The Henries 2015!!

We won... yippee!!!

We still can't quite believe it. What better way is there to celebrate 10 sparkly years in the business!

Winning best children's range at The Henries is the icing on the cake to an already amazing year of us.

Not only that but we won best gift wrap collection with Paper Salad by Glick!

Here is our marvelous award with our winning range - Dungarees!! 

A few pictures from the night...

And some professional ones too!!

A huge thank you goes to everyone who voted for us and a bright and sparkly thank you goes to all of our wonderful customers and Paper Salad lovers who have congratulated us on our award! 

A huge well done for all the other award winners, we hope you had a magical evening!!

Love Paper Salad x x

We have now sent off all our entries for this years Henries Awards. The Henries are the ultimate accolades in greeting card publishing, and each year some 14,000 cards are entered, so we have strong competition!

We were nominated most promising young designer in 2010 and our gift wrap that we design for Glick won in the best gift wrappings category last year so we have our fingers crossed that our cards will get through this year!

This is the last year that Claire can enter the most promising young designer category! 

The Henries winners are announced at an amazing awards ceremony on Thursday October 4th at The Lancaster London Hotel in London. We are looking forward to it already!

Exclusive christmas shopping events ...

What a productive week we have had design wise!  First of all we have designed a flyer for the Christmas shopping events at our gift shop .....

If you live locally please feel free to join us, we have lots of lovely new stock that will be ideal stocking fillers.

We have also been busy in the studio designing our new ranges,  we have also completed two new Christmas Gift Wraps for 2012, I know it seems early but they have to be ready for the trade shows at the beginning of the year.

The first completed design is Christmas baubles, which we think is for flat wrap, maybe printed on brown craft paper with foiling.

and a santa design, this is for roll wrap and will have three different backgrounds, yet to be decided.  They will be scanned and the backgrounds added on the computer.

We have finally got the 'official' photo from The Henries!!

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Photos from last weeks greeting card seminar....

We are back in work today after what seems like ages, what with The Henries, then The Manchester Gift Show,  followed by three days down on the South East coast at The Ladder Club Seminar.  We are back in creative mode working on our next designs, as well as trying to complete two designs for Christmas Gift Wrap for Christmas 2012.

It took us the whole day to get to the venue, the first leg was 2 hours on the train from Stockport to London Euston.  Ryan Thomas (Aka Jason Grimshaw from Corrie) was on our train, we held him up struggling to get our bags in the luggage compartment and he was very pleasant indeed.

On our way through London we spotted a Taxi, that reminded us of our new gift wrap!!

Two tube rides from Euston to Fenchurch Street Station, stopping for lunch in between.

Then finally a 50 minute train ride to Westcliff On Sea .....

After arriving at our hotel and dumping our bags, it was a quick change before meeting up with Sharon  from the GCA and Tracy from Progressive Greetings...

Industry experts spoke about all aspects of the Greeting Card Market, and included founder of the Ladder Club Lynn Tait of The Lynn Tait Gallery,  Jakki Brown from Progressive Greetings and The Henries Awards, Debbie and Mark from G.F.Smith Paper Merchants, Bob from the Imaging Centre, Steve and Nicky from The Sherwood Press, Sharon Little from The Greeting Card Association, Jeremy Corner from Blue Eyed Sun and of course yours truly.

Around 100 delegates came to the 2 day seminar and went away with a wealth of knowledge.  This event is key for new publishers, and also to existing publishers as it helps to keep the industry fresh, and the UK on top of a very creative industry.

Our role was to talk about our story, and the highs and lows of being a greeting card Publisher, so that delegates get a good idea of the industry and what they can expect, we also spoke about licensing and branding.

All in all it was a great two days, we all had positive feedback and we met some lovely people who we hope will become very successful in our fantastic industry.

Back to designing .......

We won at The Henries .....

Hooray!!  We are both still in shock but we won a 'Henrie" at last weeks prestigious greeting card awards which were held at The Lancaster Hotel in London.

We were nominated in the Best Giftwrappings Collection with our designs which we licensed to Glick and they entered under the Paper Salad Brand.

We were up against stiff competition and really didn't expect to win!  Other finalists were Gorgeous and Girlie from Marks and Spencers and Orla Kiely Paper Collection.

The Henries greeting card awards were launched by Progressive Greetings Worldwide magazine in 1997 to recognise and award the excellence in the UK greeting card design and execution, with awards covering the whole spectrum.  The Henries are so called after Sir Henry Cole who was an eminent Victorian, whose 'claims to faim' include the UK's famous Great Exhibition of 1851, being the first director of the Victoria and Albert museum, a leading light in the establishment of the Penny Post - and most importantly he introduced the first ever commerical Christmas card! The awards are judged by 30 of the UK's top greeting card buyers including Paperchase, Waitrose, John Lewis and WH Smith.

We haven't as yet seen the official photos of us receiving the award but here are a few photos of the night ....

Before the award ceremony began

Laura Darrington and one of 'The Bearded Ladies' Aka Mark from Brainbox Candy.

Mark and Ben from Brainbox Candy, the night had a Circus theme, hence the fancy dress.

Karen with one of the girls from Stop The Clock Design.

Gavin and Anna from The Little Dog who were up for nomination in three categories with their fantastic cards.

The view from our room at The Lancaster Hotel over a lovely  Autumn day over London and Hyde Park.

Karen celebrating with Ian Hylands from Noel Tatt.

Award founders and editors of Progressive greetings Jakki Brown and Warren Lomax.  

More pics to follow....

The Henries and Greetings today ...

This is an exciting week for us, as 'The Henries' are on Thursday night at the Lancaster Hotel in London. This years compere is actor Greg Davies who plays Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners.  Glick are nominated in the best gift wrappings category with the designs that we have licensed to them so fingers crossed they win.  We are sharing a table with a fab bunch of industry friends including the boys from Brainbox Candy, Laura Darrington, Kathryn and the girls from Holy Mackerel.  We will be the noisy table probably placed at the back of the room.

This years theme is The Circus, roll up, roll up.

We received Greetings Today on Friday and were pleased to see that Glick had placed an advert featuring our latest designs ....

They also wrote a piece about how successful the collaboration has been ....

Indian Summer.....

These photos show the view from our studio window, needless to say not much work has been done today.  We have been trying to design our new ranges, but have been easily distracted with the lovely sunshine outside and with shopping online for dresses for The Henries (The prestigious greeting card awards) which are in 2 weeks time.  We have been nominated in the Gift Wrap category via Glick so are very excited.  We can't believe we are having this glorious weather so late in the year, lets hope it last a bit longer.