New Things!

This week has included a few things that have been on my to do list for a long while... One of those things being a logo for my Etsy shop.
I opened my shop back on the 4th of February this year and have been using a basic drawing of a badger as my logo. I knew this wasn't good enough, a logo should say something about you, include your name maybe, give an idea to what you are... and I was just saying... Badger.
Not that there's anything wrong with my badger, that little drawing I did has been part of my life for many years now! But it was time to push forward and have something more appropriate.
So I got to work this week designing a new badger...

The picture above shows it in it's early stages whilst I was using my Derwent Inktense pencils. These pencils are blooming amazing, they're like watercolour pencils where you draw on to paper like a pencil but when you add water they transform in to paint but as you can guess from the name... are ink and boy are they inktense! (pun intented!) They create extremely vivid colours and are very smooth flowing. I've found with some other brands the pencil lines continue to show through after you've added water but these never do that and as I said, the colours are amazing.

But enough about the gush over materials... I do get excited sometimes...

I wanted to have something fun and quirky as my logo, something that summed me up... of course a goofy badger would end up being that design! I wasn't sure if it might be too silly at first and not professional enough but once it was done, I knew it was perfect for me and my shop.

And here's the final design!

I wanted to have the traditional look which is why I went with pencils and pen instead of colouring digitally and my leaf doodle had to be included. I draw these leaves all the time, when I'm on the phone, watching films, waiting for things to scan and print... they've become as much of a signature thing for me as silly badger so they had to be included.

If my slight buzz doesn't make it obvious, I'm very happy with my new logo. It's now up on both my Etsy shop and my Redbubble profile and making things look much more connected.

Another thing that has been on my to do list for too long (I make a very bad habit of this!) is to make badges with the shrink plastic I bought last summer... yes, it's been that long. I played around with it when I first got it making some little bee designs pictured below.

They were fun but I didn't know what I was doing and they were very tiny... I took on a big challenge when I was learning and it backfired... each bee is buckled, the ink has smudged on some and the varnish I used at the time wouldn't take. So yeah, it didn't go so well. 

But this week I tried to create my original idea, little bird illustrations to be turned in to badges to hopefully sell on Etsy! Needless to say, I'm very happy with the results!

As you can see in the picture they shrunk well and the colours didn't smudge! I worked on a bullfinch (top) and a little wren (bottom) and in the picture you can see the before (left) and after (right) shots. The wren has become my favourite and the finch has opened up a lot of options for future designs. There are many finches out there and I am a big fan of them, some are ridiculously colourful and of course you also have the domesticated range that include the zebra finches.

The only problem I truly have right now is that I am a doofus. Because these were just a spur of the moment thing just to see how sizes and colours worked I didn't make copies of the illustrations for future badges... So I'm going to have to recreate both of these. 

The finch should be fairly simple, I've drawn loads of them over the last few months but the wren could prove interesting... although saying that I have drawn this wren three times now since the original doodle from december! The picuture below shows the second sketch I made.

So of course these add a new branch for my product list which is very exciting but at the same time I do realise I am adding a lot of extra work for myself! Each of these need to be hand drawn and coloured individually and baked in the oven, flattened, finished off and packaged up. I'm seeing the potential of many baking sheets covered in curling birdies! Now thinking of that I'm kinda excited!

It's a different approach than what I had originally planned but I'm loving being so involved in my creations! It's wonderful!

This week has also been the beginning of ideas, to do lists (again... yeah I know) and draft sketches for future projects including the raptor zines and some larger artwork. It's always fun to get ideas out on paper and see where you go with them! It's lots of fun.

There's also the possibility of some colouring sheets at some point! But that's all I can say for now.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Etsy Fun And Games

As you know if you've read my recent posts, I opened my Esty shop! After too many someday moments but that's for another post entirely.
I've been learning as I go and in some ways I've been completely winging it! Not in a bad way though, I am enjoying every moment of this experience, even the awkward mistake moments where I'm having to learn the hard way!
I see myself as a good seller, packaging orders well and nicely and sending them out on time and I hope being a good seller with communications.

But I, like everyone else am also human and I do make silly mistakes when I'm learning something new.
And like the weirdo I am, I want to let the world know of my mistakes! Mainly because I want other people to see that these things happen to everyone and because in some cases it's just damn funny!

So Etsy oops episode one is all about the postage and packaging costs!

To start with I want to highlight that even though I've had artwork sold all over the world in the past year, this has been through Redbubble who deal with the printing and sending themselves and I just take a backseat.
This is the first time that I've been completely involved in the entire process.

So when you put a listing up on Etsy you are asked to give postage and packing costs for the countries you're wanting to deliver to. So far so good right? I spent a good few hours trying to research this and kept seeing a website recommended on lots of forums so, I thought I'd use it to.
The prices were a lot less than I'd been expecting too, too good to be true...
So I listed all the prices and posted my items up for sale. All was good.

My first order came and I spent ages making it look pretty, wrapping it up in tissue paper and tying it with string and adding a nice tag... this was put in an envelope and off I went to the post office to post it when I looked to see if it counted as a small letter I found that due to my pretty packaging it was too big... So that ended in me having to rush home and take half of the packaging out to make it thin enough.
That wasn't so bad and I learned not to get too fancy with my packaging in future!

I then got my first overseas order which was amazing. I was so bouncy when the order came through, to think that my products were going further than my own country was just so incredible. I loved the idea of them flying all that way to make someone smile somewhere.
So again, I carefully packaged it avoiding the extra chunky additions and head off to the post office. Now back to this site with the too good to be true postage prices. I was expecting to pay around £1.40 so I went up to the till, got the packet weighed and was met with a postage cost of £2.25.
I should know not to trust the internet with important things!
So I payed the extra and left laughing to myself at my mistake until I realised that all of my overseas costs would be wrong and then I also realised I wasn't charging for packaging... I haven't laughed so much at myself in ages.

Once I got home I did some proper research and found the correct prices and amended them to include packaging costs (mere pennies but essential if I want to keep going!) and that was when the wackiest mistake popped up. I was scrolling through the prices which were mainly made up of £1.00 until I came to the Netherlands... £100.00 in total for postage. I'm sure I had a double take there until I realised I must've typed awkardly and pressed 0 too many times... Oh how I'm sorry to anyone in the Netherlands that saw that!
Luckily that too has been amended!

So yes. I have made a few hiccups over the past 23 days of owning a shop but I think that's to be expected, you can't expect to be perfect at something from the go after all!
I would also like to point out that my customers didn't suffer, if anything they had a sneaky discount s well done to my first few customers!
Hopefully that will be the last of the P&P hiccups and we can move on to something else... or you know, stop making silly mistakes with Etsy and go back to making them with my artwork... like spilling some extra ink on the page, something much more normal!

Although I'm now off to get address labels designed... lets hope I don't make a typo there!

Treat Those Wonderful Mama Bears Out There

Mothers Day (UK) is the 6th March 2016

It's that time of year when we celebrate our mums, the women who have gone through all the hassle of our childish tantrums, helped us through those tough times like starting school, our first break ups, putting up with those horrific teenage years we'd all rather forget and who still love us at the end of the day!

My own mama bear has gone through some pretty tough adventures with me and she's gotten me through it all. My mum is awesome.

So I now have Mama Bear designs greeting cards on my Etsy shop HERE and many products with this design on my Redbubble shop HERE along with many other designs of course. Go check them out if you're interested!