Initially I was excited (until I hit the steep hills), excited again (until I fell off trying to bump up a kerb)

excused from cycling on Thursday due to extreme knee bruising, and then back to loving it again on Friday and feeling all Emily Lloyd in “wish you were here” (great 1987 film).

Would have liked to have done a Meg Ryan “City of Angels” and shut my eyes and held my arms out and cycled along in the wind, but given that she met a sticky end with an articulated lorry, perhaps not.

There is certainly a sense of freedom whilst cycling along, just you, your thoughts and the open road. When outside, your tangled thoughts are straightened out and for me, if I’m struggling to put something together creatively, I find the creative blockage clears and the solution is simple.

I’d like to think it will last, but looking at the looming black clouds as I type, I know that the first splat of rain and that car is coming out! Plus if I break my arm falling off, who will design, how will the stuff get made? Oh my goodness, now thinking about it, what a RIDICULOUS, WRECKLESS idea…..now it’s raining. Amen I sigh silently

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, come back to mamma, I miss you, wherever you are.

This theme started out as a Butterfly Table Plan, now, I never used to do butterflies as it just seemed so trite! I started out in 2003, so just prior to the big handmade BOOM. At the time handmade wedding stationery was a card blank and a one dimensional butterfly thrown on the front. I am not a pink girl, or a girly girl, or glitter and fluff and feathers girl, so to do this, would go against my personal grain so to speak. Little bits of butterfly have crept in over the years, but nothing major, and I tend to find if it ain’t on the site, people don’t ask for it! So the order I got was for a Butterfly table plan, not a problem, I can do that…UNTIL….EEK….9 months later, the theme was changed to “Cinderella”. With the deposit long absorbed into the business, I couldn’t cancel, plus, keep calm girl, its a challenge! As I opened the images my client gave me…my heart sank a little.  It was SO against my personal grain, that I needed virtual calamine lotion to stop the itching!! Lots of baby pinks, diamantes, lots and lots of glitter and feathers. Oh my I stressed, I can’t do this, I don’t have the girly girl gene! So flash forward to the first week of May, Fairytale Week. Now, if might surprise you to read that I don’t plan designs. Never have and probably never will. I unwrap an album or a canvas and the inspiration just flows. If I sit and try to think of ideas, it doesn’t happen. I just can’t work like that. I generally know what I am going to do, but the thought in the brain will generally be very different to the finished article (in a good way). So the moral of this blog is, don’t be too hasty to judge or become scared of someone elses fairytale, accept the challenge, put it into the bunny delicious non-sensical machine, turn the handle and let the creativity flow. Out will pop your theme with the original bunny delicious twist that I am famed for.  So fanfare trumpets please…….Ladies and Gentleman….presenting “Once upon a Fairytale” (first 3 images are the client’s inspiration pictures) Oh and for the record, not only did I surprise myself with what I had created, but I made the bride cry with happiness (and I daresay relief!) Leanne I love you for changing your theme and forcing me to move the creative goalposts!!

OK have just checked the pictures and they must be too large to view (me being lazy and not re-sizing) will have to amend all the sizes an reupload, if you cannot wait though, and why would you, who waits for things these days?? Then go direct to here http://www.facebook.com/pages/bunny-delicious/95620187111?v=photos&ref=ts#!/album.php?aid=215187&id=95620187111 

OK, so I’m usually quick to jump on a social trend, but the art of blogging scares the hell out of me! Do I need to be über cool? Know what I’m talking about? Professional? Oh well in that case, I’m screwed (apart from the über cool of course!)

Well, if I can nutshell myself, my name is Zoe, I run www.bunnydelicious.com and have done so for nigh on 7 years. Oh and I didn’t start the business 20 minutes after I got married either. I make wedding stationery basically, but desirably DIFFERENT stationery. I don’t follow trends (hence I don’t make pocketfolds, throw diamantes at everything, and don’t use a bow to get me out of a sticky design patch) and I generally just do my own thing, which appeals to a bevy of ardent bunny delicious fans.

As for the handmade element, I am forever copied, but very rarely challenged. And I mean that in the nicest sense. I have people that I aspire to of course, but I have yet to come across someone on my production wavelength, and for that I am grateful! 

I like being unique and this stems way back to probably beyond school days. My mum used to take me and my sister to London every summer. Without fail, we went to Liberty, Selfridges, Harrods, Covent Garden and without fail Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road.  I used to stand in utter AWE of the masses of paper, pencils, pens, STUFF and the colours, oh the colours! I was a 13 year old girl lost in the Twilight Zone, with no intentions of ever being found! So whilst the girls in school started a new term with the same, choice of three pencil case from Woolworths, I was always different with a Paperchase or Hamleys pencil case and contents. It’s what made me tick. The other girls couldn’t understand this of course and would steal my beautiful things and once I got left a ransom note for my stuff (dinner money and a packet of cheese and onion crisps – this was around 1986!) This was the only element of school that I hated. I was definably different, but didn’t know why. I wasn’t hip at school, I didn’t snog boys or smoke, I was just the weird girl with the posh pencil case, a love of stickers, posh carrier bags and a PE Kit in a rope handled Covent Garden General Store box bottomed bag.  On reflection, I love that I was like this, and I now understand that my ability to hunt out the gorgeous, quirky and downright quirky has EVERYTHING to do with my early years and my introduction to the world of individuality, courtesy of my mum and those idyllic trips to London.

Fast forward to 2003, just had my 2nd baby and panicked! I can’t be a housewife! I need to do something, aspire to be something! What though? I shall be a seamstress, I thought! I will SEW stuff and have one of those dress dummy things and a tape measure around my neck and hang out in fabric stores…one problem….crap at sewing. Then I had a conversation with my sister, who had bought some card blanks and embellishments/die cuts from ebay and was making her own cards. Hmm I thought, I could do that, so to cut a long story short, I did just that, I set up a business, and sold my first batch of birthday cards to a beautiful gift shop called “Natural Edge” in Leigh, that I used to go to when I was 14 with my friends on a Saturday afternoon…..and the rest, as they say is history.

So when you look at my designs, hopefully you will see the passion and time that has gone into the creation of each one. Nothing is thrown together. Everything is well thought out and made, pretty much through the eyes of a 14 year old girl captivated by the awe of detailing, the love of colour and the romance of perfection in her fabulous make believe world of bunny delicious.