This Is Who We Are & This Is What We Do.

We are El (on the left) and Bex (on the right) and we are StuffedNonsense. StuffedNonsense is handmade business specializing in quirky plush and home wares.

By The Yard is the new chapter in the StuffedNonsense story.

We spent five years ‘playing around’ with StuffedNonsense. When we say playing around what we mean is we dipped our toes into craft fairs and stocking shops around the UK & we also dabbled in the world of Etsy. We even opened a small studio shop which we were foolish enough to ‘assume’ would work.  It was a lot of fun and we met some truly super people along the way, but it wasn't paying the bills and we began to get a little frustrated that we were putting soo much hard work in and not getting anything out the other end.  The impending arrival of El and Johns little bundle of joy (the bundle of joy is no longer impending and she is called Efa, she arrived on the 4^th of July healthy and happy) also made us realize that we couldn't play at this anymore. We had to get serious or get a grown up job somewhere.

So we decided to pull our fingers out and our socks up. We got serious about achieving our dreams; we got serious about doing this for a living.

We took some time to sit down and really figure out what we wanted and once we had put all the ideas into one pot we stirred it around and poked it a bit. We knew we wanted to have our own shop full of our work and also the work of all the other talented makers and designers out there. We knew we wanted to help new designers and makers figure out their approach to retail outlets. We knew we wanted to run workshops and show people that they all had a crafty bone in them somewhere. We knew we wanted to create a space that would be inspiring. In short we wanted to become the creative hub of Cheltenham.

And so By The Yard Was born.

This is us trying to achieve our dreams. 

Welcome aboard, we hope you enjoy your stay. 

xxx