My name's Wendy Massey, I'm the designer/maker at 1st Unique Gifts and, having far too much to say about stuff other than my little business, I thought I'd create another blog for it all!
I decided to write Handmade Harbour with the handmade community very much in mind. It's got tutorials, interviews and even tips for selling your stuff.
If you like handmade, I hope you'll like Handmade Harbour.
Like all blogs, it's evolved a bit since I started it, and it's not just a blog any more...
I recently set up the Handmade Harbour website, where you can buy digital stamps for cardmaking and scrapbooking, as well as sewing patterns (there are more in the pipeline!). I design projects for craft magazines and some of those that have been published will be available as digital patterns too.
Now you know a bit about Handmade Harbour - if you want to know more about me, here goes:
- I'm a mum of four and grandma of another four!
- I'm a bit of a workaholic
- I'm a volunteer puppy walker for Guide Dogs. It involves having a puppy to live with me from the age of 8 weeks to 12-14 months. I do some basic training with him as well as socialising - taking him in shops, restaurants, on buses and trains and generally getting him used to visiting places he'll visit with his eventual owner. Here's Quentin looking adorable at 8 weeks:
- I'm untidy, messy, slightly chaotic at times and live with a man who I think could qualify as Britain's Tidiest Man (he deserves the capitalisation, believe me). It's a lovely but slightly odd combination and works better for me than him, I think. Poor man.
- I'm passionate about handmade products and creativity and I'm especially inspired by recycled and upcycled crafts.
- I taught young offenders for about 12 years. It was a job that brought satisfaction and frustration in roughly equal measures.
- I set up 1st Unique Gifts after leaving my prison education job mainly because of severe and chronic migraine, although redundancy was thrown into the mix too.
- I now eat gluten free, after discovering it was gluten that was actually triggering my migraines - I still get the odd one after any accidental gluten intake (literally, the tiniest crumb is enough) but they're much more under control now.
- We have free-range back-garden chickens who give us plenty of eggs and delight my toddler granddaughter (and me) with their little old lady antics.
- I am usually to be found covered in paint in my untidy, paint-splattered studio round the back of the garage. If I'm not there, I'll be sewing or blogging in the office/sewing room/spare bedroom.
If you'd like to contact me, you can get hold of me by leaving a comment on this blog or by emailing me: wendy@handmadeharbour.co.uk