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!

More pics of our New York Trip ...

Claire and Warren from PG in the beautiful courtyard of Barolo's in Soho, hat provided by Jakki!!

Jakki and Ian from Progressive Greetings and The Licensing Magazine with South East Agent Rose Trow (again at Barolo's)

One of our favourite places for breakfast, Pigalle in Midtown, just off Broadway

Lovely eggs benedict mmmmmm.....

On a beautiful Sunday we decided to go on a sightseeing tour on an open top bus instead of going to the National Stationery Show. After visiting New York 13 times it was a first for us and it was great, we would highly recommend doing it, the Sunny day added to the experience.

We felt like true tourists ..

Central Park looks beautiful in the sunshine.

The Dakota Building, where John Lennon lived and died ..

We love the brownstone buildings!

Newlyweds, eating Hot Dogs.

The beautiful Guggenheim Gallery

The first part of the Bus tour was Uptown, we travelled on the West Side to the top of Central Park and into Harlem, then back along the East Side along Park Avenue.  We got off the bus at the Apple Store where we both treated ourselves to an ipad.

What a fantastic day!!

News .....

Hi, another busy, busy week, still on the last minute trying to get our designs done in time for Top Drawer, we have taken delivery of one new range which we are really pleased with, and are well on the way to finishing our new children's range which is to be called 'Sherbet Lemon'.  We have to have all the designs completed by Tuesday if we stand any chance of having them printed on time.

A lot of our time recently has been taken up with an idea we had in the Summer of producing a newsletter/marketing tabloid newspaper, and we are proud to say it has now been printed and we have taken delivery of the finished article today.

It is a tongue in cheek look at the world of Paper Salad,

4,700 copies have been delivered to Progressive Greetings today, as it is going in the January Issue as an insert, targeting existing and potential customers.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Karen and Claire xx

Our Trophy for our award winning designs ...

We received our copy of Progressive Greetings yesterday and a picture of our trophy was in there

Alongside some other pics from the night

There was also an article about our talk at the ladder club!

This will certainly be an edition that we will be keeping!

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....