I’m not the most patient person so it’s been quite hard telling myself that building up a business from scratch is not going to happen overnight. The biggest problem being that when I set up as a freelance graphic designer, it did literally happen overnight. There were a few dry spots, but for the most part since the day I left my permanent job I was pretty much set for work. I never really had to do any marketing or self-promotion, pretty much all my clients came through word of mouth, ex-colleagues etc.

But this is something new, something more creative, something more flexible, something that not many people know I can do. Most importantly something that will exist with and around my family. There will still be late nights and short deadlines but these will have to happen around playground visits and the (actually quite loud) pitter patter of little feet. I’ve been doing a few stationery designs here and there when I have time, but everything has been feeling a bit all over the place. So over the past couple of days I’ve been having a good think about what I will create, who would be interested and what it will hopefully mean to them. I’ve had a few good chats with a very good friend who is in pretty much the same place as me and that has left me feeling very inspired. Yesterday my head was buzzing with all the things I want to do, but I was feeling pretty tired. I told myself if it was earlier than 9.30pm then I’d start creating something. It was 9.24pm so two hours later and I’d finished my first little steps:

I dragged out my favourite thing, my sewing machine. As much as I love my Mac and all my pencils and paper, there’s something much more satisfying about my sewing machine. I know I don’t use it how you’re really supposed to. I probably sew more paper than cloth, my lines are never straight, my tension is all over the place, I’m more of a sketch sewer than a fine artist, but the results end up feeling really ‘me’. So the little steps I started last night are the beginning of a new ‘little bulldog’ shop banner. A couple need redoing, in fact I’ll probably redo all of them, but it’s a start and it’s a huge step away from the client-led retail designer I’ve been for the past few years. It feels right, so we’ll see.

Slide 8 x 8″ Print by Cassia Beck

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Scrap Bag Festival Bunting by Flaming Nora

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The Circus Is In Town – Mini Print by Blackoutwell

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Carousel Rose by Maria Allen

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Bandstand by Lynsey Hunter

Yes I need some of this. This is what’s missing, it’s so obvious when I look at the collections of designers who have it. Here’s who’s inspiring me to be more coherent:

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Charlotte Macey Textiles:

Beautiful linen homewares with line drawing embroidery. A simple but strong and recognisable style.

oatmeal ‘coffeeee’ cosy

navy beach huts tea towel

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Isak:

I love everything from Isak. I’d deck out the whole house in all their things if I could. Instantly recognisable, bit retro, very Scandinavian. They make me want to move to Sweden.

blue penguin wallpaper

lovebirds tray and mug

123 wall decoration

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The Linen Cat:

Beautifully made, simple, timeless. All created by one of those incredible full-time mums who still manage to create wonderful things and run successful businesses.

Linen Cat in Pink Russian Doll Print Dress

Ellie Floral Bunny Lavendar Bag

Hungry Bear Plate from James Ward

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Chocolate Cake Coin Purse from Dinky Daisy

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Alice in Wonderland ‘Eat Me’ Cake Toppers by Crafty Pagan Designs

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Apple and Pear Card from Little Bird Too

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Cream Egg Cosy from Charlotte Macey Textiles

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Now I’m even more hungry.

]]> http://bonbah.co.uk/2010/07/16/folksy-friday-hungry/feed/ 3 http://bonbah.co.uk/2010/07/10/little-bulldog-design/ http://bonbah.co.uk/2010/07/10/little-bulldog-design/#comments Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:04:12 +0000 joanne http://bonbah.co.uk/?p=51 I officially back from maternity leave to my freelance business, little bulldog design, a couple of months ago, but you wouldn’t really know it as not much in the way of work has come in. I blamed it on the recession for a little while, but it quickly became apparent that my clients had either understandably found replacement designers while I was off or there’s just not alot of room for a freelancer who is at the beck and call of a little boy during most working hours. So although I will hopefully still get the odd design job, it’s time to finally take the initiative to create on my own and see where that takes me. As it’s the world I’m now becoming apart of I’ve started with a few baby designs so we’ll see where that takes me.

birthday invitation

My website is soon to be revamped but in the meantime I’m starting to post new personalised invitations on Folksy and Etsy, if you haven’t already visited either they’re very addictive and full of amazing stuff you won’t find in any high street shop. I’m also thinking of offering a sort of invitation service for busy yummy mummies – sending out the invites and managing reminders etc. Also on the cards are packs of personalised children’s birthday cards so you can buy them all in one swoop rather than stressing at the last minute.

lace dress wedding invitation

sunshine corsage from Mud Puppy

complete van-atic greeting card from hello sunshine

vivid green paisley flowered sun dress from Kryshees

happiness earrings- sunshine yellow from Chain of Daisies

'The Summer Sun' print from bubble or squeak

Click on the photos to view their other lovely items. Here’s to more sunshine.

owl bum, originally uploaded by joannevc.

I’ve never been very good at keeping up this blog and over the past 8 months I haven’t been very good at keeping up with much of anything except a certain little boy. But it’s time to get back into the swing of things albeit a different set of things. My world has now been totally babyfied and I am 100% besotted. As everyone says nothing can prepare you for parenthood and it’s true nothing compares, it’s wonderful and it’s all consuming. My baby’s not a Gina Ford baby or a Baby Whisperer baby, he’s not a BLW baby or an Annabel Karmel die-hard. He sleeps when he’s tired and eats when he’s hungry. Sometimes he guzzles mushed up food and sometimes he’s not having any of it, sometimes he gnaws on broccoli florets and sometimes he shouts at them. I couldn’t tell you what he’ll be doing at 4am tomorrow or at 2pm the next day. He is (and I’m completely unbiased) the best baby ever, he is a million times better than I ever thought a baby could be and I had pretty high expectations. But he’s obviously a bit hard to plan a work schedule around other than planning on not getting anything non-baby done while he’s awake. So be it.

There is alot going on in this city for kids and alot of it is free, for the moment anyway. So I’m hoping to share the things I find here so if anyone else happens upon this blog they can take advantage of it as it’s often hard to find out where and when things are happening. I’d also like to keep up the original purpose of this blog by talking about the interesting and inspirational design and craft that I come across.

I wasn’t too sure about the Tate Modern when it first opened. I think that was because I was still very much in love with the Pompidou in Paris, which is still my favourite museum. So on my first visit to the new Tate Modern, shortly after it opened, all I did was compare it to the Pompidou and complain about the room of poo (still not a fan). But over the years it’s slowly grown on me and now I love it. As well as the museum collection itself (apart from the poo), I love the building and I love the bookshop which in a dream world I would transplant to my house. But I guess having it easily accessible along the South Bank is just as good. I normally spend all my time in there looking at the books, but when we went yesterday (to see the Cy Twombly exhibit – separate post later) I wandered over to the card section. And I think, as well as having the best book collection, they might also have the best cards. Here’s just a couple of the companies they stock (more on the others later)…

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we are family design

quirky & eco-friendly too, they’re all printed in Britain with vegetable based inks on FSC, chlorine free paper. who knew you could make a nice pattern out of sprouts?!

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rose hip cards

the notebooks are on recycled paper but not sure about the cards. these weren’t the designs they had at the tate but they’re lovely all the same

But anyway, back to little bulldog – the home page will change every now and then and I’m planning on using different images/illustrations of the dog but for now I still really like the one that’s up.

Here’s what I did last night while watching Spooks and distracting the dog with a squeaky ball during the fifth night of fireworks. So you see it is possible to throw a squeaky ball, follow an increasingly convoluted terrorist plotline and make a very amateur stuffed bear. Don’t look too closely because I sewed his head on wrong – can’t blame that on Spooks, that happened during the very edited version of Helvetica shown on BBC1. Who’d have thought they’d show a program about a typeface on mainstream TV? Well done Gary Hustwit. Not only did you make a brilliant film but you’ve given me a great transition away from a stuffed bear and onto typography.

The BBC Imagine version missed out quite a lot of the original but still had most of the funniest bits (yes really!) from Erik Spiekermann (top right – very funny German, yes really!) and Micheal Bierut (bottom left – very sarcastic New Yorker, what really?).

We saw the full Helvetica film a month or so ago at the Design Museum. Although it’s not the best venue for watching a film (basically projected on a wall) that was made up for by a pretty interesting panel of guests afterwards – Jonathan Barnbrook (who we seem to be stalking), Matthew Carter and Gary Hustwit. It was a pretty interesting discussion with all three having very different views = Barnbrook – very anti-Helvetica, Carter – very pro-Helvetica from a craftsman’s point of view, and Hustwit – just very very excited about everything in general! Who would’ve thought a typeface could be so controversial!

But I’m supposed to be keeping this kind of stuff for my designy blog once Little Bulldog is up and running – hmm should be doing that rather than this really – so I’ll probably have a proper babble about Helvetica once that’s up. So back to the amateur bear (not such a good transition this time). He was made from The Cute Book from Aranzi Aronzo which Jeff gave me for my birthday

So far the bear is the first to come to life, but watch out come Christmas! So friends and family, any preferences, let me know because you know you’re getting one (don’t worry I’ll learn how to sew on heads by then). Jeff’s already ordered a monkey surprisingly – but there’s everything from squirrels to aliens.

I wonder how Erik Spiekermann would feel about featuring in the same blog as a stuffed bear… Well at least I didn’t use Helvetica.