November 13, 2021
November 06, 2021
We've made something beautiful, just for the Christmas holidays. A festive wall planner that spans five weeks to cover the school holidays in December and January and capture all those pantomimes, nativity plays, Christmas Fayres, working from home days, childcare juggling days, and the best ever days off!
Cool and icy blues, beautiful inky illustrations, and all the space you need to create a fabulously organised festive season. They're live on our website right now at just £15.
But Christmas was made for magic, so here's how you can get one for FREE.
Every order for our stunning Paint Chip 2022 Wall Planners placed in November, will include a free additional Christmas Holidays Wall Planner.
November 05, 2021
For us, the perfect Christmas Eve box is all very hygge, a time to hunker down at home in pure comfort and spend time together, before the excitement of Christmas Day.
We’ve put together some suggestions of what our perfect Christmas Eve Box might hold in case you wanted some inspiration. And spoiler alert – Christmas Eve boxes shouldn’t be just for the kids! (Which is basically me saying, I want one!)
Some new, and freshly washed, PJs. We love these ones by our pals at Lola and Blake Designs. Available in baby to adult sizes so you can all match!
Slippers – and nothing is cuter than these crocheted ones from Eka Wear. Available in baby to adult sizes.
Something to read – a comic, a book, a magazine – just some downtime away from a screen, whatever age you are! You can't go wrong with a Christmas classic, and with a redesigned cover from Bookishly - even better.
A card game – I can highly recommend Exploding Kittens if you haven’t already found this. Very addictive and fun for all ages. Or just a new pack of cards so you can play your own choice of games. We are big fans of QueenG cards for their gender equality and diversity of the royal cards.
A new Christmas decoration. This sweet mouse is handmade from 100% British sheep wool. Proudly wearing a Santa hat this little fellow would hang sweetly from a Christmas tree. From Brown Betty Blue
Or a personalised tree ornament as well, like these polar bear ones from Betsy Benn.
A little creativity – maybe some origami squares for the older ones, or some watercolour paints (yes – for me again!) or these gorgeous Elf stickers from Elf For Christmas
Some hot chocolate – and delightfully presented maybe like this one from Zac and Lily.
And maybe a mug cosy to keep little hands protected? We love this polar bear one from Chi Chi Moi.
For the grown ups you could add a miniature brandy or rum for extra warmth!
And absolutely include a snack. Either ready made biscuits, or these ones to bake yourself from The Katie Bakes
November 04, 2021
And just like that, we've cruised straight past half-term and landed in November.
My November days are almost all about getting ready for the peak trading days at the end of the month and early December, so jumper drawers have been organised and batch cooking has been full steam ahead.
The shorter daylight hours have me trying to squeeze dog walks into the middle of the day rather than the end, so I've had Willow for company in the studio. Which is lovely, but she does seem to think the bathroom is a Narnia-like transportation door and she cries outside whenever I'm in there. Daft pooch.
Not much product development happens in November - it's just too much plate spinning with everything else. (Oh, ONE print is coming soon!) Building new relationships though, can happen at any time.
I had a great morning on Tuesday with local stylist and Instagram expert, Dee Campling. She worked marvels with some of our old favourites and upcoming launches to create some gallery walls and has all the tips on how to blend styles and work with what you have. Keep an eye on her Instagram for Betsy flavoured stories! Her two ducks, Sage and Onion, looked quite disinterested until we got their favourite snack out - fresh peas. Billy the dog though was happy on the sofa throughout!
Having recently collaborated with Brighton jewellery designers, Posh Totty, we realised there was a love of all things celestial that we shared with our other pals at Bookishly. So the three of us are joining forces again on a Sun, Moon and Stars giveaway over on our Instagram tomorrow - so do check that out.
A stellar prize if ever there was one (pun totally intended).
After all our other travel plans bit the dust this year, we found a week during half term to visit Crete for the first time. Such a beautiful island and we were all thankful to be able to pause, take a breath, and enjoy some gentle sunshine.
I think I spent about two hours counting waves, trying to see if the seventh wave was always the biggest. If you don't know what I'm talking about then google it, but essentially waves travel in sets, typically anywhere between 2 and 15, so 7 quite often is an average. Counting the waves between the biggest and smallest is something I've been doing for years and it's so hypnotic.
Interestingly, we breathe in sets too. Sit for a few minutes and notice where you take your "biggest" breath.
October 30, 2021
We can source laserable items even if we don't have them in stock. Like these yoga mats. Similarly, we're happy to work with products you want to source yourself or include within a larger gift.
Whether you want your company logo, and inspiring message, or just each individuals name or initial we can create any amount you need. Short production runs are easy to do from our studio in Cheltenham.
Our Santa Hat decorations can make the perfect personalised desk drop Christmas gift. If you have the team photos, we can turn them into Christmas decorations.
October 09, 2021
57 Ideas for Advent Calendar Gifts - not sponsored by Heinz!
Advent calendars! There’s so much love in our house for the December countdown to Christmas and I have made SO many advent calendars for kids, friends and my very lucky other half that I’ve lost count.
A massive part of the attraction of an advent calendar that you create yourself, is that you can fill it with exactly what you want, things you know the person opening it will appreciate. Which is perfect if you don’t want your small one to be eating chocolate for breakfast every morning in December (same rules don’t apply to Mum or Dad though, right!)
If you want some inspiration on what to fill your advent calendar with, I’ve compiled some of my favourite ideas and thought starters below. Some are free, some are budget friendly, and some are more expensive so feel free to mix it up and use whatever is helpful. I’ve kept most of my suggestions to the smaller sized items that might work with either our paper advent calendar or our bespoke wooden initial advent calendar. But if you want to go BIG my friend, then you go for it!
I’m also trying to support as many other indie businesses as possible so where there are specific suggestions I’ve added links to their products.
For ease of reading I’m going to split the suggestions into “Teens to Adults” and “Primary Schoolers” but please keep in mind your own audience as you know them best. If you’ve got this far, you might as well read all the suggestions because lots of them work across the ages. Yay – let’s rock n roll.
Something free every day!
Actually, let’s start with free ideas that work across the generations. These could be a part of the advent calendar every day, or just popped into a few days – but they are very low cost, basically free ideas for a bit of fun.
So, you get the idea on add ins to your advent calendar that are free or really low cost. You can make those bits super specific for your person. Now, let’s spend a little!
Suggestions for the teens to adults (but read through because some will work for any age)
Suggestions for Primary School age children, adapt as necessary.
And just a word about shopping small and supporting your local economy. As this is a blog post we really had to link to online places where you can purchase these suggestions! Not a single one of these links though, takes you to an Amazon page. Yes, a lot of small businesses also sell on Amazon, but that will not be the ONLY place they sell and you can support them by finding their own webshop, or sourcing any of these items in physical shops local to you. You might even be able to find some of these suggestions in local charity shops. Be creative and your advent calendar becomes a much bigger gift!
If every adult in the UK spent £1 a day with a small business, it would add £12billion to local economies. And what a gift that would be to all of us!
October 08, 2021
Hello October, we've been expecting you! I have to say the start of quarter four has me a little buzzing.
The last three months of the year are always our busiest (we do about half our years' orders in those three months) so we wait for October to arrive with an equal mix of excitement and trepidation. We plan as much as we can but we'll never know exactly how it will go.
This week has seen Team Betsy doing a final sweep of stock levels, product descriptions, and emergency snack rations. You'll be relieved to hear there are plenty of snacks! So, come on Christmas, what have you got in store for us?
Have a wonderful weekend, and maybe check on your own snack stash. Is it too soon for the mince pies?
It's rare that I get a moment to pause and pick up an actual paintbrush, but that rare moment happened this week and I painted this guy. The original plan was to draw him on my iPad, but my favourite adobe programme wasn't working so out came the watercolours.
He's destined to feature on a new Christmas tree decoration that we're launching later this month. You can watch a timelapse of me painting him here.
Do you paint? Or do anything else crafty that you don't always have time for but absolutely love when you do it? Maybe you can carve out some time for it this weekend - it really is great for the soul.
Here's one from the archives that I absolutely adore; our first laser-cut Christmas card. When I doodled the design I thought it would look so smart with the word HO, repeated three times. At the back is the empty space of HO, then the cutout, standing-up letters of HO, and then the drop shadow of HO. Ho Ho Ho (Merry Christmas)
I keep toying with the idea of refreshing the design and running off a limited edition. What do you think? Would this float your Christmas boat? Drop me a line and let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.
I think we had the last sort-of-summer day in the magical surrounds of North Devon visiting friends who have just moved there. By the time we got home, it was definitely dresses away and jumpers out. It was so beautiful, just check out that sky!
Ben even had a spur of the moment surf lesson from Ollie. The water was amazingly warm but I think he was still pleased that we hired a wetsuit. Just look at Willow trying to get in on the action - daft woofer. xxx
September 24, 2021
What a magical week this has been with both the Autumn equinox on Tuesday and the most beautiful Harvest Moon the following night. Each morning has been filled with gentle sunshine, illuminating the suddenly heavier dew and the many, many webs in my garden!
It's prompted a little Autumn Clean in my world - like a Spring Clean but on the opposite side of the calendar - and I've actually tidied my workstations, both in the studio and at home. I'm sure this will now induce a week of me not being able to find anything because I have "put it somewhere safe" but on the surface at least I feel very organised!
Have you felt the shift into a new season?
Sending you the very best of Friday vibes as always, and have a wonderful weekend whatever you have planned.
It's thirty years to the day that Nirvana's Nevermind was released, and to celebrate BBC6 Music are playing ONLY songs from 1991 all day. I'm not sure if this is going to make me feel old or like a 17-year-old again, but either way, I'm totally on board! I might even dig out my old flannel shirt and DMs - yes I was THAT stylish.
Stop motion has become my latest love! Initially driven by those pesky algorithms that say that video content gets more views on social platforms than still images, but now I'm kind of addicted. I keep thinking of new ways to show a product or a feature and seem to have about a dozen ideas in my head at once. My skills are trying to catch up to my imagination, though I still forget some basics like keeping props still!
Here are some stills from my latest stop motion for one of our notebooks.
The last image is my very basic setup to hold my camera phone still, and directly overhead of my "image zone" - it's been unbelievably useful. Then I edit everything in Video Editor which most PCs come with as standard and Bob's Your Uncle! Watch the final video here! I'd love to hear what you think.
Apart from one very wonderful catchup with some old school friends in Northampton, I've mostly been sticking close to home the past couple of weeks. My knee has healed enough to be able to join Andy and Willow on the daily walks at Crickley Hill and I can't believe how quickly it seems to have switched to Autumn! It's only been four weeks but the sun is setting lower and earlier, and the bright purple thistles have changed to their silvery, skeletal selves.
I'm ready for it to be Autumn, I think. The days still feel long enough to achieve the things but the slight nip in the air is kind of thrilling - just me?
September 12, 2021
September 06, 2021
August 27, 2021
Welcome to Anthology 03!
As I type I'm recovering quite nicely from a little knee op with the assistance of a well-poofed corner sofa, a mug of soup, and a fresh loaf of sourdough from local deli, Bakers and Graze. Turns out it really is the little things that we turn to for comfort!
I hope your weekend is looking restful/adventurous/full of family and friends* and here in Cheltenham we have NO RAIN forecast for the whole of the Bank Holiday! Some of my recoup hours might be in the garden.
(*delete as required ;-)
Last Friday was all about Christmas with a long and hectic photoshoot with business pals Lola And Blake and the marvellous Felt So Good.
Our friends at Dawn Nurseries cut three Christmas trees for us - and yes we did get some odd looks at the recycling centre afterwards - and we had 19 different models of varying ages arrive throughout the day across six room sets as well as some outdoor shots.
Our amazing photographer, Laura, captured some really beautiful images a few of which are below. We were all on hand with our own cameras too, taking the odd bit of video as well so you'll definitely see those crop up in stories.
Thanks so much to everyone involved, especially Harriet, who turned over her beautiful house to us for the day! If you're a fellow small biz owner then I highly recommend teaming up with other local businesses for shoots like this.
Well, we didn't go to Italy! Like many, our international travel plans are temporarily on pause, but I know how much we'll love it and appreciate it even more when we do eventually get to return.
Instead, we decided to spend a few days in Brighton. We've been before but only as a fleeting visit and always with a course to attend, or friends to visit, which didn't really leave much time for a mooch and a wander. That's the best part of going to new places isn't it? The mooching!
We had a lovely wander around The Lanes, and found the Record Store Day release of Alive by Pearl Jam in a local record shop, Cult Hero, which made my day! And I couldn't go past Cass Arts without stopping in and geeking out over the paints and pastels. I had to take a photo of their noticeboard. I call it "How Artists do Business Cards" ;-)
Are you planning any holidays at the moment?
My sofa day today is heavily punctuated by cuppas, which got me thinking about our first mug designs from 2012.
We'd never really thought about making mugs, or anything other than art prints to be honest, when Scottish-based mug company, McLaggan Smith, approached us about turning one of our Union Jack prints into a mug design. Of course, I thought it would be a bit weird only having one mug so I designed another one to go with it, inspired by my lifelong love of dunking a biccie in a cup of tea.
I'd completely forgotten until I looked it up just now that the mug went through a few design changes. Originally, I'd wanted it to be a full colourful rainbow of stripes. However, mug printing is not as straightforward as I thought and the professionals recommended sticking to a range of five colours, and preferably not featuring pink (apparently pink is notoriously difficult for consistency!)
From left to right we have the initial concept, the first redesign, and then the final version. Yellow was too difficult to read and again a bit tricky with the consistency issue. And we had to lose one biscuit to size it all better, so shortcakes bit the dust.
Without a doubt, the best part of the development process was sitting with a stopwatch, a hot cup of tea and a pile of my favourite biscuits to see how long each would dunk for!
I love how they turned out and it's still my favourite mug to use at home.
August 08, 2021
And a very good Friday afternoon to you!
Did you get a fleeting week of sunshine last month, and then poof, it disappeared? Us too.
Honestly, it feels less odd to be thinking about Christmas when it's raining outside (and Christmas is our main focus now!) but it would be nice to see a few more hot days before we admit that summer is on its way out.
If you happen to be in London, or heading there over the summer, I found a weatherproof, soulful way to spend an hour in the shape of an immersive Van Gogh Experience.
Not to confuse you, but there are currently TWO different Van Gogh experiences in London. I guess that's what happens when no-one owns the exclusive rights to his images!
The one I went to was Van Gogh Alive in Kensington Gardens - just opposite the Royal Albert Hall. It's there until September when it moves on to Manchester and I can thoroughly vouch for the quality of the pastries and hot chocolates in the garden cafe afterward!
Lightly animated and set to music, his most famous works of art are supersized and projected all around you. The way he saw the world takes my breath away.
It's suitable for all ages and my top tip is to try and go in the first or second slot of the morning. It's slightly cheaper and much quieter than later in the day.