Hi there Thanks for popping in. It’s been a day for sorting through old photos and memories with our Grace. It was an emotional rollercoaster for sure. We smiled, laughed, wept, hugged each other, and then kept going. We were compiling a photo tribute for Dad’s funeral, which will be set to Billie Holiday’s “‘I’ll be seeing you”. We’d been procrastinating, because we knew it wouldn’t be easy. Was it pleasant looking back? Double-edged sword really. On the one hand,…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. Sunny day, blue skies here in the southeast of England. Calm head. A morning of pottery does that. I signed up for a very specific kind of Sunday pottery class many weeks ago, and today was Day 1. Five Sundays in a row. The course title is Architectural Ceramics, so you can imagine it’s all about structure, building, lines, curves. Less about function, more about shape. That’s the kind of art I have been…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. Good day today. Very good day. Spent it with my dear friend Carron. She’s a real diamond. She lost her beautiful Mum during lockdown. Terrible circumstances really, by comparison. But she was able to take her experience, compassion and love, and help me get to grips with today today. You know, we chatted, we laughed, we cried, we laughed a bit more, we sighed and then we hugged each other. It was the best…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. Funny old day. Going through the motions, going through the paperwork. The sadness comes in waves. One minute you think you’re fine, the next you’re in floods of tears. I daren’t listen to Billie Holiday. We had Billie Holiday on all through the weekend with Dad. He could still hear EVERYTHING, and was evidently enjoying his favourite singer. His arms were up in the air, and he was tapping away to the rhythm of…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. Our darling Dad died late last night, just before midnight. It’s been a struggle for a while, and I guess, at 85, the old body was just worn out. But not the spirit – never the spirit! My brother Steve and I were with him. In fact, we camped in his room at the beautiful nursing home with him all weekend, the three of us, right till the end. Never left his side. And…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. Happy New Year to you! I hope that today marks the start of a happy, healthy and better New year, filled with love, laughter and creativity! Let’s not dwell on 2022! Let’s leave it in last year, and skip into 2023 with a spring in our steps – or at least let’s try to cheer up and look for the positives. That’s my advice to myself, because the incessant negative whining in my head…
Hi there Thanks for popping in. I hope you had a good Christmas and are enjoying life? It‘s been full on here; a house full of young energy and action. It really has been lovely to spend time with the kids, but they have to get back to their lives. Grace and her Mark headed back to New York yesterday, and Dave is driving our Mark up to Heathrow this morning, so he is on his way back to San…
Hi there The year was 2015, and we were flying high. Claritystamps and stencils were selling very well, our Create & Craft TV shows were getting busier, and we were going like the clappers! Our new website was looking good, and we were certainly moving online. We had never had a bricks and mortar shop; we had always been a mail order company, and we have had a website / online shop for as long as I can remember back!…
Hi there. The story continues. We launched our Claritystamp range on telly in about 2008 – and that’s when things really took off. Our little corner stamps and pattern-building tricks proved very popular. It was something new to TV, and folks loved the way we presented. So we moved out of the portable cabin in the garden and into an industrial unit on a farm. It was the Old Pig Shed!! Our team grew then, to keep up with orders….
about 30 years ago, I had a bright idea…. Hi there. Thanks for popping in. In the run up to the GRAY FRIDAY SALE at Clarity (We leave Black Friday to the rest of the world), I thought I’d use these 4 days to tell you how we evolved in the the Claritycrafts Company that we are today. It was the early ’90’s, the kids were nippers, and we lived in Northern California. My Brother Steve and I were already…