Stabo

Currently preparing for a trade show I find it almost impossible to motivate myself without sitting in my made up stall. Lots of work still to do.

For anyone in the Impington area this Sunday who has something they need fixing, perhaps a row of stitches, perhaps a hole or riveting two things together you're very welcome to bring your item to our repair morning this Sunday and we will try to fix it.

Screen printing our latest T shirts Avengers style - that's Avengers the classic British TV series not the super heroes.

Screen printing 1970s TV theme tune style A video of us screen printing our latest T shirt designs, two with a cycling theme and one with a cricket theme.

Stabo123
13 days till Mother’s Day123
Plenty of time to show gran / granny / nana…. she is in your thoughts. These loving gifts are one off, made by us with your unique personalisation.123
And we can gift wrap and add a message to the swing tag.123

We’re on the train towards Norwich to have a mother and son cycle ride and I get to test out the pannier bags (super easy to attach to the bike and a great size). The boy has just head butted my open flask of coffee all over the floor, apparently this was just his normal way of getting up but it’s nice hanging out with him and I am learning a lot about trains. Travelling between Cambridge North and Thetford stations there was a phenomenal amount of flooding. I’m sure it’s the same all over the country but it’s hard not to think of what this landscape was like 600 years ago when it was all flooded; the wet fen and how this is a glimpse into past times.

Valentine’s Day on Wednesday? There’s still time. We’ll be posting out orders all day and tomorrow (but orders sent out tomorrow are sent out with fingers crossed they’ll arrive). We’ve got loads of great ideas in our Valentines Day shop.

Valentines Day? Stuck for ideas for her? These beautifully soft, vibrantly coloured leather pouches make perfect gifts. Screen printed with old fashioned wooden screens.

Valentines Day? Struggling for ideas? For sports fans we have a beautiful range of special gifts all made here in our Cambridgeshire studio many of which can be personalised.

Valentines Day? Stuck for ideas? Here are 5 quick ideas for Valentines Day. We’ve got loads more in the Valentines shop on our website.

Custom slipper order going to Canada. Very distinguished in black leather.

Our Cupid is back at the console preparing for those valentines deliveries. He is wearing one of our personalised scarves, which he says keeps him snug when out on dispatch.
He says his mighty machine can handle anything from a valentines card to a pallet load of wooden throws, so rest easy and feel free to order as much as you like.

Clearly the star of the show here is one of our son’s Walkmans, it does work and he does use it. The T shirt is one of ours as well

As a family we’ve never all sat down together on a Saturday night to watch telly, but somehow Ed’s got us excited about trying Gladiators. We’ve got the slippers on, we’re snuggled up and ready to watch it

Standing tall in 2024 (that’s the first time I’ve written the new year). We’ve had time off over Christmas but now we’re ready to tackle the year ahead. We’ve got new products and ideas but are also thinking closely about how we re-use and repair things.

This little guy put on his antlers and ate a Christmas nut sitting on our water bottle. So I took a photo, quite a coincidence.m.

Here is our works rider at the console and ready to embark on another dispatch mission. And he is wearing our original wax cag, designed and made 20 years ago, patched and re-waxed many times.

We thought we would try using a cute animal in a slipper, a popular choice for many. If only our hamster would cooperate and look more adorable. He looks cuter in real life

Todays . This pair of bookmarks are absolutely gorgeous and I’m sure the grandparents will be thrilled to receive them. I cycled home with my youngest from junior school today and started getting sad that I’ve only got one more year of dark December cycle rides home from school before she goes to secondary school. So capture the moment and preserve all those scraps of handwriting and little pictures while you can.

This is from quite a while ago (the children were about half the size they are now) we were desperately trying to get a decent throw shot. Our house never had the right light in the right place. It’s the same story today we chase our product photography around the house trying to get the best light quality and have to wait for the half hour ‘good light’ window of opportunity. I don’t think we ever used this image of our personalised throws but it makes me smile and actually there’s nothing like taking a throw with you to cuddle up outside, it’s so cosy.

Exciting news for us Histon (just next to the village green) is stocking a lovely range of our products. So if you’re local you can go in store and touch and feel what we do, we’re also offering a personalisation service so you can place an order in store and come and pick up your personalised items a few days later. Topiary Tree is such a lovely shop and it’s such a privilege to have our things in there. 😍 It’s also great for loads of different Christmas and Birthday gifts. So pop in and take a look.

We’re not taking part this year but we’re really excited about going as Christmas shoppers to this year’s Cambridge Made Christmas Fair coming up in a few weeks. It’s always a great event and so wonderful to see things in person.

Our website is very much a work in progress (but I’m sure that’s not that unusual) every day we find something we need to tweak or improve and it’s complicated when you’re selling on other platforms because in your head when you’ve changed something in one place you often think you’ve changed it everywhere. So please, please do get in touch if you find a glitch or something you think should be there isn’t there we are listening and we are always trying to improve the website. 📣😃

Our new pannier bags made with the adjustable Klickfix rack fitting so you can just click and go. They are recycled from Royal Mail sorting bags and have a handy carry strap.

The bag’s still going as are the hat, trousers, jumper and red coat although the red is now a bit more washed out and onto the next child with a big star mend on the wrist. I have a feeling the building in the background is still there as well 😂. The tights held out well but there comes a time when tights are more holes than tights. The point of this photo was to take product shots of our leather bags which will last a life time, it is still a joy to go into Cambridge and occasionally see one of our bags being used which we know to be over 10 years old. If you scroll through the photos you’ll see a photo of the internal pocket and the bag interior and the type of personalised message we can add to the bag if it’s a gift (which is very sweet).

After not really paying attention for far too long we're now working quite hard to get up to speed with running a business in 2023, which includes all sort of exciting developments including reinstating our lapsed Youtube channel.

As we're trying to upload a lot more product videos I might not upload every single one but here's a short film about our turquoise leather sunglasses case for today

Turquoise leather and silver glasses case by Stabo Our handmade turquoise leather glasses case has the cut out image of a glasses frame hot foil embossed on the front. The simple sleeve is ideal for a pair o...

Our handmade leather and crepe soled slippers. These are Ed’s passion project. He started making slippers and shoes maybe 5 years ago and has spent so many hours working on them since then. When you have a shoe maker in the family there is probably also a water feature designed for soaking them. We’ve currently got a large yellow box but they’ve appeared in the kitchen sink and even in the water butt but I managed to make them sink to the bottom so that wasn’t repeated. These slippers are really useful and this particular model is perfect for nipping into the garden as it has a proper sole and the oiled leather is certainly a bit damp grass resistant.

We’re here this morning at Histon farmers market at the Methodist church, I didn’t expect to be here but the eldest daughter is crochet mad and was very keen to do a stall. When a last minute space came up at the local farmers market and she didn’t have enough stock to fill a table I thought it made sense to share the space. It’s really great to have a market like this just down the road and sitting next to a wonderful cheese stall feels like a great way to start the weekend.

These beautiful stacking rings are by Willow & Twigg on Holly & Co, if you search for ‘empowerment’ or ‘stacking rings’ you can find them.

These rings seemed like the perfect product to share this week because it does feel a little as though ‘courage’ ‘strength’ and ‘tenacity’ are the order of the day, but that also feels a bit empowering.

The reason all those qualities are needed is because Ed and I have taken a risk and left an old platform and started to sell on a new platform, a platform which did not exist two weeks ago. It is a beautiful place to sell, it is wonderful to be part of a new, collaborative way of selling but it is something new and it will take time to grow. Similarly we’ve probably never given our own website, the place where we get to be us and try new things, enough love and we are now relying on it a lot more. All this change is forcing us to think really hard and try new things. Some of those things are things we’ve wanted to do for a long time but never got round to but if we think too hard about the unknowns we are facing it can get a little overwhelming. So ‘strength’ ‘tenacity’ and ‘courage’ are what we need at the moment alongside, of course, a healthy sense of humour which always keeps things moving forward. .co

These are our leather glasses cases which we engrave with a copy of your writing. Typically (judging by the orders we get) they are grandparent gifts and are ideal for reading glasses. They make a really sweet gift. Children’s handwriting is quite magical and writing a name captures a little of that magic. Available on our website.

This is our big news we are now, as from 9am this morning selling on Holly.co the new platform launched by small business Wonder Woman . There was a preview yesterday where we got to browse the store and it is absolutely beautiful.
Creative, eclectic and inspiring it is the place to go for the most lovely items so do pop over and take a look. It will really inspire us to be more creative. Showcasing the best of British small businesses we are thrilled to have been invited to join and look forward to the next step of our small business journey. The website is quite simply holly.co