Sole traders

Pop in and Paint

Sandra and David Fassam took over Master Plaster Casters - a business with upgrade potential when the previous owners retired in August 2008.  Sandra who is from Florida and has a background in American Folk art runs the business.

‘We rebranded the business and called it Pop In and Paint to reflect what we do, which is to provide a venue for people of all ages to come in and paint plaster models.  Rather than using pottery which then has to be fired (taking an extra day), the models can be taken away freshly painted which saves the children being disappointed.

We have up to 4 children’s parties over weekends and during the week school children often come in – up to 60 at a time! We split them into groups of 20 to make it more manageable.

Our future plans may include expanding our range of entertainment to include things like making balloon models and story-telling sessions for children. We also want to expand into the wholesale business, providing models to paint to schools and clubs and possibly even concessions.

We also see ourselves as giving something back to the community by working with charities such as the Chernobyl Children’s Life Line charity. This charity provides children from Chernobyl, who are forced to live in a contaminated environment, with places with UK families during holiday periods and we give them free sessions as a group. We are also talking to other charities to extend the support we give.

‘It’s easy to describe our business as children painting plaster models – we see it as giving children real entertainment in our family friendly venue’

David was already a client of AMS Accountancy as a Freelance Contractor and said that ‘Having AMS as a reliable accountancy team onside has given us the time to concentrate on the core business and providing a good customer service. We see AMS as quality providers for our accountancy service.’

The Chernobyl Children’s Life Line charity can be found here http://www.ccll.org.uk/swindon/ for info. Link to website www.PopInAndPaint.co.uk  Also on Facebook as Pop In and Paint.