21 December 2012

Leaff's First Christmas Party

To wave 2012 goodbye on a very positive and happy note, last night was Leaff's first ever Christmas party. This year has been particularly exciting, as Leaff has developed leaps and bounds and we have been graced with the most brilliant and varied projects. It has been an absolute pleasure to work on each and every one, and to meet the array of new clients that we have been lucky enough to work with - as well as to develop our great relationships with our existing clients.

It has been a year of great success for sure, but there is no doubt that it has been a serious amount of hard work - especially while going through a pregnancy at the same time - so last night was all about acknowledging that, patting ourselves on the back, and enjoying an evening of good food and celebration.

We were joined by a few of our local and regular clients, who have become great friends of ours, for an evening at The Fold Cafe, Bransford. The Fold Cafe is such a special place - they are a very ethical cafe/restaurant, and huge supporters of local business, having much if not all of their produce sourced locally. They had decorated the place beautifully - as you can see from the pictures - and both the food and service was out of this world.


Group Shots
First Picture - Beverly of NV Hair & Beauty, Myself and Charlotte of Cottontails Baby
Second Picture - Sylvain Rabbit (courtesy of Cottontails Baby), Myself & Jay, Charlotte of 
Cottontails Baby and Alan & Beverly of NV Hair & Beauty.

We are very hopeful that this will be the beginning of a tradition, and that our party will grow as more and more clients join us over the coming years. It was a great opportunity for our lovely clients to meet each other, as fellow local businesses, and for us all to reflect on how far we had each come in our businesses this year.

We hope that you have all found the opportunity to really appreciate yourselves - or do find the opportunity over the festive break to do this. I think it is such an important thing.

Finally, we would like to thank each and every one of you - clients, friends and fans - for all of your support over the last year. We wish you a truly magical Christmas, and look forward to all that is to come in 2013.

Leaff is now closed for the festive break, and will be re-opening on the 2nd January 2013.

Our Christmas Mailer (that was not to be)

As some of you may have heard on Twitter, we've had a bit of a tough week with the collapse of our Christmas mailer - and what was typically set to be our best yet. So much of our hard work and money had gone into them, and they were set to arrive with Leaff's clients and friends alike by this morning. Alas, all it took was one supplier to let us down and it was all over, which has been very hard to swallow. So to all of our clients and friends, we are very sorry that instead of this intriguing mailer, nothing at all has ended up on your doorsteps this Christmas - we are crushed.

Since we put so much into the mailer and it cannot be re-used next year, we have decided to share it with you here. The bit that didn't get done has been super-imposed so you can get a really good idea
of what the finished thing was going to look like...


We had duplexed single cards using heavy stocks in our corporate red and snowy white. While the red sides were supposed to have our Mayan-themed design spray painted onto them in white, the reverse snowy white sides were where our personal, handwritten messages were displayed. These were teamed with transparent promotional slips and the whole thing was to be housed within teaser envelopes.
It would have been great - it was great.

We really hope that you can all take some enjoyment out of looking over these pictures and the description of our ideas at least. What we will take from it is self-appreciation for all of the effort we
put into this mailer, and how much fight we had to get it done - despite the fact that we have been in
the midst of the busiest few months that we have ever had.

Somehow, among all of the project work, we managed to plough ourselves into this personal project in what spare time we had, and really exercise our imaginations to come up with fresh, exciting ideas, utilising new techniques. We have developed as designers from this project by trying new things
- which is always what we aim to do with every personal project like this - and although we are still
licking our wounds from being so let down by the supplier, we are determined to take the positives out
of this and feel proud of what we had tried so hard to do.

Most of all, we are feeling sorely disappointed that our clients and friends have gone without this year,
so if all this post does is inform you all that we had planned great things and you were not forgotten,
then it has served us well.

20 December 2012

A Festive Tutorial...

I had planned to complete a small number of festive crafty projects to share with you this week, but Leaff has been keeping me so busy, that I have only managed to complete one! Alas, a good one it is too.

We just love Christmas, and all the fun of decorating the house, and while we love to buy those special finds, it is also fun to try our hand at making some things ourselves.

This year, I found this great little project on the blog Lauren's Closet. We were immediately inspired to try it ourselves, and it was super easy. These gorgeous little ornaments can be used for a variety of things - as tree decorations, as charming home furnishings, as gifts, and even as wrapping decoration
for presents. So as your work lives slow down for the festive break, why not try your hand at making these lovely little decorations - they are even something you could do with children.


Ingredients & Equipment

4 Cups of Plain Flour
1 Cup of Table Salt
1 1/3 Cups of Water
Cookie Cutters
Decorative Object for Impression
Straw or Bamboo Stick
Ribbon or Twine
Paint (optional)

Method

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl, until you get a nice smooth ball of dough.

• Once ready, roll out to your desired thickness - be careful not to roll out too thinly, or else your
  ornaments may break or crack.

• Place your object that you are using to make an impression on the surface of your dough and roll
  over your object hard enough to get the impression into the dough. Use any style cookie cutter
  that you wish to cut out your ornaments.

• Place your finished ornaments on some baking parchment and push a straw or bamboo stick
  through the top of each ornament to create a hole for your ribbon or twine.

• Allow your ornaments to air dry for a couple of hours, turning once. You will notice a change in
  colour, as they dry white.

• After air drying, place them in the oven on very low heat of 90 degrees (fan) for about 4 hours,
  turning them every hour. Once out of the oven, allow them to air dry even more for as long
  as needed.

• Once they get to your desired dryness you can then paint them if you wish, and finally thread
  with your ribbon or twine.

Tips

We made our ornaments about 1cm thick, which in hindsight seems to have been a bit too thick.
We ended up needing to leave them in the oven for 6 hours rather than 4 and even after all of that,
they still weren't as white as they should have been. Just bear this in mind when making yours,
if you would prefer not to paint them. We finished ours with some white crafters spray paint.

Be sure to pop on over to Lauren's Closet for a peek at how theirs turned out - they used frilly
edged cutters and angel ones too, which show they really work with any style. There have also
been suggestions of adding cinnamon to the mix in her comments feed, which would obviously
give a really lovely festive scent when used at Christmas!

07 December 2012

Things to come...

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted, due to Leaff being at full capacity! I don't think we have ever been as busy as we are right now, which is wonderful, but which leaves me little or no time
to keep up with our social pages. This is particularly difficult when all I want to do is share all of our exciting projects with you, because we have been working on such great things lately. Give it time,
and I will cover them all!

So, aside from this, I just wanted to send out this little post to give you a taste of things to come.
As you will know from previous posts, my pregnancy has been stirring up a storm of creativity within
me lately, and I have been inspired to try new things and generally enjoy crafting in what spare time I have managed to grab. For example, this little baby blanket that I recently made for our niece's Christening.



It is on our list for our Christmas prep to get on with a few festive projects, and I intend to cover these
on here very soon, to share our experiences and give you ideas of little projects that you might like to
do over the festive period. I am a firm believer that getting creative outside of your business really does impact your energy within your business.

We will also be starting to put our nursery together soon, and I will definitely be covering that on here too, with full details of special products and tutorials on things we have made. Oh how I love interior design!

Until then, stay cosy!
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