Not On The High Street (NOTHS) — the award-winning (and pos­sibly) largest online mar­ket­place for the UK’s best inde­pend­ent small busi­nesses — is launch­ing it’s first awards. The Make Awards 2011.

The Make Awards cel­eb­rate these busi­nesses – their cre­ativ­ity, their pas­sion for design, and the impec­cable cus­tomer ser­vice they offer.

And Coulson Macleod sell on NOTHS.

And we’re pretty con­fid­ent that we are cre­at­ive. We most def­in­itely have a pas­sion for design. And we are very proud to offer impec­cable cus­tomer ser­vice. If you agree, we’d be delighted if you’d vote for Coulson Macleod.

Vot­ing will go live in May, but in the mean­time you can nom­in­ate Coulson Macleod via NOTHS’ Face­book page. You can read about the Cus­tomer Votes, which are broken down to three awards

1. Gift of the Year
2. Hero Product of the Year
3. Best Cus­tomer Service

Thank you.

Since we launched our typo­graphic art busi­ness 18 months ago, Coulson Macleod has made lots of cre­at­ive friends. One of these is artist/designer Joanne Holbrook.

Joanne, who used to work as a graphic designer for pack­aging design­ers Jones Knowles Ritchie and design agency Pub­li­cis, launched her art busi­ness in 2004.

When her eld­est son Stan­ley was born six years ago, she cre­ated this gor­geous print for his nurs­ery wall, mak­ing a col­lage of his name using some old print­ers blocks she’d picked up from a Lon­don market…

Then, when Albert arrived three years later, she cre­ated this equally lovely one for him…

Glad to have made some­thing spe­cial for her boys; Joanne put the blocks away. But when friends vis­ited, they kept ask­ing where she’d bought her art­work. Then nagged her to do the same for their children.

Tak­ing the ori­ginal let­ter­press effect as inspir­a­tion, Joanne now digit­ally cre­ates unique designs.

Visit Joanne’s store on Not On The High Street for her full range.

Today is a good day. Why? I hear you cry.

Well folks, we have beaten our sales record. We have sold more prints in August than in any other month in the entire his­tory of Coulson Macleod. And we’ve been up and run­ning for almost eight­een months.

We have a white­board on our office wall. Every time we make a sale we wipe off the old num­ber and write up the new one. I say we, but actu­ally I usu­ally do this, partly because my hand­writ­ing is neater, but mainly because it gives me a huge amount of pleas­ure. Every month we write down how many we’ve sold, whether they’ve been sold via Not On The High Street or through shops or if they’re bespoke and how many came via one of our adverts in Elle Dec­or­a­tion or Livin­getc.

We love our white­board. We quite often catch each other star­ing at it fondly. Because every month the fig­ures go up. And that is super exciting.

And this month, only half way through August I might point out, we’ve notched up the biggest num­ber since our records began. To let you into a secret, we only star­ted record­ing this on the board since Novem­ber, which was when we star­ted selling in ser­i­ous num­bers and the idea of a white­board sprang into our heads.

So ladies and gen­tle­men, tonight we may clink our glasses and say a little toast to our little boom­ing busi­ness that we love so much.

I’ve men­tioned tex­tile designer Stephanie Miles (who owns and runs Smiles Design) on a pre­vi­ous post as I fell in love with her hand­made black and white wooden bird­cage cards.

Stephanie emailed me yes­ter­day to say she has now launched Bower­bird, her new ven­ture to spe­cific­ally sell her cards and jewellery.

Cur­rently Bower­bird designs are only sold via the online mar­ket­place Not On The High Street.

The reason for the name? Appar­ently Stephanie is fas­cin­ated with the little Vogelkop Bower­bird, a nat­ive of New Guinea, who are so named because of the beau­ti­ful shel­ters or ‘bowers’ they build.

Stephanie says she’s a bit like a Bower­bird “a bit plain, but likes dec­or­at­ive things and col­ours”. The Bower­birds dec­or­ate their shel­ters with incred­ible detail that show a nat­ural eye for attract­ive design. Some use col­our­ful flowers and leaves, some col­lect stones or other objects, which they lay out in patterns.

For any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about the Bower­bird, here’s a clip from BBC One’s nature pro­gramme Life…

The Vogelkop Bower­bird. Nar­rated by David Attenborough.

Stephanie has many more designs up her sleeve so keep an eye on her Not On The High Street shop.

Got a delight­ful email yes­ter­day from the online store Not On The High Street.

They want to sell Coulson Macleod art.

Not On The High Street is the lead­ing, award-winning, online con­tem­por­ary mar­ket­place cre­ated exclus­ively for small inde­pend­ent UK busi­nesses.  Appar­ently they decline over 95% of new applic­a­tions in order to main­tain their quality.

They also have a great-looking cata­logue that show­cases the products too.

Lucky us!  Obvi­ously if you’re read­ing this you already know all about Coulson Macleod and can buy our art dir­ect from our web­site.

I’ve been want­ing to show­case the amaz­ing hand­made cards by Ruby Wren for awhile now. All of the designs are simple, mod­ern, and totally lovely. Ruby Wren’s cards and envel­opes are 100% recycled and bleach free and are made using ele­phant and rhino poo!  

This small busi­ness, run by Hay­ley Mitchell, also hap­pens to be pretty local to Coulson Macleod — which makes me think that this is rather a cre­at­ive pocket of England.