A Christmas gift (tag) for you!

I stumbled across a gorgeous gorgeous blog the other day jam packed with wonderful creative projects and fabulous downloadable treats. I found something perfect for this time of the year that I wanted to share with you - gorgeous, stylish gift tags that you can download and print. Print them on thick paper, punch a hole, thread some yarn and *voila!*, the perfect finishing touch to your beautifully wrapped gifts!


You can download the PDF gift tags here. Have fun wrapping!

Christmas Creativity

One of my favourite things about the run up to Christmas is all the gorgeous creative goodies we get to create. Whether you're young or old we all get the chance to try our hand at creating little masterpieces to be proud of. I wanted to share of few of my favourites with you:

Gorgeous handmade cards to Mummy and Daddy by my son (4) and my daughter (20 Months)

Christmas tree decoration of a red robin by my son

Gingerbread men by my talented friend

A little box of brownies by meee!! (recipe by aforementioned friend). Gifted to all the school teachers, nursery teachers and swimming teachers.

We would love to see your gorgeous creative goodies - please send a photo to info@happyspaces.co.uk or post it to our Facebook page here.

You can still get it in time for Christmas!

Order online at happyspaces.co.uk before 12pm on the 22nd and you can still get your art in time for Christmas! Just make sure you choose express delivery on checkout. Happy Shopping!

£10 for you to spend at happyspaces.co.uk

Here’s a little helping hand to make those Christmas wishes come true. Use this Happy Spaces complimentary £10 voucher at www.happyspaces.co.uk towards the purchase of any of our beautiful canvas and fine art prints. Guaranteed to brighten up any child’s room, our affordable and exclusive prints come in a variety of sizes and styles plus they are elegantly gift wrapped. Hurry though, as the voucher expires at 23:59 Monday, 28th November. Enter Offer Code: SAVE10 on Checkout.

A Great Big Happy Welcome to our New Artist

We would like to extend a very warm welcome to our newest artist, Lucy Monkman.

Lucy hails from lovely Yorkshire and her work largely involves line drawing and collage. Lucy has created a beautiful counting design especially for Happy Spaces and can be seen and purchased here. It is jam packed full of gorgeous things to look at and is certainly a statement piece - so go on have a look, we think it's pretty special!

Here Lucy tells us how she got started designing for children and who helps create her special designs:

"From childhood I have always loved drawing animals. This has increasingly led me to work on more projects for children. When I had my own children I really enjoyed creating images for them. From the artwork that I did for them I received commissions for the nurseries and bedrooms of other boys and girls. Now whenever I draw or collage a new animal I always ask my children if they can tell what it is and they are generally very patient in telling me the answer. They can also be quite diplomatic when a rabbit looks too like a mouse."

Interview with an Artist - Carla Daly

Every few weeks we’ll be interviewing one of our talented artists to give you a glimpse into their world of art and find out what, where or who provides them with that all important inspiration.

We’ll also be giving our customers a special discount on all designs by the featured artist at happyspaces.co.uk.

This week, we kick off our first interview with artist Carla Daly from Dublin and as a way of introducing this special feature we are offering a very, very special discount of 50% off all of Carla's designs for 2 weeks only (offer ends 16 November).

Enjoy...

How would you best describe your style of art?
Fun, bold, colourful and childlike.

What is your most loved childhood memory?
My Mum telling me stories at bedtime. The best stories were always the ones she made up!

Who or what was your biggest influence in deciding to become an artist?
My Mother, she was an artist too. She created daily; creativity was just a way of life in my house.

Which artist do you admire the most?
Too hard to say, I really like a lot of artists, more recently I love the illustration work of Allan Sanders.

If you could recommend just one book for everyone to read what would it be?
For kids, I would recommend a series of books I illustrated with Roy Apps. The Twitches, I read them to my kids and we all laugh so much.

If you could be a cartoon character for a day who would you be?
Fireman Sam, my kids would be soooo impressed with me!!!

What was your favourite toy as a child?
My Dad travelled a lot when I was a child and came back from America with a Big Bird from Sesame St. It was quite a unique thing to have back in Dublin in those days. I still have it and my kids play with it now.

What is your HAPPY SPACE?
My art studio. I recently moved house and converted my attic to an art studio, I have a balcony where I can see the river Liffey, the river that runs through Dublin city. It is a small studio but I love it.

View Carla's designs here and save 50% off her whole collection!

Starting Big School

My baby boy, my first born, started school in September, an emotional and exciting time for both of us! He is an August baby so I have been acutely aware that he is very young to be starting school and is starting off behind a lot of his school mates.

As a mum all you want is to do your absolute best for your children and being a teeny weenie bit of a control freak, I decided we needed a plan to help him as much as we can at home - first step 'Letters of the Alphabet'!

I got out our sample of Laila Hills' 'Alphabet Poster' and started teaching my son the letters and sounds of the alphabet, made all the more enjoyable and attention-grabbing by the gorgeous pictures and characters. Oh my goodness, he absolutely loves learning about the alphabet and it is definitely making a huge difference. Thank you lovely Laila for a fabulous piece of educational art!

NEW! The Happy Spaces Fine Art Print Collection

We are very excited and proud to introduce our new fine art prints collection to you. Available to buy online now at www.happyspaces.co.uk. Have a look through and please let us know what you think.

And here they are; the 11 gorgeous prints:

Beautiful Dreams by Ellen Giggenbach

Butterfly Fairy by Tea-Time Tots

Farmyard Friends by Laila Hills

Happy Friends by Ellen Giggenbach

Horace and Albertina by Sandra Isaksson

Insects and Flowers by Laila Hills

London Town by Clare Fennel

Noah's Ark by Lesley Grainger

Oswald and Oswaldina by Sandra Isaksson

Racing Cars by Clare Fennel

Robbie by Any Underhill

Each print is individually presented with a mount, back board and post card on the back. They are made and printed in the UK on FSC approved fine art paper.

Happy Babies

There is nothing we love more than a happy baby so we thought we would bring you a double dose to brighten your day.

For those of you who follow this blog regularly and have been anxiously waiting news of the arrival of Mia’s bundle of joy, here it finally is: - the gorgeous little guy, Gabriel, was born on the 7th of August. Both mum and baby boy are doing really well. Gabriel has just started smiling so I have the most adorable photo to share with you – soooo precious!


A little while back one of our fabulous artists, Belinda Strong, sent us a few photos of her beautiful baby girl, Elora, who had just started smiling. She is so gorgeous we just had to share one with you. She definitely has a twinkle in her eye – we think it’s all the beautiful artwork in her bedroom ;0) !

To see Belinda's beautiful collection of art click here.

Gift giving made easy

It's nearly that time of year again (I can't bring myself to say it yet!) so we thought we'd share with you a little something that will make your life a whole lot easier - our gorgeous gift card pack.

When you purchase a gift card we will send it to you or directly to the recipient together with a little pack of postcards and a strip of Happy Spaces stickers - all to make that special person smile!


You just can't go wrong - knowing you're giving something beautiful and unique, getting a few lovely extras, a tiny delivery charge and delivery to anywhere in the world.

So that's Christmas *oops, I said it - sorry!* SORTED!

Please vote for us!

We've just found out that we are a finalist in the Sheerluxe Online Shopping Awards - *happy dance*! As you can tell we are super excited about this and wanted to say a very big thank you to everyone who has already voted for us. We also wanted to ask very nicely if you love Happy Spaces and our products, please, please, pretty please, vote for us here - thank you kindly *cheesy grin*!

New Art Arriving Soon!

Great news everybody! We are so very excited to let you know that we have 3 new amazing designs arriving mid October. Below is a little peak at the new art. We would love to know what you think.

Kokeshi Dolls by Belinda Strong (45x60x2cm)

Map of the World by Laila Hills (70x50x2cm)

Counting 1 to 10 by Lucy Monkman (50x70x2cm)

If you would like us to let you know when these designs are available to purchase please send us an email at info@happyspaces.co.uk.

Uninspired Art!

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook the other day about her daughter - I thought it was priceless!

'The kids were given lots of coloured paper and glue to create a collage..... this is Hayden's, obviously feeling rather uninspired that day!!'

We love it, Hayden!

Kiddie Photography Project

Have you ever let your child loose with a camera? My 4 year old regularly steals my phone to take photos of pretty much anything and everything. The other night I was going through all my photos on my phone to clear out the junk and it took me about an hour to delete all the blurry, cut off, random photos kindly left for me by my son. But what I did find funny and why this is such an interesting project is firstly what a child decides to take photos of and secondly, they can end up with some real corkers!

Here are a few of my favourites taken by my son (3 years old at the time).





And here is the photographer himself, riding his scooter wearing 3D glasses........ as you do!

Photo Shoot Happiness!

A few weeks ago we organised a shoot to photograph our new fine art prints; it went really well and we are very excited about the results. Would you like a little sneaky peek......? Sure, no problem!



We would love to know what you think.

We will be adding all of our gorgeous new fine art prints to the website in the next few days where you will see all the rest so keep popping back for a visit or join our mailing list and we will let you know when they are available to buy.

The Happy Spaces family is growing ........ again!

We wanted to let you know some very happy, exciting news from Happy HQ. Our very lovely director, Mia, is due to have her first baby this summer and we couldn’t be happier for her.

As you can see from the photo above, pregnancy definitely agrees with her and she is blooming. Please join me in congratulating Mia and wishing her well for her third trimester in the summer warmth.

We will keep you posted when the little munchkin decides to make an appearance. Watch this space...... !

New Happy Sets!

Preparing your nursery for a new arrival? Be inspired by our 6 new eye-catching and unique Happy Sets now available at happyspaces.co.uk. Click here for more info