Hello and Welcome to the Florrie blog.
Hi, Su here. For new followers of Florrie, I wanted to do a quick introduction about Florrie and me.
Su Florence, Florrie.
My name is Su Florence (hence Florrie) and I make notebooks, sketchbooks and journals from my studio/home in North East Fife, Scotland. I also have a keen interest in paper crafts, print making and photography. I wasn’t always a book binder, in fact I trained as a medicinal chemist, and worked in big pharma before starting Florrie. Florrie is a one-woman outlet, I make every book by hand, I answer every email and I capture every photograph on social media! Florrie books are tactile, beautiful and most importantly, practical. I favour reclaimed fabrics to form their hard cloth covers and use paper (typically 140gsm) that can withstand fountain pen ink, which is another passion of mine.
Reclaimed fabric forming covers for hand made books.
My interest in book binding started as an outlet from studying and long days in the lab during my PhD. As I’m largely self-taught, I’m very grateful to those that have shared their knowledge and their experiences widely and freely. Now that I have gained my own experiences, I’d like help those who are starting on their bookbinding journey. I’ve been doing this via social media private messages for a few years so I’ve a few topics in mind! Over the last decade I have also amassed a large collection of books-about-book-making. In my opinion, these are very much experience dependent so I’m going to be sharing some insights on these in order to guide you towards a text that would suit your own projects.
Away from bookbinding, it felt like a steep learning curve to start a business and there were various areas that took a lot of time, trial and error. It was frustrating and I’m still learning! I was fortunate that I had some friends that had gone self-employed in different, but still creative, fields before me so they kindly could guide me, but what if I hadn’t? I once read that 20% of start-ups in the UK don’t work out - so I’d like to offer what help I can. I would like to use the blog as an opportunity to discuss some of these areas - such as craft fairs, starting on Etsy, social media - and remove some of the mysteries surrounding them.
Craft market set up at The Rhynd, 2019.
Finally, If you’ve already been following my Instagram, then you’ll know I’m passionate about small business (especially local) so have decided to invite fellow creatives on to discuss aspects of their work. I hope these informal chats serve as valuable insights to each unique independent business. If you are a maker and are interested in talking about what you do, then please get in touch, I would love to hear from you (contact me here)!
I’m excited to get started!
Bye just now,
Su
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