About

Hi, I'm Fiona and I'm the creator and maker of everything that you'll find in McPoodle Shop. 

This is my origins story:

It started with a clown

That's right, a clown that haunted most of our dreams as a child (provided you were also born in the last millenium and are from the UK).

Rewind the clock back to 2012, I'd just moved to Manchester with the dream of making props for kids' TV programmes. Like every young and keen person trying to break into a new industry, I decided to get some business cards printed but I wanted mine to stand out from all the other faceless business cards that get handed out at the rate of knots....so I decided to recreate the infamous BBC Test Card F image.

I had a red t-shirt and a red alice band, my housemate had an i-Pad so I could play naughts and crosses but I didn't have a Bubbles the Clown to play with because the internet did not provide the world with such things back then. So as any budding wannabe prop maker would do, I made my own.

I overthought the whole process but I eventually ended up with a pretty damn good replica of the clown which I was very proud of and I now had the best business cards anybody has ever seen. My housemate was particuarly impressed by the clown that I had made from scratch and insisted that it would do really well if I sold it online. To my surprise, a few months' later I had my first sale. Somebody wanted one to feature in their band's music video. I was absolutely over the moon!

Since then I have made and shipped off over 70 clowns and they have been helping people through the lockdown blues, advertising hair salons, appearing onstage with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and looking bloody awesome at many a fancy dress party! I'm pretty sure every one of my clowns are now living their best lives and I love hearing tales of them out in the world. 

Yes enough about the clowns already, what other things do you make?

Since having my own pocket of the internet to sell things, I started to expand into other things. I mainly create things that amuse me or make me happy and I wanted to use upcycled things as much as possible. 

My candles came next, using upcycled food containers (mainly baked bean tins, Spam tins and Marmite jars