If you are in a profession that is related to Business-to-Business marketing then you might very well have come across rubber band powered automatic pop-up products. You know the type of thing – an interesting-looking pack arrives in the morning’s business post, you open it with a certain amount of curiosity and then you get a surprise when out of the pack jumps a pop-up cube. Everyone seems to agree that the product is great at achieving its aim of capturing your attention and of putting a smile on your face, so why have you never seen these products on sale in the greeting card shops?

 The answer lies in long-term storage. You see, in order to achieve its objective, a rubber band powered pop-up must be presented with the product compressed to a flat position ready to pop-up with a lively action as soon as the pack is opened. However, when the product is in that compressed state, the rubber band is stored at full stretch and that presents a problem. Rubber bands are a natural product and do not retain their full elasticity if stored at full stretch for longer than a few days. Think of a rubber balloon – it is a good, round, bouncy thing when it is first inflated but after a while, it goes limp and floppy.

 A greeting card may sit in a box in a warehouse and then on the shelf of a greeting card shop for months before someone buys it and so you can see that the typical retail scenario just does not suit automatic pop-up products. So, how would an ordinary person go about finding such a product to send to a friend as, say, a birthday greeting?

 One answer would be to make it yourself but where would you start? There are numerous internet websites, chat rooms, forums, and blogs where paper crafts enthusiasts swap ideas and suggestions but there doesn’t seem to be a central source. However, that is about to change providing that the card making and scrapbooking crafts community joins in!

 Quite a number of companies in the UK have been producing automatic 3-D pop-up products for the B2B marketplace for years and they all are aware of the drawbacks of trying to put the product in a retail environment. We are looking to change that by making die-cut blanks available to the paper crafts fraternity through a new website called Pop up Crafts - but we acknowledge that we don’t know enough about the market to be able to do the job with 100% confidence. However, we do have the good sense to invite ideas and suggestions from the vast army of paper craft enthusiasts with skills such as card making, scrapbooking, rubber stamping and in decoupage. If the paper crafts fans have anything to do with it, you might yet receive one of these terrific pop-up products in the form of a handsome handmade greeting.

Let’s face it, no matter how hard you try, you just cannot escape it – news of the credit crunch is everywhere. It seems like the news hounds are desperate to print any point of view that adds to the doom and gloom, even though the message is the same everywhere – prepare for the worst and economize. No doubt the advice is sound but there are certain areas where economizing can rub against the grain. For instance, when it comes to buying a gift, how do you economize without looking like a tight-ass? I have one good suggestion; buy a bottle of wine and a new form of greeting card called a bottle bow.

 For many years, you will have seen different styles of bottle collars, bottle tags and bottle hangers on wine bottles on your supermarket shelves, only they will have been used for advertising purposes just like those featured in our Bottle Boutique. You know the sort of thing, “Buy this bottle of “Paradise Cocktail” and win a chance of a Caribbean Holiday”. Well, bottle collars have taken a giant step forward and now they are available in a much more attractive format as a form of shaped greeting card that actually sits on the gift bottle. This style of bottle collar is called a bottle bow because it looks a little like a bow-tie. So how do these products fit in with an economy drive? Read on!

 Many gift occasions call for just a token gift. It is just to show your appreciation or just to show that you care. As such, there is no need to push the boat out but what can you get for under £5 that doesn’t look cheap. The answer is simple. Visit your local supermarket or your nearest wine store and search for their special offers. There will be many decent bottles of on display at very attractive prices – remember, these are hard times for everyone, including wine merchants and they are desperate to win your custom. Find a suitable bottle that you think will do the trick and then dress up your gift of wine with an attractive bottle bow.

 There is no need to buy a card as the bottle bow will convey the message and there is plenty of room on the bottle bow to write your personal greeting. There is also no need to buy a bottle bag or a gift tag as the bottle bow dresses up your bottle by adding colour and vibrancy to match the celebration. As bottle bows cost much less then either a greeting card or a bottle bag, the economy is plain to see.

 The bottle will be well received and will look the part - the perfect answer to gift buying on a tight budget. Our new range of bottle bows from A Nice Touch will go on general release after a launch at the UK’s Spring Fair at the NEC in early February.

They are fun, they are sexy, they are interactive and they are a little bit addictive. What are they? The answer is “Wobbly Bits”, a new idea in greeting cards released under our brand name “A Nice Touch” and planned for their world premier at The Spring Fair at the NEC 1^st – 5^th February 2009.

 The range of designs covers rear views of muscular males and shapely females that each have one thing in common – a wobbly bottom. Give the bum a gentle flick and off it goes bringing shrieks of laughter as a result. Our research shows us that women absolutely love the men’s bums and the pre-show samples are being snapped up before we have been given chance to release the product!

 Each design is funny but not vulgar or dirty and the models are all wearing shorts. The cards have no titles nor do they carry a message as they can be used for just about any occasion or just for a laugh. Four male bottoms and four female bottoms will be available from the initial launch. The cards are individually wrapped, they are made in 350gsm silk art board and they are designed, printed and hand made in England.

 We will be issuing point of sale examples with each purchase so that in-store customers get a chance to flick the bottom to see exactly what it does before they make the purchase. But be warned – these things are really funny and quite contagious. The cards will be available from the “A Nice Touch” website which will be live from mid January.

We have been supplying the Business-to-Business promotional marketplace with automatic rubber band powered pop-ups for years. We have a very good reputation in this field and we like to think that we know what we are doing. However, we are about to take a step into the unknown and we need you to light the way. If you are a person with craft skills such as card making, scrapbooking, decoupage and rubber stamping and you would like to work with automatic pop-ups then we should be able to help each other.

 You see, our research tells us that crafters would be very interested in being able to work with rubber band pop-ups and we can provide that opportunity. What we don’t know is how you would like them to be presented. Our automatic pop-ups are made in 500micron box board and an internal rubber band gives them their pop-up action. We make them in their thousands for our B2B clients from start to finish – we even mail them out on our clients’ behalf. That, however, is a totally different cup of tea from the scenario presented by our popupcrafts website.

 We don’t know enough about how you would like to work with these products. We have consulted a local expert but she acknowledges that the way she has worked with the samples that we have supplied could well be down to personal choice. Another card making crafter could well choose to work in a different fashion. For instance – would you like the die-cut pop-up to be supplied flat, cut and creased with a separate sheet of instructions and a rubber band? Would it be better if the folds were already made so that it would be more obvious how the pop-up achieves its 3-D state? How about if the product was part-assembled by our in-house crew?

 We would also like to know what you think of the manual pop-ups and interactive products in our commercial range. Would you like us to make these available as die-cut blanks? Most items in this range are made in a lignen-free 350gsm silk art board and we can supply them exactly as you want them. All you have to do is to tell us how that would be!

 If we are to make a success of this site we need to talk to the people who are in the know – and that could be you. All your ideas, suggestions and comments will be very gratefully received and you can pass them on to us via the ideas and suggestions page on the temporary popupcrafts website.

A brand new type of gift card is about to hit the greeting cards market. However, it’s not a greeting Card, it’s not a gift tag and it’s not a credit card type of gift card. Due for launch at The Spring Fair at the NEC 1^st – 5^th February, Bottle Bows are a totally new idea as a gift card which we release under our new brand – “A Nice Touch”. So what are Bottle Bows? Regular readers of our blog pages will realise that they have seen something very similar in our Bottle Boutique – a range of products available only to our business-to-business direct marketing clients – but now we are making a retail version available to everyone.

 A Bottle Bow is a very attractive and eye-catching adornment to the gift of a bottle of wine. It is designed to simply slip over the bottle neck and sit comfortably on the shoulders of the bottle. We have designed Bottle Bows in attention-grabbing shapes decorated with vibrant and colourful designs as we feel that they needed to be “upbeat” to match the happy occasion that is being celebrated.

 The opening range is not yet fully developed but we plan to have at least 5 different shapes covering a variety of popular all-encompassing titles including congratulations, thank you, happy birthday, with love and best wishes to suit most celebratory occasions.

 We are currently building a brand new e-commerce site for the “A Nice Touch” brand, which is due to go live in mid-January 2009. The site will follow two paths – one for end-users and there will also be a trade path for retail outlets. New developments will be posted on this blog just as soon as they happen.