My friend, fellow creator and New England resident Beattie Alvarez is outrageously talented, with many strings to her bow. A published writer, illustrator, editor, book designer, and toymaker, Beattie also owns and runs one of Armidale’s favourite shops, Granny Fi’s Toy Cupboard, which also has a nationwide clientele. I’ve had the joy and privilege of working with Beattie on many projects, including many books for the acclaimed Armidale-based small publishing house we are both associated with, Christmas Press, and also with the New England Writers’ Centre, for which Beattie previously worked as program manager for several years. With grace, humour, and an impressive creative energy, Beattie manages to wear many different hats and make them all look like they were always meant to be, and recently I caught up with her to chat about her many creative and business achievements, and ask how she does it.
I guess that is in fact the first question, Beattie! How do you do it? How do you manage to combine so many skills and roles so well?
Well, I’m not sure that I do! However, there’s this person in my life that I call ‘Past Beattie’. She is awesome! When I’m running around like a headless chook, I often find that Past Beattie has already done a lot of the prep work for me. She is far more organised and business minded than I am!
How did it all begin? I know you come from a creative family and were creative even as a kid, but did anything or anyone in particular inspire you to take on the wide variety of things you do, or did it develop over time?
As with everything else in my life, I fell into everything by accident! The writing started when my favourite TV show was cancelled… without a proper ending. So I wrote my own! To date, my very first story has over 250k reads on Fan Fiction. The rest of it, is really because of my mum, Fiona McDonald. She had the opportunity, but not the time, to open a toy shop — which is something she’d always wanted. I managed it from the beginning and eventually took over officially in 2017. I grew up surrounded by stories, artists and a house full of handmade toys, and despite swearing I’d never become an artist because I wanted to make money when I grew up (I’m still waiting for both the money and the growing up), I seem to have become one!
You are a keen reader as well as a writer. Tell us about some of the books that you’ve loved and been inspired by. And what about art? How did you get into illustration?
Oh dear! How long have we got? There are so many books that I’ve loved and been inspired by for so many different reasons! I will start this by saying that almost all of the books are for children and young adults. Why would I read about grown up stuff when I could have an adventure without the worry of paying electricity bills? I always have a full handbag thanks to Jill Barklem’s In the High Hills (part of the Brambly Hedge series) which taught me to always have ‘the essential gear’. I’m just going to list some of my favourites, most of which involve the type of magic that movie makers forget about — cosiness, great descriptions of food and imagination. The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club (yes, yes, I know!), a lot of Enid Blyton — from The Enchanted Wood to Malory Towers with a good dose of Noddy thrown in, classics like A Little Princess, Coral Island (one of Grandad’s favourites!), and the Railway Children. Narnia, how could I forget Narnia! Although, I will admit that it was the old BBC tv series that first got me into the land of Narnia. If you haven’t watched it, you should! Harry Potter, how could I own a magical toy shop AND be a writer without having had Harry as a big part of my life? And then we have some lesser known ones like The Changeover by Margaret Mahy, Tajore Arkle and Somewhere Around the Corner, both by Jackie French, A Place for Me which was Robert Westall’s last book and one of only a couple of books on my list that doesn’t have magic in it. We could even add in the Sweet Valley High series (again, I know how bad they are!), but I read them until they fell apart! All of these books have shaped who I am and what I do. I’m actually feeling a bit guilty and sorry for other favourite books of mine that haven’t made the list!
You’ve written several books, including four jointly created under the pen-name of Phoebe McArthur with your mother, artist and author Fiona McDonald, while your book as sole author, Escape from Sherwood, was illustrated by your husband, artist David Allan. What’s it like, collaborating with family on a book? What challenges and pleasures were there?
Now, this is what we do best! We are a family that works, creates and imagines together. And I love it! Mum and I have always tossed our writing back and forth between us to make a story as good as it can possibly be. Sometimes she writes the initial ideas and sometimes I do and then we edit each other’s work. It’s gotten to the point that we’ll be going through a manuscript and we won’t know who wrote what! So that’s why we started writing together under a nom-de-plume. Plus, there’s never enough room on a book cover for both of our names!
I actually met David through Mum (they were friends first), so it is easy for all of us to work together. When we were doing Escape from Sherwood together, it was quite simple — I said what I’d like illustrated and he either did it or gave me an option that would work better. We often share ideas and work together even if we aren’t officially working on the same project. David and I are working on a book at the moment, an idea of his that he’s been thinking about for years. I’m trying to turn those ideas into a middle grade novel. I write a chapter, send it to him, he tells me what he’d like added or removed, and we go back and forth until I’ve written the next chapter! Working with them both is an absolute joy!
You are the principal book designer for Christmas Press. Can you tell us a bit about how you started and what you learned along the way? What is your favourite part of book designing—and your least favourite? 😊
Haha, how did I start? Well! As usual, I fell into it by accident! It was my first big job as an editor — Once Upon a Christmas published by Christmas Press and David was illustrating. We had young children at that point and time got away from us. Back then, I knew how to these things on a computer: open a word document to write and edit, open the internet and turn on music to have something to work to. And that’s just about it. However, he was on a deadline, the book was going to the printer Very Soon. So while he illustrated, he was giving me instructions on how to use InDesign. And I mean very detailed instructions like: move the mouse to file and left click, no not right click, left click and move the mouse down to place. Now click that and choose the image and click okay, left click!
It was a struggle! Eventually, I got the hang of it and once I did, I realised how much fun I was having! When the finished book arrived and was so pretty and shiny, I couldn’t wait to do the next one!
I find doing the initial layout quite therapeutic and amazingly, the work is now almost automatic! Gone are the days of trying to remember the steps, I do them without thinking. Then we get to the fun part of designing it! Working out which fonts, what size, how to make the motifs work well. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t! The bit I like least would be when I get sent a document and the author hasn’t got a good grasp on how computers work. It is tedious to go through line by line and remove all the manual indents. Even when I do a global change, I still have to check each line.
Your beautiful handmade toys, especially the dragons, are a big hit with people of all ages, not just in the shop, but at the conventions and festivals around Australia that you participate in. How did you start on that particular creative track? And what is your favourite part of toy-making?
I’ve already talked about how we started the shop, but the actual toy making was a bit of a surprise. Mum was making dragons and we sold out on our opening day! She then told me to take orders… but I took a few too many and had to dust off my high school sewing skills very, very quickly to fill them all. Eventually, I had enough knowledge to start designing my own patterns and… once again bit off more than I could chew, so I graduated from Dragon Apprentice to Head Dragon Hatcher and David became the apprentice. He has also completed his apprenticeship and is now sometimes known as Mr Mandrake.
The first event we did was Supanova back in 2015. I did NOT have high hopes for it, however, when Mum and I found ourselves madly sewing in the hotel room after the first night, I realised that I was wrong! We sold out at that event and just about sold out every one since then. In the last few years we’ve started branching out into Medieval fairs and similar shows because we suddenly worked out that they LOVED dragons back in those times!
Other than selling the toys, my favourite part of it is seeing people falling in love with something that we’ve made. Our toys aren’t just toys, they’re art that we’ve created and selling art — which we all know is ridiculously hard — is a fabulous feeling!
Granny Fi’s is a very special shop, and has many dedicated clients, supporters and followers, both in person and online. Tells us about how it started, and what it’s like, running a busy small business, as a creative person?
Granny Fi’s Toy Cupboard has changed a lot since we started. It has evolved from a simple toy shop into one that specialises in fantasy and fandoms. We have things in the shop that shouldn’t go together, but somehow do, from fairy gardening to pop-culture to original art, books and of course, the handmade toys.
I love what I do, but it’s not without its difficulties. Money, of course, is the hardest thing. Not having done any business degrees or any degrees at all, I often find myself floundering or sometimes drowning in paperwork that I don’t understand, but have to make it work anyway. The events and online are the easy part, it’s the day-after-day of sitting in a shop in a very quiet town, that gets me down. However, I’m off to renew my lease on the shop today, so I guess I’m a glutton for punishment!
You have a great social media presence. What is your vision for it, and what do you think is the best strategy for not just collecting likes, but also encouraging people to seek out your products?
Our social media (mainly Facebook, but also Instagram) is my happy place! The community that has grown around our page is an amazingly supportive one and I think of all the followers as my friends! They’re there for me when I have a good day — or a bad one. They boost me up when we’ve not had a sale in three days and I can talk to them about anything, movies that I’ve seen and liked (or hated), the state of the roads and the weather, anything! Except politics. We don’t use naughty words like politics or adult in the shop!
I don’t have any particular vision for our social media. Apparently we’re allowed to ‘monetize’ our account now, but I not have any clue how to do that, nor do I really want to!
I have learnt a few things though which help with algorithms and reach.
- If I put a link, price or the words ‘website’ or ‘sale’ into a post, then it doesn’t get seen by anyone until I edit it a few hours later to say ‘hey guys, help me boost this!’. I get around that by using terms like ‘it’s for S on the W now’ and adding the link in as an edit later.
- A couple of days of big reach means that it’ll be a lower reach for a few days after that, so I try to time things that I think will have a bigger reach than others and not put anything that I want to have a big reach immediately after a big post.
- People love stories! I’m a storyteller at heart and I don’t like boring posts that say ‘buy this, I made it’. All of our social media, toys on the website, etc are FULL of stories.
- We get followers BECAUSE of the stories! There are some people that have become invested in the shop and my family because of what and how I post things. It is wonderful!
You go to a lot of fabulous events around the country to sell your toys and books. Can you tell us a bit about them, and what are your favourite aspects of participating—as well as the challenges?
We’ve touched on this already, but I’ll add in a bit more here.
One reason that we do so many events is simply cash flow. We can make more in a two day event than we sometimes do the rest of the month in the shop. It’s not just about that though. The events we go to are like entering a different world! All the costumes and cosplay, conversations that you never thought you’d overhear, the love and happiness that exudes from the attendees. Almost everyone is happy and they want to be there!
The hardest part is having enough toys already made to make the event financially worth it! There are only so many hours in the day in which I can sew and I’ve asked really nicely, but the powers that be, still won’t extend it to be a 36 hour day. They also haven’t turned the heat down in Queensland, despite my very polite requests!
Living and working as a creative and small businessperson in a regional town has its share of both pleasures and challenges, some of which are similar to those in the city but others quite different. What, for you, are the advantages and disadvantages of being regionally based? And if you had a magic wand, what would you change in terms of improving and/or highlighting the situation?
Oh boy! Settle in, this could take a while!
I hate bringing everything back to money, but it’s on the forefront of my mind at the moment — constantly actually.
To stay in business we need to make sales. It’s as simple as that. Or is it? To make the sales we need the stock, to be able to buy the stock or fabric or dragon fluff we need the money! But the money has been spent on rent, insurance, utilities and those boring things. So we need to make more to make more to make more… and it goes on and on. Now, most business people would run away screaming if they saw our sales figures vs outgoings. I’ve been tempted myself! But, as people keep telling me, they’ve never seen a business like ours. So I stay and I try. I try the same things and different things, I take on more work or new ideas to try to work out what will bring people down to the Mall (a pedestrian mall in Armidale where our shop is) and once we have them in the Mall, how to get them into the shop!
Regional areas like Armidale are beautiful, relaxing and quiet. Sometimes too quiet! When tourists come to town, we do well, it’s changing the mindset of the locals that’s hard. Locals tend to have their routines, their standard way of shopping and Armidale has a reputation of not having anything that they want. When we can get them into the town and away from the shopping centre or the ease of online shopping, then they discover that there IS stuff in town. There are shops and different things to buy and explore.
Instead of a magic wand (because I do sell those and they don’t seem to work for me) could I have another tornado instead? And could it hit the big shopping centre in the middle of the night when there’s no one there to get hurt? No, not really, but I think one of the problems that the town has is that we’re not a big enough population to be able to support three different shopping districts. We’re too spread out for any of them to fully thrive, so removing one would force things back into the centre of town. Also, if they could remove timed parking from around the CBD, that would be great!
As a last note — thank you for inviting me to be part of this! These questions (and trying to think of answers) have reminded me of books that I need to reread, toys that I want to make, and given me new ideas on how to help my business!
If you’re visiting Armidale, make sure to visit Granny Fi’s Toy Cupboard! And if you can’t make it there, visit Granny Fi’s website to browse and order dragons, dolls, bears, books and original art, no matter where you are in Australia.
Feathers of the Firebird 