For lord knows how long the soundtrack to evenings at Ace Jet Towers has been the steady daggadaggadaggadaggadagga of Karen's sewing machine. She's been making lovely things for as long as we've lived in NI. Longer really. First it was just things for our boys when they were younger. Then Karen started making things for other people's kids, which went down really well.
Before long it was craft fairs, with a whole range of things for children and grown ups. Karen makes a great stall; it's always the best and during the summer, at the Mount Stewart Craft Fair, she was approached by a rep from the National Trust who did us a major favour. Not only did he ask Karen if she'd be interested in supplying NT shops (they'd recently changed their buying strategy and wanted to stock more locally produced crafts) but the interest put a rocket up our whatsits.
First off: a brand. Karen had been selling under a name that had come out of making things for kids but now she was making more things for adults. So we needed something new and Edie Sloane was born (well, reborn actually). Edie Sloane was Karen's Gran. Karen's been told, many times, how like her Gran she is; ES made loads of stuff, grew loads of things and also got her husband to do all the shitty jobs - with a smile on his grumpy face (Karen is very like her Gran).
Next up: a super-simple micro-portal-site (designed by me, built by Ryan) to launch interested parties into Edie Sloane's onlineness. It's not quite sewn up* yet, there's a blog to set up, but we have managed to set up a Folksy shop. And with that Karen's first online sale. Now that's pretty exciting in our little world.
Of course, you can follow Edie Sloane on Twitter and if the notion takes you, browse her hand-crafted wares here.
And if you missed it above, you can check out the Edie Sloane mini-site here.
