I’m going to the Romantic Novelists Association conference next week. I’m so excited about this, it’s ridiculous. It’s a whole weekend talking about writing and romance. More importantly, it’s a whole weekend being just me. Not the wife, not the mother, not the tech transfer lady, none of those thing. It’s just me, being me and being the writer. I. Can’t. WAIT.
I’m making lists – what to take (chocolate, teabags, wine… oh yeah, clothes), what notes to make on my WIP, people I need to talk to. One of the fun things about the conference is the goodie bag. We can all contribute something to go into these goodie bags. Some of the bigger publishers give away free books (I’ve discovered many new authors this way), a lot of people put in things ranging from bookmarks, to pens to sweets. All very welcome.
Last year, I made some business cards with my book cover on the back. They looking nice and were fun. I was particularly pleased with the wording on the back – it’s hard to fit a full blurb on a business card, I had to cut it down to ‘The story of a girl ran away from fame to become a lawyer’. They were okay. They did the job of putting the name of an unknown book in front of people.
This year, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to put in something that was actually useful. I looked into branded Post-Its, notepads, pens, pencils, key chains. You can get just about anything personalised nowadays. Some of them appear quite reasonably priced, but if you multiply it by 200, suddenly it’s not exactly affordable.
So here’s my solution:
200 mini cards from Moo.co
m (around £ 30)
200 of those tiny craft clothes pegs (off eBay) (around £6)
One tube of good glue from Poundstretcher (£1)
A couple of evenings sitting at the kitchen table gluing and chatting with DH (er… priceless?)
And this is the result:
The idea of the big blank space is so that they can be used as labels. Hopefully, they’re cute enough and useful enough that they won’t end up in the bin on day one.
I’ve got a few spare now, so I can use them to clip my receipts together (because the Fairy Godmother says ‘Keep your Receipts’). What would you use yours for?
PS: If you’ve not used Moo cards before – they are beeeeeeautiful. If you click through from here, you’ll get 10% off your first order. It’s a referal link, so I’ll get something off my next order too (Yay!).
Jeevani Charika and Rhoda Baxter 