Meet Paper Plane

We've been a bit quiet lately, furniture-wise (although tonight we're off to beautiful Harringworth to collect a wardrobe we've been asked to paint) and this is why... meet Paper Plane.

Paper Plane is our new business, specialising in prints and greetings cards, but with the aim of moving on to a more diverse product range as the business develops.

Laura had been itching to put her design skills to use, inspired by awesome people like Bread & Jam, Newton and the Apple and The Happy Pencil - and with my bordering-on-the-unbearable penchant for puns, we decided we could probably scrape enough ideas together...

Initially, we're selling via our new website and through the Reloved Vintage storefront on notonthehighstreet.com, but we've also got a small selection of products in two of our favourite shops - Vintage Betty and French Grey Tales.

We'll be adding more new designs to our range when we find a moment in between our full-time jobs, running Reloved Vintage and, y'know, managing to feed, bathe and dress ourselves.

If you'd like to give us a hand (and maybe even help us make the leap to doing this full-time, gulp) we'd love it if you shared any of the cards or prints you like on your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts. Or, if you have a shop and would like to stock any of our cards or prints, just drop us an email.

Getting to the final...

Reloved Vintage missed out on an award at the Stamford and Rutland Business awards last week, but I think we should be incredibly proud to have made the top three in the Marketing and Design category, beaten only by the brilliant and very popular Serenity Loves in Peterborough and the very well established international organisation that is the Institute of Credit Management.

Considering we're just me bashing away at a keyboard and lugging chests of drawers up and down stairs, and Laura spending her evenings and weekends painting and sourcing new furniture (not to mention meeting customers, undertaking commission work, replying to the many commission emails we get each day, photographing stock, listing products on the website and notonthehighstreet.com, organising deliveries, doing the accounts, I could go on...) I think we did amazingly well just to be finalists.

I think it's proof that Laura's hard work and skill is being noticed (particularly her amazing, totally self-designed, photographed and maintained website, relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk), and see it as a sign that we can take Reloved Vintage further, so that one day we're the established business picking up the prizes ahead of the plucky upstarts!

Many thanks to the judges and organisers for arranging everything - we wish we could have been there on the night.

Finally, well done Laura. You're so incredibly good at what you do. You should be so proud that the business you've built up from scratch, with no budget, no staff, no big workshop, no formal business training and only a set of self-taught skills and your own spare time around a demanding full-time job, has been officially recognised in this way.

Getting It Right - #1 Bread & Jam

We're nosy little people here at Reloved Vintage. We're always checking out what other small (and big) businesses are doing – looking for great ideas we can be inspired by, or terrible horrors to make sure we avoid. 

Every so often, we see something that just makes us want to stand up and applaud - and that's what we'll be celebrating in our Getting It Right series.

You Are My Cup Of Tea mug £8.50

We love Bread & Jam. In fact, we love Bread & Jam more than we love bread and jam. And who doesn't like bread and jam? Hedgehogs can't get enough of it, and it's really bad for them. The prickly fools.

We first saw the work of Jamie and Catherine (aka Bread & Jam) on Facebook and assumed they were a huge, successful, Paperchase-style giant. Turns out they're a tiny, soon-to-be-ultra-successful small business.

Jamie and Catherine both have a background in interior design - and it shows in their eye-catching, retro-meets-kitsch-meets-modern-meets-cute-meets-cool products. The simple elegance of their patterns is reminiscent of classic Hornsea, but what sets Bread & Jam apart from the many talented designers out there is their eye for words, a perfect turn of phrase to melt your heart and lift your spirits. They also photograph and accessorise their products so well it makes us secretly seethe with jealousy (but don't tell anyone, it would make us seem childish).

Screen Printed Wooden Pencil Box £7.50

The quality of their work has not gone unnoticed and in addition to their Not On The High Street store, Bread & Jam products are also for sale through the style behemoth that is Anthropologie.

Not content with being bloody talented, they're also jolly nice, generous people, who have always been on hand to offer us advice whenever we've pestered them.

Bread & Jam are one of our biggest inspirations. Like us, they're a couple, originally working from home, selling online and aspiring to build a successful business. And, like us, they seem to live in a house that is permanently full of boxes...

We're so happy for them that their work is now being seen by a wider audience (especially as it means our Bread & Jam mug may one day become a collector's item!).

Notes Of Apology £9.50