Modo Creative

We finally reached our limit.  After years of juggling a new business with a young family, the long working hours and daily compromises threatened to overwhelm us completely.... just a week before our busiest time of the year too. We were just gearing up for the Christmas rush when our internet died and we were forced to relocate on a daily basis to a local cafe.  It was very VERY tough.  We got behind with orders, forgot to eat, neglected our family and friends and didn't even notice the festivities building around us!  Somewhere around midnight in the middle of...

Five years ago we were almost alone in the world of personalised prints. A chunky canvas was in the 'in' thing for our walls and artwork for the small people in our lives was rife with tractors or fairies, babyish fonts and garish gender specific colours. We are having a clear out in the office this week as its high time we claimed back some order. During this sorting we have unearthed some wonderful things, mainly the initial workings of some of our most popular designs. These are the before's and after's. Firstly the original version of our Alphabet Art...

When a baby is born or christened or named - people like to buy it something. The thing is, new babies are pretty hard to buy for because they are mysterious little creatures at first. In those early days they are very secretive about what their personalities will be like and this makes gift buying a bit troublesome - buying a gift for someone you don't know a lot about is not easy!  So the gift you choose needs to address and reflect the things you do know about them!  Like the vital statistics of birth for instance!  Bingo! problem...

We have just spent a lovely week at Harrogate Home & Gift 2012,  it was our first trade show and I think it's fair to say a rather steep learning curve.  We were as organised and prepared as we could be but there is nothing like learning on the job!  Turns out that the greeting card industry is welcoming and friendly, we were most impressed with how supportive some of the more established exhibitors were towards us.  The days were long and tiring but we made some good new contacts, met some of our existing buyers and had an awful...

This week its all about rhyming couplets!  We are very lucky to be working with an extremely talented lady who really has a way with words.  She takes your words and memories and turns them into a funny and charming 26 line poem. In the short time since we joined forces, her witty words have been a big hit with our customers and we are growing quite a little fan base.  They are hard to market though, you really need to get one in your hands written for someone you know to even come close to appreciating how clever she...

this week its all about caravans!  After some considerable umming and arrhing we decided that in order to ever escape work and the daily stresses of having a business in our home we needed a bolt hole, a home from home, our own little space somewhere far away from work. We decided that a caravan would be just the ticket and set about searching for one. The first place we looked was Ebay and on the first page, right there, before our very eyes was a beautiful 1960's caravan. It was love at first sight and two days later we...