Jubil-woe

The long weekend looked like being a great one with lots of mug printing and fishing. Unfortunately, the fishing was cancelled due to the weather though I don't see why - it doesn't bother the fish!

My mother arrived at Gelert Design Towers for an impromptu visit, which was great.

I was very busy with the mug printing with Zingy mugs proving especially popular

Luckily, Mrs Gelert Design helped out by entertaining mum while I was busy, and in just two days I had too many packages for a single trip to the post office!

One of the Etsy teams I'm part of, CraftyFolk, democratically decided on a new logo and a few of the team members chose to have their own CraftyFolk mug made. I love this idea - obviously - and enjoy putting other people's designs on mugs. After all, that was the idea initially!

But then, as invariably happens, disaster struck. The mug press decided it had had enough and downed tools. Completely. Cheap Chinese imports notwithstanding, you do expect your machinery to last more than a week!
So, while the orders kept coming in, I was left twiddling my fingers waiting for the bank holiday to finish so I could send a very stern letter to the supplier of the press and order a new, better, and unfortunately more expensive model today.
With priority delivery, the new press should arrive tomorrow morning and I should be able to catch up. Only a day lost and with a 3 working day posting deadline, I won't be late sending out the mugs.

Hopefully the original press will be fixed/replaced and then I'll have 2 mug presses which will aid me in busy times and means I'll always have a standby so that if anything goes wrong again, I won't miss a beat.

Well, you have to think positively don't you?

Under Pressure

Here at Gelert Design Towers I'm getting closer to achieving the goal of having a whole range of merchandise available!

The sublimation printer hasn't arrived yet, but the heat press has!

This is a 5 in 1 combination heat press. Ideally you'd want to buy different presses for different applications. With the combi press, if one things breaks, it all breaks, and it's quite fiddly changing over from one application to another. But with that risk and nuisance factor aside, this is a good way to start off.

The 5 different presses included are for 11oz mugs, baseball caps, 2 sizes of plate, and lastly the main platen for everything big and/or flat, like t-shirts, mouse mats, iphone covers, and even flip-flops!

It's still in the box right now as some careful negotiation with Mrs Gelert Design is required as to where I'm allowed to set up. She's already lost the entire kitchen:)