Creating a Dolls House Miniature Window Display

Working Together... 

As we don't have a "physical" shop premises here at Magpies-Miniatures, it is difficult to reach out to local people, and let them know we exist! Only so much can be done through local advertising, social networking, and word-of-mouth, so when an opportunity arose to claim window space in the Town centre over the Christmas period, we'd be daft to not oblige!

We were in contact with a local store at the beginning of November, and quickly our conversation led to us agreeing to complete a window display for them, for our towns annual Dickensian Festival. This festival is a weekend event at the end of November, which sees the town turn back in time. For more information, see the Ulverston Dickensian Festival website.

The brief the shop (Namely Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe) had given to us was simply "A Victorian style street scene". We were allowed to go with this however we saw fit- and we did.

My Dad, Jon, is incredibly talented at many things - woodwork being one of them. He created us a 4' "stage" to create our display on. We were able to source some wonderful photo prints of the town centre in Victorian days, and these became the backdrop of our scene.

Our town is a very traditional, old-style quirky market town- complete with cobblestones and original dated buildings. The photos depicted these, and we used a couple of the wallpapers we sell in our miniature store, to create the pavements, walls, and cobbles. (We found an old slate roof tile paper gave a brilliant result for cobbles!)

We then decorated two shop fronts. One in the style of an old toy shop, and another as a miniature Mr Simms Sweet Shop. If you have a Mr Simms local to you (they are a small(ish) UK franchise), then you will know what a magical aura they have themselves. It's like stepping back in time - shelves filled with glass jars of the most colourful candies you could imagine, from floor to ceiling. Our Victorian piece fit wonderfully into it's surroundings..

We included details from a period postbox, to people going about their business in the busy market scene, and even down to coal spilling out of the coal sacks, and 3 little black rats- one toying with a cat around the Mr Simms advertising board.

We had so much fun researching the period, collecting the miniatures together, and creating a wonderful miniature scene! We hope Lynne and John at Mr Simms are impressed with our work, and that passers by can enjoy the miniature world too. A lovely bit of magic for kids, and big kids alike!

Here's a few pictures of the scene as it developed:

Christmas Postage dates 2013

It comes at the same time every year, yet every year it induces this mad panic, braving the cold to endure some frantic rummaging through half-empty shelves to find that perfect present for your Great Aunt Tilda.

Well, we have a solution to combat the road-rage, angry mobs at the check-out, and the need for steel-toe-capped boots in the shop aisles. Grab yourself a lovely warm cuppa, kick your slippers off, and browse through our lovely website to find the perfect gift for your miniature-loving friends and family (or yourself, of course!)
Everyone deserves a little treat at Christmas.

Here we have some further information about postage details for the upcoming Christmas period. Turns out the Royal Mail is in fact nothing to do with any elves or reindeer, and they too could do with a sprinkle of magic dust to make them fly faster but, seeing as this isn't especially easy to achieve, we simply suggest you follow the guidelines below to make sure your package is with you well before the man in the big red suit climbs down your chimney. Let's make it easy for everyone this year, and pull together to make sure we all have a simple, straight-forward, stress-free Christmas. (Well, as stress free as it can be!)

The following information is passed on to you from the Royal Mail (the shipping company we deal with here in the UK) - and these are the last recommended postal dates for Christmas deliveries. Of course these are the VERY LAST days, so please try to plan as much as possible - we will not be liable for any packages which are delayed in the system, and we'd hate for Great Aunt Tilda to be disappointed.

International Airmail including Airsure® and International Signed For™
Wednesday 4 December	Asia, Far East (including Japan), New Zealand
Thursday 5 December	Australia
Friday 6 December	Africa, Caribbean, Central & South America, Middle East
Monday 9 December	Cyprus, Eastern Europe
Tuesday 10 December	Canada, France, Greece, Poland
Friday 13 December	USA
Saturday 14 December	Western Europe (excluding France, Greece, Poland)
	HM Forces Mail - British Forces Post Office (BFPO)
Friday 29 November	Airmail to Operational BFPOs
Friday 13 December	Airmail to Static BFPOs
UK Services
Wednesday 18 December	2nd Class and Royal Mail Signed For™
Friday 20 December	1st Class and Royal Mail Signed For™
Monday 23 December	Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed™

So there we have it! For any more information, including postage costs, please see either UK Postage Information , or International Postage Information - depending on your location.
Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year from all of us here at Magpies-Miniatures.net

Wish List

For a good while now we have been bugging our host (Create) for a Wish List feature, but to no avail. However, a quick Google told me that Amazon have created a "Universal Wish List" which is not only usable on Amazon but on ANY online store.
I gave it a download, and a quick test run.

I'm currently using Firefox 23.0.1 and I have to say it works BRILLIANTLY on our webstore.
Will give a quick tutorial here as to how it was applied and used.

So all you need to do is follow this link (presuming you have an Amazon account, if not you need to sign up first) :
and follow the instructions!
When you restart your browser, you'll see an amazon "A" next to the address bar. Now, visit our web store.... and find an item you like (isn't too hard ;) )
I'm a geek for all things creepy, so I'm choosing the 3 black rats (really, they're adorable!)
So... find your product, and click the A!

 

This will bring a pop-up screen up, so you have the option to add to your wish list. Do the same for any other product your heart's craving for! Worth putting a  few things together to save on postage costs, right?

I'm choosing some more favourites now....

...

My list now looks like this:

 so now you can compile your list until it's ready to pop! Beauty with this is you can even post it to facebook to drop some very heavy hints, print it out and leave it in front of the kettle for your spouse to accidently "fall" upon, and when you're ready to purchase anything, just visit the product page by clicking on the item title, and pop things in your shopping basket. Beautifully done! 

You can set up lists for various websites, or even different rooms in your dolls house - a bathroom wish list, living room wish list... etc!

What a magical little feature.

Thank you Amazon!

-Niccy  

www.magpies-miniatures.net

Important news for our eBay customers

This is a special notice for customers on our eBay store, found here:  

We mentioned there are upcoming changes to ebay, and the way they handle fees from sellers, in a previous Blog post. We have been scratching our heads to try and get to grips with what it is they want from us, and have found the only way to combat their greed, is to up our postage prices on there (We really don't want to have to do this!). Currently they don't take anything from your postage price, which is great, because we don't make any profit on this (it all goes to our lovely friend Andy - our local Post Office Wizard). Now ebay have decided they want 10% of the money we would have given to Andy... and it's not fair that we should take the hit (as they already take 10% off the item price), and the money isn't going to materialise from Andys' pocket (and why should it?) so the only option we have, is to pass on that 10% increase to you, the buyer. We hate to do this, as we feel like we are ripping people off - this is not what we are about! Please remember it is EBAY who are being greedy, not us :(

If you ARE a serial eBayer (you know who you are) this is where you need to listen up. 

Currently on ebay we have around 400 items (431 to be exact), where our website total currently stands at around 3500 (okay, sticking with being exact, we actually have 3526 products WITH MORE TO ADD!) everyone likes variety! (Website 1 - Ebay 0 )
 
Now, to list them on ebay- we already are forced to add AT LEAST 10% to the price you would pay on our website, so that lovely order you compiled on ebay which came to £100? You could have had it for £90 (or less!) on our website! Cheaper! (Website 2 - Ebay 0)
 
Surely ebay has better offers on?...NOOOOOO. We don't run the same offers on ebay goods as we do on the website. Our sales and Special Offers are EXCLUSIVE to our website customers. (Currently having a huge Jiayi sale, which ends on 31/08/13) -and keep an eye out on newsletters because I sometimes share discount codes there too, applicable ONLY on our site!  Offers and Discounts! (Website 3 - Ebay 0 )

But what about combined shipping? As standard on the website, as there's a full integrated shopping basket. We do of course combine shipping on ebay...but it's manual and time consuming. Everyone likes something easy. Simple! (Website 4 - Ebay 0 )

 Payment! Surely it's more secure on ebay!....no..... it's all in your imagination. We take payment through Paypal too on the website, just as you would on ebay, so it's just as secure! You don't even need a paypal account to pay, just credit or debit card details. We will also accept cheques (UK only) Secure! (Website 5 - Ebay 0 )

I could go on, but I think you can see the point I'm making here...
SHOP DIRECT ON OUR WEBSITE AND AVOID EBAY AND THEIR GREEDY WAYS!

We can't stress this enough!!
What's the website?www.magpies-miniatures.net

Visit and click Ctrl+D to add us to your Bookmarks :)

Win a Dolls House Miniature Coffin

 
Have just opened a new competition to win yourself a lovely 12th scale miniature Dolls House Miniature Coffin. just visit to enter, and complete the form: http://www.magpies-miniatures.net/newsletter.html

Entries close 31/08/13 for this giveaway!

Best of luck!

Ebay Changes - Effective 4th September 2013

Ebay are making HUGE changes to the way sellers sell, and it makes a huge impact on Small Businesses like ourselves: so much so, that it looks like we're going to have to take most of our stock off there, and sell only through our website. 

Ebay are becoming more and more greedy, and with Royal Mail also taking their price hikes sky-high, it really is a battle for us, and many other small businesses out there.

Please shop directly through our website, where we still accept PayPal payments, so are just as secure as eBay - but there's no fees to pay, which means we can bring you the products cheaper. There's also 3000 more products on our website currently, than there are in our eBay store.... I will give a little more information below: 
This point is for us, a main point in why we are going to have to consider removing our products:

From 4 September, if your item sells, you’ll be charged a final value fee based on the total cost to the buyer, including postage, packaging and other related costs.

To manage any fee increase you may see, we recommend you include postage as part of your item price and offer items with free postage. You may be able to achieve lower postage costs by exploring alternatives to your current postage supplier.

(-Ebay, quoted from here: http://sellerupdate.ebay.co.uk/autumn2013/fee-changes )

- What this means, is that we have a 99p item on eBay, (for example a black top hat), we currently charge the customer £0.99 + £1.00 Post and Packing. 
eBay currently take 10% fee off of the item price, not the p&p. 

Now what they are saying, is that the final value fee (the percentage they take) will now ALSO include the p&p charges (I fail to see WHY they should benefit from this) - so they suggest adding the cost of postage to the item to the item cost, making the hat effectively now £1.99 with "Free Postage", and they will then take their final value fee from the £1.99, not the 99p, which is clealy more; therefore we will be forced to up the price, or lose our profit. So we'd have the choice of up our prices to customers, or lose our business entirely as our profits would be eaten little by little.

What is also important to note, is that currently if you require e.g 10 top hats, you would pay 99p for each of the hats, £1 original postage cost, and a further 10p per extra hat, which would mean the order would total £11.80 (10 hats at 99p, postage at £1.90)
With the ebay changes, this same order would cost you in excess of £19.90, as the "postage" fee is included with each individual item, not as an order as a whole. This figure is assuming we DON'T increase our prices to compensate for their greed. You would effectively be paying £10 delivery cost for items which cost £9.99... You could argue that it will still only cost us £1.90 to send the parcel, and can take our profit from the extra postal costs, but we're not here to rip people off-  we are human, and are customers too- we wouldn't feel loyal to a business if we knew they were pocketing more money than they should be. We're trying to consider you, our customers, as well as ourselves, as without you- we wouldn't be a business at all - just a couple of mad women sat amongst a pile of miniature products!!
The same order on our website would total  £11.00...  no brainer?
 
If you have any more info on how YOUR small business is going to cope with the changes, we'd really appreciate some input.

www.magpies-miniatures.net

 

Alternative Monopoly Pieces

Did you hear back in February, that Hasbro (the big guys behind the world famous Monopoly game) have now scrapped the 'iron', 'boot' and 'wheelbarrow' markers? And in replacement, have added a cat, helicopter, a diamond ring, a robot, and a guitar! (I mention due to the fact they are changing the game again, and are now scrapping the Jail corner!)

Now if you opened your game box in the past 6 months, you may have felt a little cheated in not having your favourite game token included... but we have a solution. How about our Doll House Miniature silver iron?? It's not the exact piece- in fact, it's better! 

We could get inventive here and make up a NEW collection of alternative Monopoly game pieces using miniatures. How about a microscope, bucket, whisk, or pair of high heeled shoes! There's some amazing miniatures to choose from, and they would truly make your gameplay more unique, and even personalised to the players in your family or friend circle.

Take a look on the website and see what you can find! : Magpies Miniatures