Two days remaining for the free product images in exchange for an annual subscription of £150 for your own web pages on www.peakdistrictcreations.co.uk Or look at it another way, you get 30 + product images for £150 and free web space for a year - all you have to do is contact me and pay the deposit to secure the offer - then we agree a time to get the images and text for me to upload....

Mathew Look

contact

After a long day  yesterday with a few frustrations along the way, the Solar PV systems are both up and running - a great thanks to the two installation guys that stuck at it all day - in what turned out to be "one of those jobs". A huge thanks to my long time friend Peter Millard who came up trumps with a special purpose drill bit for some last minute bracket mods' - from what I can see the fixings will probably still be around well after the roof has disapeared into dust !

Thankfuly we have had quite a bit of sun today and I have seen the combined systems generate in exces of 10KWh today.

Now I have to restock the tea bag jar, instant coffee and biscuit box..... small price to pay to keep the guys chirpy !  All that is left to do is process the paperwork and register for the Feed In Tarrif to ensure the investment starts generating some revenue.

Drop me a line with the contact form if you would further details.

Mathew Look

The panels have now been in for almost a week. They have been repeatedly washed by our glorious summer weather and have had a few hours of direct cloud free sunlight - I keep getting asked....'so how are they performing'.....  it is still early days. My rough calculations say that they are returning  approx 8% revenue via the FIT - if you then add in the free power to use and not having to buy as much in then the return 'could' get as high as 10% - BUT I stress its early days and my calculations are rough - after all, July &  August are supposed to be the best months for PV generation. I am tracking it and will chart the KWh over time through the year to see how things perform.

I know its small change to some but so far they have generated 17.6 KWh @ 43.3pKWh = £ 7.62 and its not exactly been the best of weather  !

Based on the results so far,  the estimation used by my chosen installer doesn't seam far off the mark - which is reasurring.

Mat

The Creative Greenhouse /Antenna Exhibition

There's already been a lot of interest from you in the Christmas exhibition at Antenna so here as requested is some more details;

Creative Greenhouse members are invited to apply to sell their work at Antenna the creative business centre and meeting place in Nottingham www.antenna.uk.com . We are looking for edgy, affordable works in 2D that are offered for sale immediately for display in the foyer area. This area is staffed and will be secure as the centre operates a 'members & guests only' entrance policy.

Artists and makers working in any 2D medium are invited to submit work for selection; this work will then be displayed until sold or until the exhibition closes on 13^th January 2012.

As this is our first venture into collaborating with Antenna and to support our members, we will not be charging a commission fee on sales (except all card payments will incur a 3.5% admin cost).

• All artists must be Creative Greenhouse members to exhibit
• Artwork delivered to Antenna 10.30am - 4.30pm, Friday 11th November 2011
• Selection and hanging will take place on Saturday 12th November 2011
• Exhibition closes Friday 13^th January 2012
• Work taken down Saturday 14th January 2012
• Edgy, affordable, 2D wall based artworks, priced, framed and ready to go
• Buy and take policy
• All monies for works sold will be forwarded to artists after the exhibition closes

Also, associate Antenna membership to be available for Creative Greenhouse members - at the reduced cost of £20 per year.

We are also hoping to hold a Creative Greenhouse launch event to coincide with the exhibition date tbc.

WE NEED WORK TO SELL

The aim of the exhibition is not unlike our previous "...and a Partridge in a Pear Tree" Christmas Gift Shop at Rufford Craft Centre gallery. This is to provide an opportunity for members' to sell their work and Antenna visitors to buy their Christmas presents from a variety of artists at affordable prices.

The majority of work sold in this previous exhibition was priced at under £50. Our aim is to display work that reflects this buying trend and encourages on the spot "impulse" purchases. Therefore we are looking to select most work which can be retailed at under £50, some in the £50 -£100 band and encourage a ceiling of at a maximum £500 where appropriate (depending on the nature of the work). Where possible the selection on display from each maker will include a range of items of different retail values and where possible staff present will always encourage enquiries regarding commissioned work.

Selected artists and makers will be expected to appropriately label work with retail price and reference code (full details of how to do this will be provided) and will be encouraged to supply multiples/additional stock to the gallery as items can be bought and taken away on the same day.

Please Note.

We reserve the right to not exhibit work submitted. This will be decided at selection on 11^th and 12^th November 2011, collection of non-selected works will be the responsibility of the artist at a time and date approved by the organisers.

Terms and conditions of contract will be available shortly.

Further enquiries and questions on size and/or suitability of work please contact Paul Hough - info@creativegreenhouse.org.uk

Here is a smaple creation from Peak Films this was sent to me a few days ago ...

Finally worked out how to get the time lapse sequence uploaded onto You Tube - see here

Take a peek at this blog by Ingrid Karllson-Kemp.

Blog

Mat

Two Months Live Today

Peak District Creations has now been live on line for 8 weeks and growing steadily. We now have 15 creator subscribers promoting their products on the site, twice that of a month ago.

Here are the statistics from Google Analytics:-

1081 Visits of which 964 UK based.

604 Unique Visitors

6341 page visits

34% bounce rate

5.5 Minutes Avg time on site.

54% New Visitors

Visitors find the site via Search Engines (30%), Referring Sites (33%) or directly (37%).

Over 33% of site visits were between 1 and 10 minutes in duration.

Over half of all visits viewed  2 pages or more and over a quarter of the visitors to Peak District Creations viewed more than 8 pages.

Greatest number of visits goes to 'For Goodness Cake' at 192 page views – which when you consider Sue Bowker joined the site in the last 5 weeks – that is pretty good going. She is only just ahead of the field so it all may change next month, the shark cake image is very popular even in Iceland (not the freezer department !)

Lots of things kick off tomorrow.

The Solar PV Installation begins at Peak District Creations HQ - 16 Viessmann Solar Panels get fixed onto two roof elevations, wired up to twin inverters and then through the wonders of 'electricery'  supply power for either my use or supply back to the grid for which we receive a small 'feed in tarriff'. Lots of reasons to do this, lots of reasons not to.... for me, it makes sense financialy, environmentaly and I like 'technical gear' especially when I don't understand it , in truth I have made the investment to benefit my two kids without who , life would be so much less than it is.

In addition to the above, Peak District Creations is 2 full months old - that is it was officially launched on June 16th and 16th August marks the 8 weeks live period. Once power is back on tomorrow evening I will go through the Google Analytics to see how we as a site are doing for visitor numbers and hit rate etc - for a clue we were in sight of our two month target last week.....

The drawing is by Rebecca Benstead - currently 'heavy with child' she is running her Picture Framing & local Creations Supply Business in Chapel en le Frith, and when not out with Bruno the Boxer and following the instructions from her midwife - she is feet up and drawing a great image of a field mouse - I caught a glimpse of it last week - I hope to be able to show the image on this site ....

I hope to get out with my Nikon in the next few weeks to try to capture some morning sun over the High Peak ...... then all too soon term starts and the routine of school runs kick in.

Update soon

Mathew Look

It is all getting very exciting here at Peak District Creations HQ ! - the scaffolding has arrived and gone up in double quick time. The overhanging and shading branchwood  have been cut back to clear the roof elevation for sunlight above the workshop for the smaller of the two system installations.

Installation of the PV panels and inverters etc starts Tuesday AM 16th August. I hope to get some images up after the work next week. Some concearns remain regarding the roof fixings onto the stone flag roof at front...... fingers crossed.

I've put in a special request for an indian summer starting mid next week, looks like we have had the tail  end of the monsoon season so should be good to go here in the Hgh Peak.

Mat Look