May 2021

Oh my!! We've taken on a premises....well a 'shop' to be exact.  Have we gone mad you might ask?! Well quite possibly, I guess you can never be sure when you're running your own business if you have made the right decision?! This has definitely been one of the toughest decisions to make and we're keeping everything crossed it has been the right one...time will tell.  Our new little shop is based in Saffron Walden which is a beautiful market town in-between London and Cambridge full of independents, artists, galleries, antique and charity shops!

Up until now we've been operating The Modern Crafter mainly from my living room in Saffron Walden.  Siobhan has a studio space in London where the creative thinking and design magic happens.  Then it's over to me to manage the stock, fulfilment and a few other bits related to running a small business.

When boxes had to be stored behind the sofa we knew we'd got to the point where we had to do something about the storage issues...haha!  So I'd been on the look out for a while for a premises that wasn't going to cost the earth and then the 'shop' caught our eye.  

I went to see it and loved the brick walls and light that shone through the bay window.  We felt it would also be a welcoming spot to invite our customers to come and hang out with us at creative workshops making projects together.

We're so grateful to our community on social media for encouraging us and our business and we hope that our local community will enjoy having us!  

So what's our plans?

We'll we've got to roll up our sleeves first of all to give the shop a bit of a lick of paint, remove all the cobwebs and resident spiders! Then sort the outside and add our branding. Siobhan plans to add her illustrations to the windows or interior walls which will be fun!  

Luckily my brother-in-law is a commercial property interiors designer so he's going to give a hand on the on the interiors and in particular look at our storage solution!

Initially we're planning to work from the shop during the week as our studio then open as a shop on a Saturday (aiming for around September) and take it from there based on demand.  We'll be planning a small workshop for around then too.

We feel nervous about this gigantic leap but super excited that we are even in this position to make this brave move.

We're hoping that our new premises can give us a calming working environment with the space we need to help us keep growing and so that we can welcome you all to join us for workshops.

Ultimately we're here to support everyone with our diy kits or at our workshops in combining their creativity by using their hands to craft, create calmness along the way and a great sense of achievement with your finished project!

We'll update you all on how 'the shop' is progressing along as it's definitely looking a bit bare at the moment and needs plenty of new textiles to make it more homely!

Keep you posted on our blog via our newsletters - please sign up to our newsletters to be first how things progress.

Rachel & Siobhan xx