Last Minute Ideas For Christmas

I am here to help! Orders from my website are with you within 3-5 days, so order over this weekend, and you’ll receive it in time for Christmas.

For keeping the kids amused, how about..

Colour-In Christmas Tablecloth £5

 

Paperchains – £4

 

Nativity Colour-In £4.50

 

Christmas Lotto £5

 

And a few last minute gifts..

Little Kittens Note Cards £10

 

 

Farmyard Finger Puppets Colour-in £3

Camper Van Jotter £3

 

There are plenty of other jotter pads, too.

Secret Agent Activity Pack £3

 

And there are other activity packs and stationery sets.

And while you’re grabbing a few things, why not get yourself ready for an organised new year, with this!

Family Organiser £4.80

 

The shop is also stocked full of every day greetings cards, including special occasion cards, all priced at £1.50 each, or buy any 10 or more and they’ll cost just £1.20 each.

And, as always, do feel free to ask me any questions about the products or for recommendations 🙂

Happy shopping!

My Picks of the Week #19 Babies

Whether it be for a new baby, christening or naming ceremony, these cards are gorgeous, and sure to tempt you. If, like me, you’re at that stage in your life where there are lots of people having babies around you, grab a handful and be stocked up and ready for the happy occasion…

As always, these cards are £1.50 each of £1.20 when you buy any 10 or more:

Also available in pink

Also available in blue

Also available in pink

Also available in blue

There are more, too, but I’ll stop going on! We also have gift wrap & tags, a baby memento box, a 3D new baby card and baby announcement notecards. All are available at www.jocelynscards.co.uk, along with our full every day range and Christmas stock is now in, too 🙂

If you’d like to sell these cards, I do have a growing team and it’d be lovely to welcome you on board. Just get in touch for more details.

My Picks of the Week #18 Cats

Today’s picks are all things feline..

 

 

 

As always, all cards are blank for your own message, and priced at £1.50 each, or buy any 10 or more for £1.20 each.

Now, as it’s 1st August, our Christmas range also launches today, and I couldn’t leave you without mentioning that! As it happens, there’s also a cat pick there…

 

It’s one of our extremely popular advent calendar cards. If you’ve not seen these before, I cannot recommend them enough! They’re priced at just £2 each and as you can see in the picture, have 24 little doors on them to open. Perfect if you want to send a more unique or special card, and at £2, they represent fabulous value. I always sell loads of these, and with the new selection we’ve got this year, I can see it being the same again this season!

The advent calendar cards, all of the Christmas products, along with the entire every day range are just awaiting your browsing and buying pleasure in my shop now 😉

And as you’d imagine, now’s a busy and fun time to be a trader, so if it appeals to you to try this yourself, get in touch!

 

Getting to Choose a Few Cards…

Other than a new order or an update from one of my team, there’s nothing I like more popping into my business inbox than one of these emails…

 

It’s from Head Office and it’s the October product release survey. There are 427 new designs for our consideration, and as my email says ‘Your feedback is an essential part of our business and your comments really do influence our decision making. Please vote according to your own preferences and don’t try and second guess what you think your customers will like – we want your opinion.’

I love working for a company that listens to us, though most of all, I love getting a look at what I may be selling from October and playing at being a Creative Director… 🙂

Baskets of Cards

I like to sell in various ways, as you’ll no doubt have noticed by now. One of my favourites is ‘baskets’. It’s pretty much as simple as it sounds. I pop a good selection of cards, along with a few giftwrap and tag sets, jotters and bits and bobs into a basket, complete with a couple of brochures, and leave it with someone. Whether it be a customer who wants a browse, a local dentists staff room or someone who wants to show friends and colleagues how gorgeous the cards are – anything works! I tend to leave them somewhere for a week and then pick them up, complete with sales or orders. Or sometimes nothing, but hey ho, you can’t win them all!

I like this part of my work as it can easily fit around whatever I’m doing with the children. For example, I’ve got a basket out at the moment in our local library’s staff room. So when I go to collect it next week, we’ll spend a bit of time there reading and choosing some books. It also means that my stock is out and about working for me, even when I’m not. There’s no point in it being in my house for the week if I’m busy with other things. People might as well be mooching through it!

So now you know what I’m on about when I mention my baskets. A very easy, very time efficient element of my business 🙂

Would you like to find out more about trading yourself? Get in touch 🙂

A Lovely New Coffee Morning

Bags Full of Cards!

Yesterday, I took my cards along to a local retirement home’s coffee morning. I’d not been before, and it was actually a friend and customer of mine who had given them my brochure and suggested they have me there – thank you, Ali! It was only 5 minutes from home, so I packed up my stock into a couple of bags, my in-laws arrived to play with the kids, and off I tootled.

My Display

 

I set up in a nice lounge, and people started to come in and take a look and meet for a chat over drinks and biscuits. It was an enjoyable couple of hours, with a steady stream of people browsing, chatting and buying. Several of them asked whether I’d be going again, which is always nice, so I’ve agreed to go back again in September, and will probably make it a regular bi-monthly booking from then on. All in all, a good morning’s work.

So then back to family-life, I got home in time for lunch, and we went off to a neighbour’s house for the afternoon. I enjoyed catching up with my friend, and my daughter had a great time playing in the garden with her little friend.

After dinner and the kids’ bedtimes, while catching up on this week’s Supernatural!, I unpacked a small cards delivery and popped it, along with all my other stock, into a couple of baskets ready to take out and find homes for today. Might as well get that stock out and about selling! I’ll report back on where the baskets end up..:-)

My Picks of the Week #15 Butterflies

Summer is actually here! Hope everyone’s making the most of it. I love spending time in my garden and that’s inspired this week’s picks – butterflies. Now, Phoenix know how to do butterflies….

Blue Butterfly AL69 £1.50 or £1.20 when you buy any 10 or more cards

Absolutely gorgeous! It’s all glittery, too. I always have one of these on my displays, and as you can imagine, they catch the eye and I sell plenty! As with all Phoenix cards, it’s blank inside so could be a birthday, get well, engagement – whatever you need it to be!

There’s is also a 50 sheet jotter pad, of the same design, shaped as a butterfly (not glittery, though, of course!)

Organiser Box £10 OB4 

It includes 15 blank dividers and a pull out drawer. Could be a recipe box, keep your paperwork in, or your stock of cards!

Butterfly Paper Chain SP15 £2.50

48 gummed links to make up a paper chain, with images on both sides.

Butterfly Sky Postcards M50 £4

Pack of 10, matt textured, postcards, along with white envelopes.

Butterfly Cupcakes LS20 £1.50 or £1.20 when you buy any 10 or more cards

Month in, month out, this is the best-selling card! It’s glittery and the wings on each of the butterflies pop out – very pretty so can see why it just keeps on selling!

Painted Butterflies WS247 £1.50 or £1.20 when you buy any 10 or more cards

Another very popular one. A little smaller than Butterfly Cupcakes, this one’s matt textured, and again, has wings that pop-out.

Butterfly Frieze Blue SP32 £6

With 10 pop-out A4 sheets, you can make quite a display with these – so pretty! There’s also a pink version.

We also have mini gift boxes, stationery sets, a bookmark, gift wrap and tags, gift boxes and loads more butterfly cards, too – phew! I did say Phoenix know how to do butterflies! You can search all things butterfly on my website by simply using the product search box, to see even more of the range.

And remember, I have special offers on this month, too..:-)

Trader Meeting Today!

Today, while everyone’s been baking hot, and many of you have been enjoying Wimbledon, I’ve been in a room (air conditioned, so all was well!) full of traders, looking at, amongst other things, the new Christmas range.

Traders Checking out the New Range

It has been brilliant! My mind is still buzzing with ideas, thoughts, plans and I cannot wait to reveal the new range to my customers. Phoenix have, yet again, surpassed themselves and delivered the best Christmas range yet, though I cannot yet share it with you as there are more meetings around the UK this week, and don’t want to spoil the surprise for others! And, even better than the products being gorgeous, along with all of the cards being printed in the UK, as all our cards are, they’ve managed to source a printer in Wales for all of the roll wrap, rather than Switzerland, so yet another product from the UK – great to support our industry.

We saw the new products, heard how massive and stable the greetings card industry is in the UK, despite emails, e-cards, texts, Facebook etc., we’re clearly still want to sending cards, and we heard from several traders about how they got involved with Phoenix (all so different!) and how they run their businesses. I always love to hear these stories and really enjoy chatting to other traders as we can all learn so much from each other. And I always come away proud to be a trader for this company, excited about new plans and products, and fired up to further develop my business. These meetings are run by head office and are free and are entirely optional to attend.

So this post is fairly brief tonight, as I wanted up update you and share with you my enthusiasm (it’s literally brimming over!), and I’m sure I’ll bring you more posts inspired by today over the coming weeks, but for now, I must go and get some plans on paper….:-)

Special Offers!!

For the month of July, I will be entering every order that I receive into a draw and one lucky person will win a gift voucher to spend with me on their next order, for the same value as their July order – whether that be £5 or £500 – I’ll match it!

In addition to this, I’m offering FREE P&P on all orders that are emailed/posted to me (I cannot offer this on orders placed through my website). Do bear in mind that I batch order at the end of the month, so if ordering in this way to qualify for free P&P, there may be a little wait and you’ll receive your things in early August. If you need them sooner, just use my website as you should receive your order within 3-5 days that way, though the P&P cannot be waived.

AND, as if that’s not enough!, if you spend over £30, you’ll receive a free gift, too 😉

So if you’ve been meaning to order and haven’t quite got round to it, I’d say this is the month to sort it! Take a look now at www.jocelynscards.co.uk or if you’d prefer to shop by browsing a brochure and see samples, get in touch and I’ll post you out a free pack.

A Helpful Lot!

I though I’d update you on what I’ve been up to lately, and also to express my cheeriness today on how pleased I am to be part of such a fabulous company. So first, what have I been doing…

I’ve been keeping up with normal day to day things that I love to do, and to give you a feel for what that means for my business, it’s….sending free brochures & samples out to people (just email me if you want your free one – no obligation to buy!), helping my team out with various queries, dealing with customer orders, keeping the blog, along with my Facebook, (just added Fan of the Week over there which is proving very popular – random freebies up for grabs, so like the page if you’re on there, too) Twitter and Pinterest accounts fresh (that so does not feel like work!), chatting to people thinking of becoming traders and getting my baskets full of cards out and about in various staff rooms.  

In addition to the every day stuff, I’ve added a review page to the blog, I’ve been adding bits and pieces to my monthly newsletter, which will be ready to go out next week (sign up for yours here now – I’ll do my best to make it fascinating…! – http://eepurl.com/xWgr5 ), I attended an at home party and been checking in with the host of my next one in a couple of weeks time. I love these, though at the moment, I only tend to book 1-2 in a month, as I don’t like to miss the children’s bedtimes more than that. I’ll do more of these when they’re a little older – chat with cakes and selling cards – seriously, what’s not to love?! I’ve also tried something new, which has worked out well for me, and this is also the bit where my love of the big Phoenix family comes in! 

In one of the various Phoenix Facebook groups that I’m a part of, a lovely lady mentioned that she’d been contacting people locally that were part of the National Garden Scheme, to see if they’d like to either host a basket of cards at their event, or have her there in person, with a donation to charity made. I loved this idea, as we’ve some gorgeous gardening, wildlife and floral cards in our range, along with everything else, so I popped letters out with some samples cards and brochures to my local gardens, and happily, one of them called me up to book me in. They sound absolutely lovely people, and I’m really looking forward to going. As well as me, there’s also plants, books and refreshments for sale, so I may well be spending all of my profits, but I’m sure it’ll be a great day nonetheless! I’ll be ensuring I update you all on it, and I’ll be taking some gorgeous garden picks to accompany that post, too!

Now, the above is just one example of fellow traders helping each other out by sharing ideas like this. It happens all of the time, through our newsletters from Head Office, emails and call within our teams, loads of sharing on Facebook and there is a great stock swap shop on there where we’re all very helpful sorting each other out with any last minute requests. I’m always aware of how lucky I am to have this support network, but never more so than when I’m chatting to and introducing new traders to my team. I talked about welcoming Emma last month, and just this week, Katie and Khairun have come on board, too, and it’s so great to know that along with all the help that I’m here to offer them along the way, there are all of these other people so happy to offer support, ideas and inspiration, too. So today, I’m giving my Phoenix family a huge, happy virtual hug 🙂

Take a nosey at gorgeous cards on my website here, or get in touch if you’d like to find out more about becoming a trader yourself.