Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts Blog!

2011-10-10T19:50:00.002+01:00

Well, we can't deny it anymore - christmas is approaching. The children are back at school, the cards are in the shops, the christmas catalogues are arriving through the post by the dozen! So here at Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts we thought we'd get all christmassy too and sort out a christmas offer.

Samigail's Gifts has a variety of personalised decorations, suitable as baby's 1st christmas, teacher gifts, children's stocking fillers, 1st

married christmas together, christmas bookmarks for pupils etc

We have designed some new gifts this year - a painted personalised star, a countdown to christmas plaque, and a christmas door hanger

Offer: receive 10% off any early christmas purchase. simply quote Christmas2011 in the discount box. Even better - the discount will apply to all your purchases, not just christmas products!

The discount code is valid until midnight 31st October 2011

5 Year Wedding Anniversary Gifts

2011-05-15T18:12:00.000+01:00

Did you know the traditional gift for a 5th wedding anniversary is something wooden?

Our personalised plaques and keepsakes make an ideal, yet unique, gift for such an occasion.

A very popular gift is a wooden heart with a personalised message for the happy couple, or even a champagne bottle it a personalised wooden keepsake box.

2011-02-27T14:55:00.000Z

Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts' Birthday!!

Today Samigail's celebrates the website's 2nd Birthday. www.samigailsgifts.co.uk

Over the past 2 years Samigail's has grown substantially, what started off as a handful of Christmas, Children's and Mother's day plaques & gifts has now become over 130 different products with there being many variations of those products as well. It's impossible to detail all the new gifts that have been created over the last few months but here are just a few:-

Recently, personalised soft toys have been added, the newest addition being a gorgeous flower girl gift.

Mothers Day is fast approaching and you will find new plaques and gifts in the Mother's Day range.

For those of you with children who have endless parties to go Samigail's has added a personalised wooden wand and personalised hairbrush which make unusual gifts.

For children's bedrooms there is a couple of new bedroom plaques - A Space Plaque and a double hanging heart plaque

Finally, an adaptation to our wedding horseshoe gift as been made. There is now a horseshoe with a hanging heart in the centre of the horse which is a bit different and proving a very popular unique wedding gift.

As always, we are always happy to take suggestions for gifts you feel may be missing from our range. Just let us know.

Please feel free to leave a comment in the guest book, maybe about the site or perhaps about the service and gifts you purchased.

Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts aims to offer a fully flexible service for you. For example, if you like the wording on one plaque but prefer different artwork from a different plaque just let us know. Change the colours in the artwork to be your child's favourite colours. Each order is handmade to order so we are delighted to makes these changes for you so that your item really is truly unique.

2 new products

2011-02-17T11:59:00.000Z

Today I have added 2 new products to the website:

A personalised rag doll, ideal for a flower girl gift and a new Mother's Day plaque

The rag doll is a princess Seraphina rag doll, made by Manhatton Toy and is simply gorgeous and extremely excellent quality. She is truly an amazing gift to thank a flower girl for being part of a wedding. She costs £14.50 and also comes with a personalised heart tag.

The Mother's Day plaque costs £5.25 and has a choice of flower and ribbon colour, and of course, as with all out gifts if you wish to change the wording this is absolutely no problem!

Let me know what you think of either gift.

Personalised Thank you flower girl / bridesmaid / page boy

2011-01-27T12:51:00.001Z

Personalised Thank you flower girl / bridesmaid / page boy

Another new gift designed and added to the website.

This thank you wooden plaque costs £5.50 is ideal for a flower girl, pageboy or bridesmaid. As well as the thank you message on the front, on the back you can add a personalised message eg the "love from (names) and the date of the wedding.

The wording is added to the plaque by the craft of pyrography. All of the details are flexible so you can choose your own wording, whether you would like glitter round the edge of burnt on dashed edging and ribbon colour etc.

Let me know what you think.

Samigail's in Warwickshire Life

2010-11-23T14:17:00.000Z

Samigail's is delighted to have been included in a local crafters christmas gift list in Warwickshire Life magazine.

Here is our little corner of the feature!

In memory personalised christmas decoration

2010-11-12T09:43:00.000Z

This Christmas will be a sad occasion for me. It will be the first Christmas without my younger brother as he sadly passed away in August.
Inspired by his desire, before he passed away, to support the British Liver Trust I have made 'In Memory' Christmas decorations and 10% of all the sales of these will be sent to the charity after christmas.

The decorations cost just £4.00, and are available as a tree or star shape, with your choice of wording. The stars can have up to 4 words on the front and on the rear a Christmas embellishment of choice.

The trees hold slightly more words - up to 8 and again there is a choice of christmas embellishment and glitter colour.

Please feel free to share this blog post on twitter, facebook etc to help me raise my donation for the British Liver Trust.

Personalised Wedding Plaque Keepsake

2010-10-16T10:30:00.000+01:00

Using pyrography and 2 very cute little ceramic resin teddies I made this personalised wedding keepsake plaque as a wonderful gift to give to a bride and groom.

Personalised Wedding Keepsake Plaque

It costs £10.

The oval solid wood plaque is 21cm wide, 9cm high and 13mm thick.

It makes a wonderful keepsake and gift to give to the newly weds.
The plaque is personalised with the bride and grooms details, date of the wedding, and place. It also has "Congratulations on your Wedding Day" on.
Ceramic bride and groom teddies, which are appox. 5cm tall, are added also to the plaque.
Hanging twine is added and your choice of gingham or heart ribbon.

Facebook Challenge

2010-10-10T15:05:00.000+01:00

My friend challenged me to see if I could reach 300 facebook 'likers' by Sunday afternoon!
I'm currently at 291 so it's very close! Will it be a case of 'so near but so far'.

Can you help me? If you can please 'like' my facebook page

Also, on the left hand side under the logo on my facebook page is a 'suggest to friends' button. Can you invite friends to follow the page using that link, then hopefully I might make the target with a few over too!

Many thanks to anyone that can help, it's much appreciated.

I'm going to put a discount code on my facebook page if I make it, as a huge thank you!

Reviews and in the Press

2010-08-06T11:15:00.000+01:00

I am delighted that Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts has been featured in reviews and also in a craft start up guide.

Our latest review is on Iconic Gifts website. I am delighted to have had 2 products chosen for review on this site, Sunny Rag Doll and the Father Plaque. To see the review please click here

Being interviewed for the first time was exciting and nerve-racking all at the same time! However, I was really pleased that my comments and experiences setting up and running Samigail's were featured in a craft start-up guide and hope anyone thinking of the same finds the guide useful.

Finally, another recent review was for a teacher gift plaque - another glowing review!

Competition Time

2010-05-10T17:25:00.003+01:00

In plenty of time to be organised for father's Day we are running a competition to win one of our Father Plaques.

All you have to do is answer a very easy question.

After the winning entry has been drawn all entrants will be sent a 10% off discount code which makes a great runner up prize for everyone!

So share this competition link with friends etc and Good Luck!

Personalised Fairy / Princess Wands

2010-04-25T17:22:00.009+01:00

After a long wait for the wands (which I was just itching to get my hands on) they have finally arrived and I have had a lot of fun thinking of how to decorate them.

The wooden wands are approximately 27 cm long (point of star to end of stick) with a wooden star measuring 7cm (point to point). The star is 9mm thick.

My daughter (showing the wand in action in the photo!) has loved hers from the moment she set eyes on it and has been round and round the garden turning everything and anything into frogs with her magic spell, ending with a dramatic "Kazoom!".

The wording on the wand is entirely flexible. They could be used for any number of present ideas - birthday gifts, flower girl thank you gifts, or even classroom gifts with the name of the class on one side and eg "This week's star" on the other.

The wands are £5.50 each and are found here

2010-04-16T18:31:00.000+01:00

It's interesting to see what words the children will come up with to describe their daddy.... I gave them the word FATHER and told them to come up with a word for each of the letters in the word..... now it could have been disastrous, but they came up with lovely ones which I then turned into a plaque for them. Since it turned out quite well I decided it should be included on the website.

What do you think... didn't they come up with great words (son is 6, daughter is 4)

New Gifts

2010-04-02T10:43:00.003+01:00

Samigail's has a gorgeous range of new gifts.... some personalised soft toys.

There is a super soft cuddly meerkat for all those meerkat fans, a rag doll who's name is "Sunny" and as you will see she truly suits her name, a ballerina rag doll for all ballet fans, and an amazingly gorgeous teddy.

They are all personalised by adding a wooden tag which has your message burned onto it by pyrography.

Please take a look - here's the link.... Samigail's new personalised soft toys

Birthday Offer

2010-02-25T13:43:00.002Z

To celebrate the 1st birthday of our website Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts is offering a 10% discount on all gifts purchased on the website.

All you have to do is quote Birthday2010 in the promotion box during checkout. This offer is valid until 27th March 2010.

Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts

2010-02-16T15:11:00.003Z

Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts is delighted to have had a couple of our products included in an ideal Mother's Day gifts feature of 'Your Cat' magazine, March issue.

Mother's Day

2010-02-08T16:24:00.004Z

Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts has lots of ideas for unique Mother's Day presents.

Our newest addition was inspired by a little cat wooden embellishment which was added to a plaque with some suitable wording. As with any of our plaques, the wording can be changed to suit!

There are also some cat bookmarks to go with the plaque!

2010-01-24T16:17:00.003Z

It's approaching Valentine's Day so Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts has a number of suitable plaques for gifts for a loved one.

Any of the plaques can have your own message added. Simply decide which plaque you like and let us know the message. I've always wanted to personalise a plaque with "Will you marry me?" Will this year be the year?? I'll even add in extra ribbon for a ring to be tied onto the plaque.

So, feel free to have a good browse around all our Valentine's themed plaques and send a unique gift this year.

Personalised Flowergirl or Bridesmaid Teddy

2010-01-21T17:40:00.003Z

One of my latest gifts added to the website is a gorgeous little teddy which is dressed as a flowergirl or bridesmaid.

It has a wooden heart tag added to it with 'Thank you for being our flowergirl' burned onto it by the art of pyrography.

There is a choice of teddy in either a pink dress or a golden yellow dress. It would make a lovely little keepsake gift for any flowergirl or bridesmaid.

The teddy is found here and costs £8.00 plus P&P of £1.50

Competition Launch

2009-06-28T20:59:00.006+01:00

Just launched my very first competition.

Do you know anyone starting school this year. My competition is to win a "First Day of School" Keepsake plaque and a school bag tag to go with it - these tags help children easily identify their school bag.

If you'd like to enter the competition please click here and if you know anyone who'd like to enter who may have a child starting school and would like to win this prize feel free to forward the details.

Good luck to all the entrants!

2009-05-30T15:32:00.002+01:00

It's fast approaching the end of the school year. I've made an end of year teacher gift for pupils to give to their teachers.

Hopefully teachers will like this unique gift, it's a bit different to a box of chocs or bottle of wine.

The plaque will be personalised to say To (teacher's name), thank you for being my special teacher. On the back it will say Love from (pupil's name)

The front also has 2 lovely wooden embellishments, a choice of a ruler, blackboard or 3 colouring pencils.

2009-04-22T11:55:00.004+01:00

At the moment I'm running a special promotion. If you refer a friend to my site both you and your friend will receive a 10% off your next purchase discount voucher code. No limit on the number of friends you refer!! Click here for the "Tell a friend" page.

Ideal time to refer friends if your are considering end of year teacher presents, or wedding gifts. Make sure you refer a friend first and get that 10% off!

2009-04-14T16:15:00.003+01:00

I made a new plaque at the weekend.... totally inspired by my daughters constant singing of nursery rhymes etc!

Just for fun.... how many nursery rhymes can you come up with from the plaque, the same animal can be used for several rhymes and some may be fairly loosely connected.

I'm thinking of turning the plaque into a bedroom door name plaque with my littlies name in the middle - or as someone suggested being sung from the cockeral's mouth :)

2009-04-06T11:41:00.005+01:00

I treated myself to a new pyrography machine. I've been playing with it a while and practising. It's a Peter Child machine - hot wire tips as opposed to my previous chunky cumbersome solid point machine.

I finally felt brave enough to make an item with my new machine - a tooth fairy hanger

There is space for a child's name above the verse. I had lots of fun making up the little verse and thinking of rhyming words! My plan would be to colour the fairy dress according to the buyers specifications, adding another personalised dimenision to the gift.

Let me know what you think.

2009-03-20T19:15:00.004Z

I had a craft morning the other day and came up with a couple of extra items, one for an order and one inspired by the metallic embellishment:-

The wedding plaque is waiting to be personalised with a bride and groom's wedding details -names, date of wedding and place. It has a gorgeous metallic horse and carriage on which reminds me of my own wedding!

The tealight was made for an order. Wording can be put round all 3 sides of the wooden tealight making it ideal as lovely keepsake gifts. I love the colours on the flowers of this tealight - a grape purple and gold.

The shop is growing

2009-03-07T16:55:00.004Z

well, my online shop is ever growing. There are even more categories now. I have also been working on improvements to the website - such as making the product list items a clickable link to the shop category - that way potential customers won't have to search through all the categories if they like the sound of an item.

There will be even more items coming soon and I have ideas on more items to make - it's never ending!!

2009-02-27T16:39:00.001Z

I've done it - my new website is launched today!!

www.samigailsgifts.co.uk

There will still be lots more items to add to the shop! It feels never ending

Let me know what you think

2009-02-23T10:59:00.003Z

I've decided to start from scratch with my website. I really need a website with an online shop facility. So watch this space for a newly designed Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts website launch date.

2009-02-18T18:51:00.004Z

I found a new website today to show my items - plaincraft. I'm still working it out - You submit your items and other viewers score your item. You also include a link where your item can be found, so there's always hope for a sale along the way! The days top 10 scoring items are displayed on the home page.

You can vote for one of my items here: my item on plaincraft

If anyone esle has their items on plaincraft let me know and I'll vote on your items too.

2009-02-05T18:57:00.008Z

I finally received my order today of beech wood plaques. Hooray! This meant I could finally list my latest product - house name/number plaques. I also designed a horse plaque so they could equally be suitable for stable signs.

I've listed these for sale on MISI, Ebid and Ebay! Fingers crossed for some sales.

2009-02-01T19:12:00.004Z

My first Blog post! Wow. Those that know me would be surprised to hear I'm suddenly stuck for words!!

I suppose the impetus for setting up my blog is to spread the word about my fairly new craft business - Samigail's Handmade Personalised Gifts

I make handmade wooden personalised gifts for all occasions by using the art of pyrography (wood burning).

I love all different types of crafts - cross stitch, glass painting etc. Last Christmas I was hunting online for ideas for my husband to buy me for Christmas. I found a pyrography iron. Thought about it for a while then decided actually I just couldn't wait and bought it for myself sometime before Christmas. I had in mind I could make Christmas decorations for my children.

I enjoyed making the decorations immensely. I then decided for my son's christmas present to his nursery school teacher it might make a lovely unusual gift. The idea of a business was

planted!

So, before christmas 2007 I was busy making quite a few christmas decorations which were a huge hit. The idea that they were personalised with the teacher's name and the year was quite popular. My first efforts are shown in the picture!

In January 2008 I wondered what to make next and started thinking about weddings, christenings etc. I built up lots of different ideas and now have over 80 different listings in my ebid shop.

I now sell on MISI and Ebid.