Barnsley Fashion Creatives is presenting our brand new blog series, The Boutique Tour. We are touring around Barnsley and showing you amazing local independent boutiques and shops that have fashion items available to you. Our posts will go live on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for the whole of April, with fashion boutiques, bridals, accessories and more.

Help us spread the word of these great local places by sharing the blog posts, like their Facebook pages, visit them and say you saw them on this blog! You will make their day by doing these small things and supporting them.

There's more to Barnsley than just the high street shops and here we have the true gems. Thank you for your help and support and we hope you enjoy this blog series.

 

*Here's a link to the posts as they go live:

The Heritage Boutique

You saw right! Not 1, not 2, but 3 sketchbooks could be in your hands to fill with all your artsy creativity, business plans and doodles galore! We would love to build our email list so you can receive all the latest content from our blog as it happens.

What must you do to get this? Look to your right in the side bar and below the Search box and wordpress button, above our Instagram feed, there is a box where you can sign up with your email address to our blog. Once you have hit the sign up button, you will receive an email confirming you have entered our random draw to win 3 glorious Pink Pig sketchbooks.

The 3 sketchbooks are a large A3, an A4 and a landscape stretched A5. The winner will be drawn from our email list on Saturday March 4th at random, you will then have 3 options, either posted, dropoff within 3 mile radius of central Barnsley or collection from near town centre.

So get your email address in that box to the right!

 

You saw right! Not 1, not 2, but 3 sketchbooks could be in your hands to fill with all your artsy creativity, business plans and doodles galore! We would love to build our email list so you can receive all the latest content from our blog as it happens.

What must you do to get this? Look to your right in the side bar and below the Search box and wordpress button, above our Instagram feed, there is a box where you can sign up with your email address to our blog. Once you have hit the sign up button, you will receive an email confirming you have entered our random draw to win 3 glorious Pink Pig sketchbooks.

The 3 sketchbooks are a large A3, an A4 and a landscape stretched A5. The winner will be drawn from our email list on Saturday March 4th at random, you will then have 3 options, either posted, dropoff within 3 mile radius of central Barnsley or collection from near town centre.

So get your email address in that box to the right!

 

In recent news there was talk of a bookshop in the North Yorkshire town of Hawes charging 50p to browse their shop. The bookshop called Bloomindales owned by a Mr Steve Bloom was fed up of people using his shop to read the books and then not buy a thing and so decided to charge 50p which was then refundable upon purchases. However he has faced some backlash about this and it appears he went the wrong way about it, being called 'rude and abusive' and 'bookseller from hell', as well as receiving many complaints from their local council. But does this man have a point beneath all of this? Can you imagine if this was the 'norm' where you pay an entrance fee into all shops? You'd pay entrance fees into nightclubs and buy drinks without that fee being refunded. You pay entrance fees into the cinemas without knowing you'll enjoy the film you see.



I agree that he hasn't helped his situation and hasn't helped his local town in the way he has gone about it, but I can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's trying to run his business and there are people using his 'products' and then putting them back on the shelf and this is wasting his time and putting zero pennies in the bank. If he saw it more of an entrance fee and then allowed his customers to read however much they liked, this might not be a problem. But then this seems more of a 'library' set up and libraries are completely free!

Is this something you would do in your shop? Are your customers notorious for 'only browsing'? I'm not sure this could work for all businesses types, but maybe if you have products that customers may get something out of without having to buy, you could be the right candidate. However if you have products where it's essential for customers to browse first, e.g. a clothing store where they'll need to try them on first, this may not work. It's always going to be difficult for independent and small shops, especially with the 'brick and mortar' shopping industry changing  and the online retail  market growing in massive amounts.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Is he wrong? Is he right? Comment below.

 

 

Team Activ is a local company based in the Digital Media Centre and provide activities for businesses, education and the community. In conjunction with Penistone Grammar School, from January they will be running an after school club with them and are looking for arts & crafts tutors to deliver classes over a 12 week block. Read more about Team Activ here www.teamactiv.org

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If you have a craft or skill in the creative subjects and can be taught in a school environment, then you would be perfect! Here are the finer details about it.

Where: Penistone Grammar School / Club Programme

When: 3-5pm 1 day a week (to suit your availability) w/c 09.01.17 for 12 weeks and w/c 27.02.17 for 12 weeks.

Rates: £10-£20 p/h dependent on qualifications and experience.

Looking for: Any teachable craft skills such as: Fine Art, Sewing, 3D crafts, Textiles and more...

If this sounds of interest to you please contact us through the contact form at the top of the page, or email directly to hannah456@hotmail.com with your qualifications and experience and which day would be most suitable to you. We will pass your details on and you should be contacted by a Team Activ member.

Last week I purchased a beautiful choker necklace from Chic-yCow and did a product review of it just in case you were on the fence of buying from her. I was attending a wedding and needed a necklace to complete my outfit and knew I had to have a leather one in my life, so I approached them with my idea and it went from there. Check out their facebook page here www.facebook.com/chicycowdesigns/

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I asked about having a choker made but I wasn't sure what kind of style I wanted, so I searched through their Facebook photos for different styles they had done before to see what inspired me. I came across a bracelet that had a row of circles on it and that struck out to me as to what I could have on mine. We chatted back and forth about the technicalities, the sizes of these circles and also the colour as I was needing a turquoise colour but metallic and more a green-turquoise, so was a little tricky to get all the details straightened out. Once we were sorted, Jo of Chic-yCow began making it and sent me a photo the next day and it was perfect! Exactly how I'd imagined it.

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The necklace came in this sweet little box with some soft wadding and the Chic-yCow branding, packaged up simply to show off the necklace. I know that if I saw this necklace in the shop, presented this same way, I'd still buy it! Beautiful items like this don't need to be overly packaged and presented, just straight forward simplicity.

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Wearing the choker was super comfortable, I sometimes get aggravated when I have things around my neck and feels itchy, but not this! The circles were on a soft black leather strap with the suede side touching my neck so it was nice and soft, not once during the night I felt itchy or overly aware that I had something round my neck.

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The cost for this necklace was £20, which for a customised commissioned piece I expected it to be more so I was pleasantly surprised at the cost. I really cannot wait to wear this again as I think it would definitely suit plenty more outfits. I highly recommend Chic-yCow, from the customer service, packaging the item, quality of it and the cost all come round to the conclusion that I'll be back ordering more!

All photos belong to Barnsley Fashion Creatives.

As we progress through the details of planning the first Barnsley Fashion Creatives project with Spirit Original Designs, I'm getting more and more excited! The main updates since we first released the brief are that we have two confirmed models with a possible third, we have a photographer sorted and make-up and hair are all good to go. We almost had our location confirmed but we've had to find another place due to the last one pulling out but hey, these things happen. This is why we do all this planning and prepping before the day to make sure the photoshoot runs the smoothest possible for us to get the most photographs from it.

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We had a fitting with the two confirmed models, Sarah & Sammi, which was a lot of fun. The reason for doing fittings ensures that your clothes will definitely fit them, but it also helps to figure out what colours and styles suit them so that on the day you have a good idea of what other items would look great without wasting time.

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We also got to play about with some styling options like adding some Spirit Original Designs jewellery and handbags and mixing with cape ponchos and neck wraps, making sure we can make a complete outfit that customers could wear themselves.

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If you have a project in mind that you'd like to do but not sure how to do it, let us give you a helping hand and find the people you need to connect with and get the project off the ground. All we ask in return is to be able to share the project on our blog and social medias, that's it! Drop us an email using the contact form.

Blogging can be a huge leap forward for your business and when done right, it can funnel potential customers through to buying your products or services. Giving background information about you and your business can make your customers feel closer to you and get to know you better. They can see how you work, what events you go to and what your personality is.



Blogging can take some time, on top of the many other list of things you have to do with your business. But if you set aside just 2 hours a week and publish 1 good post a week, this can enhance the richness of your work. Say you did a fair that weekend, or you're working on a new product, or you have an exciting commission on the go, these can all be great content to put on your blog. Take photos throughout your event to create a journal of the day, or share some tips on getting commissions, there's numerous things you can put on it to share to your viewers. Be careful though, don't throw things on there, try and keep things either insightful or helpful to keep their attention. If you want to dive deeper into blogging, many bloggers post everyday or every other day but you don't have to! If you can commit to post once a week, or once every two weeks, then that's perfectly fine and your readers will know you post regularly.



There are so many free resources and guides on how to do blogs and there is no surefire way to do it, you just have to find your own rhythm to it and try and be consistent as you would with your other social media platforms. It can be more time consuming than say Facebook or Twitter but that's because its more content rich, you can say much more with text and images. Even if you're not much of a writer, photo blogs are just as popular if you just say a sentence or two of what the photos are and then post a few good quality images.


There's a few ways of getting a blog, Google's Blogger and Wordpress are the main ones, Tumblr is another but it is more image based. However if you already have a website, add a 'News' page and use that as your blog to update your readers. This can also attract more customers to your website as they're bound to search through the rest of your site once they've done reading. You just have to find what is easiest for you.

If you have anymore questions about Blogging, feel free to get in touch!