Botanical blunderings on a budget - good life starts here.

Pippilongstocking

Mrsmoo u are an angel

I think you could be my pr person. thanks lovie brilliant ideas there, well done on the charity shop bargain, bah to folk not turning up hope you aren't too tired.

Trog home the IR was ok. Glad piggy back plant doing good

Keiss I hope you have had a great day

Maty, yay to two sleeps

Greying_Pilgrim

Morning Pippi - and everyone else :wave:

Just to let you know that your 'inspiration' breakfast is underway! I had a idea last night (they do happen occasionally!) and remembered that 'popovers' are a popular american breakfast dish. whilst the recipe and method differ from yorkie puds, the spirit is the same. So get us we are having deconstructed 'frog in a bog' for brekkie!! how VERY cheffy :rotfl:

So on the plate will be; cauldron veggie sausages ( whoopsied), caramelised onion popovers (yorkies to thee and me), baked beans (nett0 finest), sauted potatoes (leftover HM oven chips from last night), and a fresh HG tomato. all washed down with coffee and fruit juice (whoopsie bargain - 30p for a litre!). So all in all it comes in at under £1 a head and we're gonna be stuffed.

Thank you again for the idea!

Come on England!!! Have a great day everyone, whatever you are up to. Now, the kitchen calls.

Greying

Pippilongstocking

Yay to stripy breakfasts that sounds yummy chef GP enjoy your brekkie and the rugby, good luck to them all.

Having been thrown into the depths of winter all week it's gorgeous here today! Typical.

Peedie is attempting to sit on my lap, when he needs to 'buttle' me a cuppa. Methinks he requires a walk. Might take my cuppa up the track, hair a haystack, wellies on, pjs rumpled.

One benefit of living alone in the country, no one can see you slob!

Back in a bit

Wordsmith

Morning, Pippi. Re the photos, my suggestion would be that you pick maybe half a dozen to a dozen pictures you really like (plants or otherwise) and get them printed by a commercial printer (e.g. http://www.edmonds.co.uk/printers-printing-greetingcards.html) and then sell them inidividually or in packs (mainly on your own web site, but perhaps also locally through shops and visitor attractions, although you'd have to give them a cut). Although there is an initial outlay (and I realise that at the moment that is a big consideration), it will make it much more of a commercial enterprise for you. Say the printing of each card works out at 41p (at this printer's cost of £208 for 500) the cost of an envelope (would need to be reasonable quality) bought in bulk, say 9p, total cost 50p (minus a 500th portion of the carriage) - you could easily sell for £2.50 or £3.00 (plus postage), so a good profit. I suspect the prices quoted on the website are for one picture, so the costs would change if you were having fewer cards of more pictures. But there are a number of printers out there, it just needs a few phone calls to get quotes and find out how they need the picture sent to them. Once you have found what sells and what doesn't, there are other options such as note blocks, mugs, postcards, playing cards, block prints, framed prints ... you name it. The card market is absolutely HUGE. Obviously there is a lot of competition, but there is always a niche market for local views, and there are a zillion gardener types who would buy cards or who would have cards bought for them.

Perhaps you could have a gardeners' gift section on your web site - cards, prints (someone local to me does these http://www.callanpictureproducts.net/ - note also her link to www.artistpublishers.com), calendars, growing kits (your plants, a "how to" sheet, plus a few bits to make it "gifty"), sock fish ...

ETA The artistpublishers.com site looks very good, all you fantastic photographers - MrsMoo2U, Cheery, et al.

MrsMoo2U

Wordsmith wrote: »

Morning, Pippi. Re the photos, my suggestion would be that you pick maybe half a dozen to a dozen pictures you really like (plants or otherwise) and get them printed by a commercial printer (e.g. http://www.edmonds.co.uk/printers-printing-greetingcards.html) and then sell them inidividually or in packs (mainly on your own web site, but perhaps also locally through shops and visitor attractions, although you'd have to give them a cut). Although there is an initial outlay (and I realise that at the moment that is a big consideration), it will make it much more of a commercial enterprise for you. Say the printing of each card works out at 41p (at this printer's cost of £208 for 500) the cost of an envelope (would need to be reasonable quality) bought in bulk, say 9p, total cost 50p (minus a 500th portion of the carriage) - you could easily sell for £2.50 or £3.00 (plus postage), so a good profit. I suspect the prices quoted on the website are for one picture, so the costs would change if you were having fewer cards of more pictures. But there are a number of printers out there, it just needs a few phone calls to get quotes and find out how they need the picture sent to them. Once you have found what sells and what doesn't, there are other options such as note blocks, mugs, postcards, playing cards, block prints, framed prints ... you name it. The card market is absolutely HUGE. Obviously there is a lot of competition, but there is always a niche market for local views, and there are a zillion gardener types who would buy cards or who would have cards bought for them.

Perhaps you could have a gardeners' gift section on your web site - cards, prints (someone local to me does these http://www.callanpictureproducts.net/ - note also her link to https://www.artistpublishers.com), calendars, growing kits (your plants, a "how to" sheet, plus a few bits to make it "gifty"), sock fish ...

:T:T:T:T:T:T:T:T
You are going to be a millionaire at this rate Pippi. So many fantastic ideas all coming together.

Cheery_Daff

fab ideas pippi! :T :T :T :rotfl: at Peedie buttling you a cupppa Could do with him here today! All rainy and soggy, we've got your weather!

Keiss_21

Woop, woop! Got new car, England out of world cup and have done the shopping...what's not to like!

Sorry to all of you England supporters (we had this last week). As a Scot I find it impossible to support the England rugby team, cricket no problem though!

Just reading through the car manual to find out about all the gadgets this car has....it even has parking assistance...I initially found this out when I reversed the car in Mr T's carpark...a bit of a surprise at the time!! :rotfl:

Some amazing money-earning ideas for you here Pippi ...you really will be raking it in soon! :T

Glad to hear you have lovely weather today...we are overcast, but dry so far. The washing has been out since 7 (up to see the some of the Wales-Ireland match), so it may actually dry before the rain comes this afternoon, if indeed it does arrive!

Have a wonderful day everyone...I'm off to sit in the car and have a go at working out how to use some of these gadgets.

Wordsmith

Pippi, I took the liberty of asking a graphic designer friend which photo libraries he uses professionally and he replied with this:

"Your friend might consider selling the images on istock (istock.com). It is pretty straight forward to sign up but the financial returns are not huge per image download. I also use Punchstock (which is owned by Getty Images), Shutterstock, ifoto and fotalia. I think that it might be worth your friend contacting one of the specialist scientific libraries as there may be a deal to be done for the entire collection. The RHS are setting up a commercial image library so they may also be worth contacting."

I think the general libraries might be too much work for too little return - if you've ever searched on any of them you will get pages and pages of relevant and semi-relevant images, and then the searcher will pick one or two of those, so you might spend hours working on the images and uploading them and find it very hit and miss when it comes to people finding them and then choosing them. The specialist libraries might be better. Maybe you could persuade RBGE to set one up! If you ever do anything with this kind of thing, what you must not do without specialist advice is sign anything that will take away your copyright. Hope this gives you a bit more to think about and is not information overload.

Greying_Pilgrim

Keiss I'm beginning to wonder if you are me or I am you! I recognised our car from the description you gave of yours several weeks ago - I think we must of had the one off the production line just before yours, as ours does a nice line in blue smoke the minute you start it up too!! And what have we done this afternoon? Gone out and bought ourselves a (new to us) secondhand car - and it too has parking sensors, as I found out when I drove it back on the test drive - and i'll be doing the 'what the heck does this button do?' next Saturday afternoon once we've picked it up - ha ha

No matter on the rugger - the better team on the day won - that's what sport is all about, and thankfully at least rugby is still quite a 'fair' game.

Good advice and suggestions on the 'millionaire making' front Pippi. Whereas I'm off to find out how to live on thruppence (per annum), 'buying' stuff don't half make a dint in your post office savings account!

Greying

Keiss_21

Love it Greying!! :rotfl:

We just felt it was better to get a more reliable car before the bad weather hits us. I should know how to work all the bits by then

DS2 had a great time and the Uni Open Day, it's very close to home (less than 10 miles), I'd rather he went further away, but we'll see how things go. He also likes the car, so another happy customer!

Right, enough of playing with the new car, need to get some wood-staining done! Funny how this day has just disappeared!