are 9 dresses in the collection, all designed and cut beautifully. You really have to see these dresses up close to appreciate how lovely they are. Designed to suit women of all ages and to be worn with the minimum of fuss. Just a great pair of heels and handbag and you’re good to go.
Cecily already have some celebrity customers and we think they’re going to be huge. Get one of their dresses now – it may well be a collector’s item one day! Top Tip!
Thanks for being lovely neighbours at the show Cecily!
Wendy and Anna managed to drag themselves out for dinner one night last week whilst they were in London. Their establishment of choice was Wahaca, a great chain of authentic Mexican restaurants. If you’re ever in London then we recommend it!
When you get your bill you get one of these little matchbox style gifts. It’s actually a grow your own serrano chillies idea. Genius. Will give it a go and hopefully have a crop of chillies quicker than you can say sombrero..
We had a great time at Spirit of Summer Fair at Olympia last week. Four days of meeting lovely new customers and lots of loyal Letterfesters too who came to say hello and take a look at some of our new products.
Wendy and Anna travelled up by train to London laden down with products and managed to put up the stand in four hours – a new record! We’re getting quicker at doing these things! We hope our stand stood out for it’s hand-made look.
We had a lovely location close to the centre of the show and the loos (this is very important)! We’re going to write about some of the stall-holders in the blog but let’s just say, we were in great company surrounded by fellow designer/makers with great products.
This is how we display our personalised illustrations.
Olympia is a fantastic venue for this type of shopping extravaganza. Light, airy and plenty of space. The organisers, House & Garden Magazine, dressed the hall beautifully and it all went off without a hitch. This is an aerial view of the fair to get some idea of scale. Such a brilliant building.
We were delighted when House & Garden chose two of our products to feature in their Editor’s Picks talk..
They chose to talk about our Typographic Family Tree Poster, pointing out what a great Father’s Day gift it would make. You are so right House & Garden!
Then it was our Personalised House Portrait’s turn in the spotlight. 
Our brochures were handed out in their hundreds! We included a handy little postcard detailing how to order one of our house portraits this time.
We think you’re going to love some of our neighbouring stall-holders. Watch this space for a blog article about amazing dresses!
Wendy discovered this fantastic site at the weekend, giving tips on recycling, upcycling, and as they call it scrap-cycling. The site’s called ScrapHacker.com. Check out these ingenius ways of using old coat hangers!
This one looks a liitle beyond our DIY skills but we’d love to give it a go. So clever.
Haberdasher’s heaven!
Now this one I reckon we could manage.
The site is also full of ideas on how to pimp your IKEA furniture! Seriously, check out what you can do with that old bookcase or lamp.
There’s also an entire section dedicated to up-cycling wooden pallets. We have a few of these lying around Letterfest HQ…. If we ever get a spare few minutes we might just do this.
Our village primary school organised a scarecrow trail this weekend and being fine upstanding citizens of Instow, we had to take part! Local residents created a gob-smacking assortment of scarecrows around the village for people to find. After buying the scarecrow map it was a case of finding the little chaps outside people’s homes, at the end of lanes, under trees, sitting on benches. The mermaids (above) set the bar very high for the rest of the village.
Ooh ahh we love living in the countryside!
There were some very err post-modern entries! Yikes. If I were a crow, I would stay well away from this one!
Sci-fi scarecrows. A first for us.
We loved the Simpsons family. Genius.
For a split second we thought this was a real person! A fairly common sight in our village..
This is a fantastic likeness of Bill, our pub landlord’s father! Brilliant!
Our little chapel had a great collection of scarecrows in its grounds, including this one!
There’s something of a Travis about this one. Strange really as we think it’s a sheep?
Whilst Travis was having a lovely time exploring rock pools this weekend, Bob and Wendy caught up with old friends in Zummerzet, sorry that’s Somerset.
They stayed in a gorgeous holiday cottage near Glastonbury called The Mill Barn in the village of Keinton Mandeville. It’s a lovely barn conversion with views across to nearby Glastonbury Tor.
A stream runs right next to the cottage. Just think of the fun Travis would have had in there…
The decor is really contemporary. A great mix of colours and furniture styles. Not your average chintzy holiday let is it?!
This is such a pretty part of the South West. Full of interesting places to visit like an alpaca farm.. No really!
Bob and Wendy’s friends’ kids’ loved it there!
Although one of them seemed to look a little different after the farm visit…! Sure it’s nothing permanent though.
Bob and Wendy spent a lovely weekend near Glastonbury this weekend (more of that on tomorrow’s blog) and Travis stayed back here in North Devon with Anna and her husband Will. The weather was gorgeous and they took him out for a day trip on Saturday to Bucks Mills. This is one of the prettiest villages in North Devon in our opinion and as you’ll see Travis is quite a fan.
The village is in a steep valley and surrounded by gorgeous woodland.
The houses are picture postcard Devon. However for Travis, the best thing is all the swimming possibilities…
The stream that runs through the village itself is tempting..
But the real attraction lies just beyond this steep path.
This is the stunning North Devon coastline.
After a short scramble down the pebbleridge
it’s straight into the rock pools….
The labrador in Travis means that any water in the vicinity will be explored..
Do I have to come out?
Ant looks after all our pebble and slate orders and to remind him of the text restrictions he had this coaster engraved like this. It’s well used as you can see. We reckon this is a true one-off… You might want to have your own coaster engraved with something a little more sentimental / less informative?! See our range here.
We have a new addition to the office in the form of a massive LETTERFEST sign. It really is quite large and brilliant isn’t it? That’s Ant hard at work drawing a house portrait sitting underneath it.
James makes all our cardboard products from lovely FSC approved cardboard. That means the pulp comes from sustainable forests so for every tree that is cut down another is planted. We like this.
We thought it might be time to have a little round-up of the cardboard gifts we make so here goes..
Here’s our Personalised 3D Name gift idea. Available in either natural cardboard colour as as seen here or white in a choice of two font styles.
Our Personalised Letter Animals come in the form of an elephant, bunny or dinosaur. Personalise with a letter for a great kids present.
Chunky Cardboard Letters can be used to make up words or a pair of initials using our lovely ampersand.
This is our Customised Word Block available in natural or white cardboard saying Hello, Love or Home.
Is April a little too early to think about Christmas? Probably but hey ho here’s our Giant Cardboard Christmas Tree anyway, ready to be painted, stickered, glittered, baubled, tinselled….
