I am based in Belfast, Northern Ireland and have always been
very interested in crafts. My Mum would say that as a child I was never happier
than with some paper, felt pens and glue. This interest continued throughout my
education, I studied Textiles & Fashion design at university and for 12
years now I have worked in Design & Buying for various men’s fashion brands
in Northern Ireland.
Since my university days I have continued to be creative and
became known for handmade gifts for friends and family, mainly paper craft,
cross stitch and jewellery. These gifts received a lot of appreciation and
comments encouraging me to start to sell.
Louise tells us about her start up of the business here:
In 2019 I started an
Instagram Page to showcase my cross stitched crafts called @louloustitches and
through this I started to receive some orders.
My partner and I were due to get married in July 2020, however with Covid restrictions we made the decision to postpone. I had spent the majority of the first lockdown crafting Wedding favours & decorations. Through social media I became very interested in Cricut cutting machines as I was fascinated by how experimental you could be. I knew that the investment would only be worth it if I used it for more than our own wedding and then Louloumadethis began.
My latest orders for cross stitch items have mainly been bespoke, where I work with the customer to come up with designs that reflects their ideas. Frames for children’s bedrooms & also baby gifts have proved popular. At first I used to buy patterns from Etsy sellers and amend as needed but more recently I have started to design my own cross stitch patterns as well.
I have also done some bespoke orders for framed prints which have been very well received.
Timescale for bespoke orders varies depending on the type; stitched frames would be the orders that take longer however these are usually under 3 weeks.
I launched my first Cricut craft products at Christmas, including personalised baubles,
hanging hearts and Christmas cards.
To gauge the interest I sold on Facebook marketplace and from my Instagram account. These proved very successful and encouraged me to plan more seasonal type products, including the personalised fillable eggs that I am currently making for Easter. The response to these has been amazing.
The popularity of personalised product has encouraged me to expand into laser engraving, which I have only just started to experiment with but can see has huge potential for the gifting market.
At the moment I have lot of ideas to build a range of new products.
I get my inspiration from a variety of different places in day to day life including social media, Etsy and Pinterest.
At the moment I have only sold in UK & Ireland, however
I have recently acquired the domain name louloumadethis.com and have plans to
develop an ecommerce website which could generate international sales.
You can view all of Louise's products and order at her Etsy shop
Follow Louise on Facebook & Instagram to see more photos of the products and behind the scenes of the making process.
and
Feel free to send Louise a message as she will be happy to answer any questions.
