Brighouse a town just 9 miles away from where I live has been a brewing; brewing lovely Bluefaced Leicester wool into some wonderful muted colour's.
What's more interesting is that Elaine of Baa Baa Brighouse has named the brews after an area of their town.
Woodhouse, Thornhills, Rastrick, Hove Edge, Clifton and Brookfoot
They sell the Baa Baa Brew yarn in full 100 gram skeins and also a gift box of each of the colours in 25gram skeins.
I came across their yarn at my local yarn shop 'The Yorkshire Makery' on yarn shop day. I just had to have a gift box!
And what did I do with those mini skeins? Well I incorporated one of them with some of the luxury yarns I now sell, the beautifully soft Baby Alpaca yarn. I worked up the finished piece using a slip stitch technique I absolutely love doing. Once you get your head round the technique and understand the charts then its a really easy knit.
The finished result is this gorgeous 'Sprig' beanie hat. So luscious and soft for this winter.
Its available for you knitters in kit form so you can knit your own. In the kit you get 100 grams Baby Alpaca DK. 25 grams of the Baa Baa Brew in your colour choice and full instructions. Obviously if you get stuck you can always come back to me, here or via email - thefemininet@aol.co.uk
Elaine from Baa Baa Brighouse is rather chuffed that I have used her yarn in this way. I think she plans to take a few kits herself to YarnDale this year. Maybe you will see her (and my knitting kit) there. Let me know if you do.
Hopefully you will have noticed that I have a new banner to my blog. Yeh! Over the last year, my product range has expanded. I have gone from just selling my uniquely designed finished knitting accessories to selling the knitting patterns themselves. Then 6 months ago I started collaborating with my local yarn shop and had the opportunity to sell knitting needles & tools. The best move I made though was to put all those qualities together in the form of 'Knit Kits' just before last Christmas. It was the best thing for 'The Feminine Touch Designs'.
My new banner incorporates my new logo, one of my unique designs, knitted in the most feminine colour there is, with a pretty little feminine flower drawn on. It's a design I played with over a number of weeks and one I'm totally happy with for now. The words on my banner encapsulate what's available in my on-line shops today. Totally different to what is was 12 months ago.
It took me a while to realise that I needed to re-look at my branding , rehash the words I use to describe what I do / sell on my web site and on-line stores.
I had wanted to sell some luxury yarns (so soft and luscious. gorgeous to work with) in my local yarn shop and needed some product tags to attach to the skeins.
I wanted something clean and sharp that worked alongside the soft creamy yarns. I immediately thought of the logo design I had played with before and decided that to incorporate that with some pretty black writing explaining what I do NOW would be perfect.
I knew then, that if I created these product tags then basically I had to change my whole branding, my web site and blog, all my social media places, my packaging and promotional material. Everything now needed to gel together. Everything needed to communicate my brand. This was important to my business as a whole. Would show my potential customers that I was serious about my business and what I was offering.
The time was right too and I was just about to launch some new knitting kits with the luxury yarns.
So this week I launched some of the new kits with lovely pretty packaging which shows off the kits really well. It took me a little brainstorming to determine what I wanted the packaging to look like and even longer to find it, lol. I needed the boxes to be white, clean, sharp and sturdy to match the product tags. I wanted a clear cut out front, ideally flower shaped (which I found) to match the flower in my logo and I wanted pretty red and white ribbon.
I surprised myself by photographing the kits on a red cable background, a total change from the normal white background that I normally use, but I thought it was more consistent with my new brand now.
At the moment I'm feeling so proud of my new look x
Do you have a consistent brand to your business ?
How did you go about creating it?
What does your brand tell potential customers about your business?
How does it make you feel about your business?
Let me know in the comments below. Would love to know.
