October 26th 2008... This week I am very happy
to bring you Stephanie Weightman
Stehanie Weightmam Create and Craft TV. Channel 671 Sky tv
I
get to do the thing I love the most- craft!"
I
am a passionate crafter with a vast range of crafting styles and techniques
which I have spent many years learning. I hope to make craft approachable, fun
and something for all the family to do and, for me crafting is a way of life.
"From
as far back as I can remember crafting has been my passion. As a child, I would
spend endless hours sitting on the back door step, engrossed in making dolls'
clothes out of different coloured tissue paper and making birthday cards for all
my friends".
After
a childhood spent in the sun in
In 1996, I was fortunate enough to make a collection of TV appearances, including Masterchef and Our House. I had the greatest honour of contributing to a series with Jane Asher the cake guru. From there, I made regular guest appearances on TV shopping channels until the call came from Ideal Shopping Direct to present on their channels, Create and Craft and Ideal World which is now where I spend most of my time when I am not designing new products for my own range.
A
quick Q&A
What
did you do before IW?
Worked in my own company.
Most
embarrassing on-screen moment?
Most embarrassing on-screen moment? Reading
Feliz Navidad in an email, and thinking it was a viewers name…
Tell
us a secret
I recently had robins nesting in my garden
and I kept it a secret.
What’s
your idea of the perfect Sunday (when you’re not working)?
Spending it with my husband and dogs.
What
is the trait you most deplore in yourself / others?
In myself, being untidy and in others,
insincerity.
Aside
from property, what’s the most expensive thing you've bought?
My car.
What
is your guiltiest pleasure?
Sneaking to the fridge at night!!
What
keeps you awake at night?
Creative ideas.
How
would you like to be remembered?
As happy.
What
is the most important lesson life has taught you?
When life gets tough, keep smiling.
Favourite
IW/CC product?
All craft.
Which
phrase do you overuse?
Ask the viewers, I think they keep count!
If
you could travel back in time, which period would you visit?
The Elizabethan times.
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September 2008
Our story began back in 2004 when the first board the Romance board was invented
and the concept of using the channels to access the designs was patented because
as you know this is what makes embossing easy to do and had to be protected.
We started trading in October 2004 and as the news spread of this new and
exciting method of embossing our telephones never stopped ringing from customers
and traders alike who were all eager to obtain their first Keepsake Board, the
business started at my bungalow but very quickly as the orders came flooding in
Kath and I found our current premises, a large business unit situated in Oldbury
with the very appropriate name of Crystal Drive.
The
business soon became a family affair with husbands, daughters, grand-daughter,
sister-in-law working for us and also dedicated ‘non-family’ joining too but
who we consider to be ‘family’ as all work very hard to provide an efficient
service to all.
Soon
more boards were designed by us such as Framey and our World famous Bookatrix
and many more and then the much requested DVD’s and project books soon
followed. Kath and I continued to add more and more products to the range
and all were designed with the boards in mind to that these products all fit the
various shapes on the boards. Further patent submissions followed when we also
invented a new and simple way of making boxes with our Illusion Box Maker and
Alphabet Board.
With
our appearance on TV our range became more and more known in this country and
many other countries too making the Glitter Girl Brand known nationally and
internationally. Kath and I are committed to designing and developing
beautiful and unique products for our lovely crafters to enjoy.
Kath
and I were extremely proud to be honoured with the Queens Award for Enterprise:
Innovation 2008 with us meeting Her Majesty and Prince Philip and other members
of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace this Summer – a day we will never
ever forget again so proud that Crafting has been bought to the Queen’s
attention. We also were proud to win the HSBC Start-up Stars Award and
Midlands Business Award for Innovation 2008. It was really wonderful to
receive all this recognition for the hard work since the business started.
We
are continuing to design and develop new boards and products which are all due
over the next few months at the request of our crafters who always ask when is
the next Keepsake Product coming………
Happy
Crafting
All
our love
Bab's
and Kathy
The
Glittergirls
Many thanks Kathy and Bab's your both an inspiration to crafters all over the world.
I
am having a workshop this weekend the 27th of October featuring 3 of the Glitter
Girls most popular boards there are 3 places left if you are interested in
coming along, regards Yvonne 
For
more information.
This Article
has been borrowed from Joanna's newsletter
Well ….. Where do I start? I think in all honesty, I should start way back when I was 12. My art teacher, a very long haired hippy type – madly artistic but very opinionated asked me to abandon art and do extra Latin as I was just not artistic and was wasting school resources. Tis true I was rubbish at painting still life scenes in oils (Yuk!) and yes I did write "I love the Beatles" on a brand new canvas and try and persuade him it was modern art.
Leaving school, I decided to become a lawyer as the long tradition in our family demanded, but sadly discovered that lawyers do boring things (in my 18 year old mind) and despite being one of half a dozen girls in a college with huge numbers of men I left and decided to live life my way without qualifications.
I had fun – I did several different jobs, never really finding my feet until at 24 I attended the Constance Spry Flower School in Central London – from day 1 I was in paradise, I had found what really thrilled me in life and I excelled. During the course I discovered I was pregnant with our first daughter Pippa and even though I felt distinctly below par some mornings still the thought of making up bouquets and floristry thrilled me enough to race into school. I passed and the world was my oyster or not…… how do you run a small florist’s shop with a brand new baby…. It’s not easy and I gave up my plans.
Then I read an article about pressed flowers and an idea was born! We had a nice garden and I raced round pressing anything that didn’t move and made up some of the ideas in my head and took them to a local framer. So I took the plunge (I would never have the courage now!) but at 25 you know everything and are scared of nothing! I took a selection up to Harrods to show the buyer, I just walked into the department I wanted to be in and asked for the senior buyer – note this is NOT how you do it, you make an appointment! Fate stepped in and he was manning the till as they had a staff shortage and when he asked to keep them and he’d get back to me – I left them – my precious first few pressed flower pictures and was assured by one and all that I was daft as a brush and would never hear from them again.
That was the Friday morning and on Monday at 9.30 – the phone rang and Harrods placed an order for £250 worth of pressed flower pictures, mainly priced at £2 and £3 each – so that’s a lot of pictures when you have only ever made a few! I rallied friends and neighbours and little Pippa who was only a few weeks old lay beside me into the early hours sleeping in her Moses basket!
I managed to get the order together in the three weeks they gave me – we delivered them into the store on the Friday afternoon and nipped back up on the Saturday to take pictures of this amazing display of MY work – and even as we took pictures, tourists were buying them in 3s and 4s. The entire delivery was sold out by the end of Saturday afternoon. Cutting a long story very short, from there we built a company selling across the world – distributors in many countries, we sold pictures to Boots, Debenhams, Fortnum and Masons apart from 18 years of supplying Harrods and the stockist of whom I am most proud – Prince Charles at Highgrove and department stores across the world.
After nearly 20 years of fast and furious success, 30 books published on flowers and crafts, things stopped being such a happy story. Pressed flowers began to lose their fashionable status, suddenly orders were taking longer to sell through the shops and we realised that the business was not looking very happy, the value of the pound against the dollar changed and so the American part of the business disappeared almost overnight as the pictures became too expensive and what had been a dream turned into a nightmare.
The worry and strain took its toll on staff, friends and most of all my marriage, everything seemed black and without hope all I could do was sit and take my mind off things with cards, flowers and my beloved crafting.
Part 2 of this life story will follow next month – how I started working with Ideal World, turning my personal life from sad to smiley and what the future might hold!
Joanna Sheen - Part Two
So …. When you wake up one morning and realise your house is on the market, your ex husband is asleep in another house and your bank account is so bad the bank manager puts the phone down on you – what do you do?
Simple answer, you take several very deep breaths …. Believe in yourself and what can be achieved by someone with a passion for her business and her children, and you work …. And you work …….. And you work ….. (Getting the picture?) – No time for self pity or depression you fight.
I was running a craft weekend and one of my favourite crafters that had been to many of my weekends said, have you seen that new channel – 24 hour crafts – sounds just up your street. She gave me the number and once all the crafters had left, I tuned in and I watched …. And I watched … I could have repeated some of the shows word perfect at the end of a week. I saw some good things and I saw some crummy things but mostly importantly I wanted to be part of it.
I wrote to the then Managing Director and explained my CV (by then I had written about 30+ craft books) and gave an outline of the pressed flower business and said how excited I was about the possibility of working with Ideal World and Create and Craft. Within 24 hours, his secretary replied and we set up a meeting. The meeting was amazing – I liked them, they liked me – pressed flowers on TV was going to happen.
My first show was about 5 years ago now and I was so nervous – I look back and realise I must have looked more like the mother of the bride than a craft show guest with my matching dress and jacket and I was so nervous that I was actually almost quiet (almost) Alan and Barry the presenters were complete gentlemen, made my first show a roaring success and even managed to get me joking although my legs shook behind the counter.
Were my legs shaking because I was nervous – oh no, it was because I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours for the previous three to four weeks. Up at 4am and never in bed before midnight, why? you ask – because someone had to process and pack all the flowers and kits to sell on the programme and handling each pressed flower with tweezers and carefully counting them into packets takes time – a whole lot of time and getting staff to do it would cost too much.
Well the show flew, we had loads of sell outs and we were asked back again and again. I got tired of using a limited range of backing papers with my card samples and decided I needed to make my own, enter the Joanna Sheen backing paper range …..And then I met Sharon Duncan (online actually!) and the Joanna Sheen CDs were born and the rest as they say is history! The years have flown and Richard has been more support and help than I ever believed possible but yes – we’ve done more hours than we care to count now!
We still work really hard and I suspect always will, if you ask anyone with a small to medium sized crafts business, they’ll agree you aren’t likely to be making the same money as if you were in banking or IT – but hey, do we have more fun or what!!!! We get to travel to America and various other countries hunting for goodies for you, I can make cards whenever I like and best of all I get to meet and chat with loads of other friends and crafters when we all gather around the country.
So there you have it – who knows if it’s a happy ever after ending – because of course this isn’t an ending we’re only half way through (50 is the new 40 surely!) and there’s so much more I want to achieve and design, share and enjoy – so watch this space and most of all – a special thank you for being part of my story