We are Cottage Cards!

Hello, I’m Angela and I run Cottage Cards with my lovely daughter Sophie who is my Social Media Manager.  We sell lovingly handmade greetings cards for all occasions.  All lovingly handmade by me, mostly using 3D decoupage.

50p of each card sale is donated to Myaware because my brother suffers from Myasthenia Gravis. https://www.facebook.com/myawareuk/We started out around 12 years ago, making handmade greetings cards for friends and family to save money during a lean time when I had been made redundant.  We used the contents of our crafting box and whatever was to hand (my children were school age then). 

Later on I discovered 3D decoupage and I started selling my handmade cards at school or church fetes and craft fairs locally, to work colleagues and family and occasionally at business events.  But I never really sold more than a handful of cards.

I set up a Facebook shop in 2017 and uploaded all of the cards.  However at that stage we didn’t have the business acumen or the knowledge to promote the shop and make it successful.  

Fast forward to the lockdown, March 2020.  By the end of April I was on furlough and Sophie challenged me to turn Cottage Cards into a business.  We both worked very hard to improve and promote the shop.  Sophie doing the best posts on Facebook and Instagram and me doing the in between days.  It’s taken a long time for me to learn how to make a post “to the point”!

This effort was all worth it, we achieved some sales during the summer.

Around May time, whilst browsing the many craft groups to which we now belong, I discovered Local Art and Craft.UK.  I joined the group and I soon realised that it was a great idea to open a shop on their shiny new platform.  I’d already tried to set up an online shop on another platform, and given up.  So our shop was born: localartandcraft.uk/seller/cottage-cards.

I uploaded 50 cards to the shop in a hurry to be able to take part in the Local Art and Craft.UK July online craft fair and I achieved a sale!  Since then I have achieved several sales although things are a little quiet at present.

The remainder of our collection of lovingly handmade greetings cards, and in particular a large selection of lovingly handmadeChristmas Cards, are available at facebook.com/pg/cottagecardsshop/shop

I am grateful to have received so much help and support from the administrators of Local Art and Craft.UK especially the amazing Dean Hurley, tech guru extraordinaire, and Tom Jenkins, who runs the Local Art and Craft.UK Print Studio and made my printed greetings cards possible. These are in our Local Art and Craft.UK shop along with many of my lovingly handmade greetings cards.

The other sellers on the platform are also an amazing family of talented artists and crafters who are always happy to offer assistance and support to new sellers (and to existing sellers who get stuck trying to set up or improve their shops!). I am so glad that I stumbled upon Local Art and Craft.UK all those months ago.

I set up a Limited Company in August and we are now legally Cottage Cards Limited t/as Cottage Cards but of course we continue to trade under our lovely original name of Cottage Cards, with the branding thought up and honed by Sophie all those years ago and much upgraded by her since.

Why not check us out?!