Anyone for Whinberry Pie?

Over the past few weeks the organisers of the Frome Super Market - now rebranded as the Frome Independent (nice new branding it is too) - have organised various workshops for the traders to attend. I have been fortunate enough to attend all of them covering accountancy, social media, making the most of the web and this weeks branding. I thoroughly enjoyed this Mondays workshop on branding. The workshop was led by Luke Manning of the award winning Pencil Studio based in Frome (http://pencilstudio.co.uk/) and was another great chance to meet like minded people to exchange ideas! Very much looking forward to the next market in just under two weeks.

Whilst in the branding workshop we each had to describe our company, what we did, and the brand surrounding it. This got me thinking that perhaps there was not enough information on the website about where the name 'Whinberry & Antler' actually came from. So I thought that I would create a little bit more information on the 'About' page to illustrate where the name came from.

So I created a new page 'What's a Whinberry?' - as a lot of people often ask if I am either Whinberry or Antler at markets! 

I also thought that it may be really nice to include a Whinberry Pie recipe. So you can now find out the story behind the name and then bake yourself some very tasty Whinberry Pie!

Follow the trail

You may have noticed a few changes on the W&A website homepage over the past few days... Well, I have been having a few little doodling sessions and thought that it might be quite nice to include some deer footprints in the website banner image as I have been trying to think of a nice way to use this space for a while now. It's also given me a few ideas for future products. So here you go, follow the deer trail to W&A!

I also experimented a little bit with one of the new designs on Photoshop to create a little Valentines image for whinberryantler.com. It was nice to use a little bit of colour which I might try to use in some future screen prints.

I hope you have a lovely (badger badger badger) Valentines day! W&A.

Getting creative with ceramics

I've wanted to create a ceramic range for a while now but it's taken me a while to decide on how much of the manufacturing process I wanted to do myself (in an ideal world I would be doing all of it!). It seems that the best way forward is to use a British company to manufacture the items for me so that I still have time to draw, print and sew all of the other Whinberry & Antler products. As I'm sure anyone who has ever tried running a business selling products they have designed or made, you soon learn that there is only so much you can do yourself!! 

Yesterday, whilst in a stationery shop in Frome, for which I am a very frequent customer, I picked up a ceramic pen to have a bit of fun with. This is a pen that once oven baked onto the ceramic leaves a design that is dishwasher proof, which is so important now that most households today use a dishwasher. And nothing is more disappointing than when a design on your favourite mug starts to fade.

So I came home and grabbed an old white plate from the cupboard and got drawing! 

I am quite pleased with the result. The lovely feedback that this plate received on the W&A Facebook page has really made up my mind : I need to do a ceramic range!

The only downside of the porcelain pen is that it does leave a raised surface and tends to go a bit textured in areas that are coloured as the ink layers up on itself. Plus whilst I enjoyed drawing this plate, I would certainly find it difficult to maintain stock levels!! However, I have now placed an order with a company in Cornwall to get the very first collection of W&A mugs made up (very exciting!). They source their ceramics from Stoke and then do the entire process themselves in house.

So hopefully if you get a chance to come along to the Frome Super Market on Sunday 2nd March you'll get a chance to see the new products in person!! I can't wait for customers to see them! 

Stay tuned and watch this space for photos....

New ideas for a New Year

Well 2014 has been off to a good start after a very busy Christmas season. Over the past month I have been really thinking about the year ahead and what that means for Whinberry & Antler. Creative Thursdays have gone well in January with two new designs complete... I am trying my best not to share these until they are on finished products! 

A sneak peek.... 

I have also been attending some workshops organised by the Frome Super Market for their traders. They have been really useful (accounting and social media covered so far) and I'm really looking forward to the next sessions. More than anything it has been great to meet other designer makers in the area - working at home is great but it can be quite isolating, so having the chance to meet like minded creatives is always so nice. In particular I have met fellow screen printers Robin and Mould (http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/robinandmould) who design bright and bold animal illustrations to make lovely homewares and Lost Shapes (http://www.lostshapes.com) who screen print ethically sourced clothing with their quirky designs - definitely worth checking them out!!

W&A will be back at the Frome market in March - the market runs the first Sunday of every month from March through to December. Very much looking forward to another lovely Sunday in Frome - this really is the best market I've ever been to so definitely worth getting there if you can! 

Scenes from the market in December, it was very busy and had such a friendly thriving atmosphere! 

Some Antlers and a Big Bus.

Hello,

Well, a little while ago I decided to try and battle a creative block by introducing 'Creative Thursday' to my week... and what a difference it has made!

The best thing to do when drawing seems hard is to just... draw!

I have been drawing a selection of animals in various styles and very soon they will be put onto my silkscreens so that I can start printing and making them into cushions, tea towels and more! I am aiming to have all the new designs out for Christmas- in fact they will be launched at the Country Living Christmas Fair in London at the end of October. There will also be a few more product lines as well as some new fabrics; so I am very excited about launching the new products. Here's a little snippet of whats coming;

Finally some Antlers!

In other news, I am heading into Shrewsbury this week to join the Start-Up Britain bus as it stops in the Square on Thursday morning. I will be there meeting people with new ideas for businesses, helping to give out advice and encourage people to pursue these ideas. I visited the bus when it stopped in Telford nearly two years ago, with not much more than an idea, some business cards and a small cutting of my first sample of printed fabric (featuring the marching hedgehogs)- I met some really nice, friendly and helpful people and was even awarded a Dell laptop for Best Business Idea that day! It was a pivotal moment for me and really gave me faith to pursue my idea. I am looking forward to encouraging others to do the same! Please have a look at the website and if you are near Shrewsbury (or any of the other stops) and thinking about a new business, no matter how small the idea, be sure to come along!

http://www.startupbritain.co/tour/shrewsbury-am-

I shall be off now, before I say too much more about the new products... I don't want to give everything away and ruin the surprise!

Thank you for visiting and reading, hopefully see you again soon.

Jacinta, W&A

Just a quick hello

Hello,

Well, I'm really getting into the creative swing again at the moment (I think the sunshine, great morning walks and a flowering garden have all had something to do with this). I've been trying out new prints with the hand cut stencils.  I made this lampshade the other day and I have already decided to use one for a floor lamp in our home;

I am thinking of calling the next collection the 'meadow' collection. I've never really been interested in drawing plant life much before, but this year I am really enjoying it. Plus I am starting to learn all the names for our wild flowers now which is great too! There is also another stencil which is half cut featuring dandelion seeds so hopefully I will be able to get printing that next week too. The meadow collection designs are going to be printed in some nice natural colours to add another dimension to the overall look of Whinberry & Antler products.

Text will also start to feature in the meadow collection. I have always really liked hand drawn typefaces and I think this would be most fitting to go alongside hand drawn designs. As a child I used to get my nan, who has the most immaculate and beautiful handwriting, to try and teach me how to write properly. Well, my handwriting is not as nice as hers, but I think it will look nice printed with the wild meadow imagery.

Our booking for the Nunney Street Market and Fayre has also now been confirmed. Taking place on Saturday 3rd August, it is set in the very picturesque village of Nunney, just outside of Frome in Somerset. There will be around 130 stalls and it should be a really great day, so come along if you get chance.

A couple of weeks ago I was in London for the notonthehighstreet.com event 'Make, Do and Meet'. It was a really interesting day, full of lots of entrepreneurial people (mainly women!). It was so fantastic to see so many people making a business out of being creative. One of the highlights of the day was a talk about 'creativity' by Michael Atavar. It was truly inspiring and great for developing processes on how to get more creative and push through blocks. The event was hosted in the lovely Royal Opera House too, which I had not visited before.

Ok, I shall be off now to continue cutting my dandelion stencil. The plan is to take some photographs of products on Sunday so that the meadow designs will start to become available to buy online soon. I shall be sure to update when they are.

One last thing.... I have rediscovered some of my design books and along with something Michael Atavar mentioned (about finding an image each day that you like and keeping them all in a kind of image journal) I have decided that each time I write I shall finish the post with an image or two from a designer or illustrator that I like. So, this time it is two screen prints by the illustrator Andrew Holder (andrewholder.net). These two screen prints are my particular favourites;

'Two Bears'

 

'Two Bears Revisited'

Thanks for reading, see you soon, W&A.

Spring meadow flowers, a badger badger badger chair and more...

Hello,

I thought it was about time that I wrote another blog post. I've been busy doing various things for Whinberry & Antler...

Firstly, a little while ago after realising that i hadn't done any drawing for months, I decided to set some time aside each week in order to get some drawing done. So now Thursdays are known as 'Drawing Thrursday'. It was quite hard initially to get back into being creative, but I find that it is one of those things, that once you start getting the creative juices flowing it becomes much easier and thats when things start to get exciting! Being able to draw and design was the reason why I set up Whinberry & Antler and is my true passion, so I felt like my interest was flagging slightly by not making sure that I make the time for this incredibly important aspect of the business.

Once I started drawing I thought it would be good to buy a small screen and experiment with making stencils by hand using a scalpel. If you have had chance to look over the 'Behind The Scenes' page, you will see that my images have previously been put onto screens using a UV Light sensitive emulsion. Whilst this is fantastic for getting beautifully detailed images onto a screen, if you do not have the equipment to do this, it is not very flexible in terms of experimenting with new artwork.

It has been on my mind now that I have wanted to create a whole new range for W&A... So I have turned my drawing to the subject of meadow flowers and grasses. I love how delicate some of our meadow plant life is and it has been really lovely to draw this subject matter with my ultra fine pen! Here's a sneak preview of what I have in mind...

These images will also be put onto a screen soon using UV emulsion, but before that I have been creating some basic silhouettes using a scalpel and Mylar (a trademarked polyester film)... this can be a fiddley process but I have been pretty happy with the results so far. I'm going to have a go at printing some of these designs onto lampshades tomorrow.

Hand cut stencil featuring delicate meadow flowers

This stencil design works well running the length of the rectangle cushion in muted natural colours

In other news, a friend of mine, Polly Waite of Polliander, who I met on my upholstery course in Wales a couple of years ago, bought some of the badger fabric from me to upholster a chair. She sent me the photos the other day and they are fantastic! It's so nice to see the fabric being used by someone to create something so stunning. The chair is for sale so be sure to check out the website!

This classic chair upholstered by Polliander in our Badger Badger Badger fabric 

If you look at the Whinberry & Antler website you will also see that lampshades are now available to buy online. Currently only the hedgehog and hare designs are on there, but the badger will follow shortly, as well as some more botanically inspired designs too hopefully!

Medium Hare lampshade 

Medium Hedgehog Lampshade

 I have also bought some transfer paper to get designs onto ceramics so I am going to be testing those out over the next couple of weeks too; I need to check that they are completely dishwasher proof... fingers crossed! I am also considering buying a small kiln at the moment. But having only learnt a bit about ceramics when I was at school, this may prove to be a bit of a learning curve! I've got a couple of books though and managed to get some advice from a few sources, so perhaps learning to fire my own ceramics could be a summer project. 

So all in all I have quite a few ideas swimming around in my head right now so hopefully by the time we reach the start of the christmas season there will be lots more Whinberry & Antler designs to get excited about! 

Thank you for taking the time to read all about the latest progress... I shall be sure to keep you updated on how all this product development goes!!!

W&A