Market time

I know it's only October but I'm going to drop the C word. Working with products for retail, means Christmas starts creeping up on you a little ahead of most. I know of creatives that started planning their Christmas designs as early as May! I'm never one to be that organised but I am gearing up for a couple of pre Christmas Markets. 

I have a friend manning a table for me in Wellington for Craft2.0, which is now at the St James Theater on Courtenay Place (I'm so sad I can't make it up myself but the date clashes with some other stuff). I've been working on the marketing material for the fair, which has been greet fun. I really like the little Craft2.0 creatures. If any Wellingtonians get chance to snap a picture of the posters or banners once they start popping up, please let me know as I would love to see what they look like out in the real world.

I'm also heading up to Auckland for 24 November MoAD market at Tyler St. Garage, 120 Quay Street Britomart. Although truth be told I'm using this visit as an excuse to catch up with friends as much as a business trip.

I was also very excited to see word of a new art and design fair being set up in Dunedin called Market 22. I'll let people know if I get a sellers spot. Hopefully I'll get to see a few friendly faces, it's always so lovely to meet customers in person.

Why didn't anyone tell me!

So last week after a month of having one kind or cold or another, I felt like going on a bit of a health kick. I'm pretty good at eating fairly healthy home cooked meals but my weak spot is my sweet tooth. I decided for once instead of fighting my love of sugar I'd look for healthier ways of enjoying sweet treats without so much guilt. That's when I stumbled across this recipe, Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding. Apparently Chia seeds have been the darling of the health food world for a few years. They are high in protein, fiber and all kinds of different vitamins including B.

The best thing about Chia seeds though, is when you leave them in liquid they swell up and turn to a gelatinous texture with a crispy center. The texture is a little unusual but I quite like it and once it tastes all sweet and chocolatey, well who am I to let some weird texture get in the way of eating some yummy pudding.

Here's the recipe for those who are as behind the times as me. It was taken from food doodles blog but I've added cinnamon, because I like it and used honey instead of maple syrup because it's half the price here in New Zealand.

• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/2 C  unsweetened almond milk
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix all the ingredients together well. Put a cover over it and leave for 20 minutes. Eat. It really is that simple. The phase too good to be true springs to mind.

Quick note to say sorry for the terrible phone photos but to be fair it does taste better than it looks.

Busy having birthdays!

Oh dear it's been far too long between posts. I'm not sure why maybe just a lack of exciting news to write about. Here in Dunedin we have mostly been trying to keep warm and dry. I'm very pleased to report winter is over and we now have some much needed sunshine.

'Dear Colleen' is ticking along. Back in August I had a fun/stressful (I hate being photographed) photo stoot for one of my favourite New Zealand publications, so I'm very excited for that to be on the selves towards the end of the year. I'm slowly working away on a handful of new designs including an idea which I've had sitting around in sketchbooks for over a decade. Hopefully these will be ready for release mid/late October. 

My boyfriend Scott and I also celebrated our birthdays (hence the title). We both had lovely days, Scott spoiled me rotten on mine and bought me this beautiful yellow cambridge satchel from the wonderful Wocolate. 

But I digress! I was actually writing about birthdays so I could share the magical custom toy I had made for Scott by Melbourne base artist Cat Rabbit. Chances are you've already heard of her but if not you really should check her work out as it's amazing. I asked her to make a rabbit toy portrait of Scott wearing his teen wolf tee and our dog Castro as a fur hat. This photo doesn't really even beging to show how amazing it is in person. The thing is, it's really hard to photograph as Castro is obsessed with it, I think he's itching to tear it to shreds. Maybe he just objects to being turned into a fur hat!

Really am sorry it's been so long between posts. I have a couple of things I would like to share in the coming weeks so I'm promise to write again soon.

On the walls

Over on Decor8 blog there is a little tour of my studio. I thought I should quickly share a few links to some of the cool things in the space. My pink office chair is a story from 2010 which you can read about here.

1. Click of Art, Limited Edition Pillow £39UK
2. Gemma Correll, Ampersand (no longer available)
3. Sucklord, Gay Empire Toy $50US
4. Devon Smith, Weep for the Pigeons $10US
5. Buff Monster's Destroyer Toy $115US
6. Watch Print, Dear Colleen $19US

Finally tea towels including Hey Girl all from my shop, Dear Colleen

Comical

Am I the only one that isn’t finding the Comic Sans joke all that funny anymore?  See example below (ok that is kind of funny, bad choice).

I don’t mean to rain on the Graphic designer parade. I know a lot of people have been enjoying a giggle at it’s expense for the past four, five years but I wonder if we (designery folks) have really thought through how it makes us look to non ‘designer’ types. You know our clients, the people who pay us. I kind of get the feeling it’s making us look a bit snobbish and unapproachable. 

I know it’s become a common theme for graphic designers to bond over, almost like a Mason handshake. I also know I’m in line to get a lot of flack for writing this piece but I can't help it I’m just over it. I follow a lot of smart talented graphic designs in all forms of social media and I witness the joke in one form or another at least once a day. Tell me any joke once a day for four years and at some point I’ll stop laughing and start pulling my hair out. 

Ok and here’s were the post gets real dangerous... (Hastily looks up tickets to Hawaii) I’m not all that offended by Comic Sans. Ok it’s not very fashionable at the moment but a lot of fonts I hated at art school ten years ago have since come back in trend. Fashion is cyclical and it’s perfectly possible some great young designer with more vision than me will take on this font and do something great with it, something that we’ll all want to emulate and bam suddenly we’re eating our roundly san serif words.

Snap shot

It's been a long time coming but I finally have my new line released and a shiny new shop to showcase them in. Inspired by watching far too many trashy shows about tattooing and many happy hours reading vintage typography books, the new designs have a different look but still, hopefully, very much feel like 'Dear Colleen' pieces.

Mostly today I wanted to share a couple of behind the scene pictures from the photo shoot I did just over a week ago. I'm very lucky that my studio is next door to a talented young photographer Emily Hlavac Green. My boyfriend has already been working with her and I've been very impressed with the images they have created together. As always working on a shoe string budget meant I had to call in a number of favours. The biggest being the kind and pretty folks who agreed to model for me. A big thank you to Gillian, Luci and DJ. Not only did they look fantastic they were all lovely and great fun to have on set. What should have been stressful actually ended up being a right laugh. 

I had this notion that I wanted to use balloons in the shoot, which I think has worked really well. The idea being that they would firstly be a subtle why of reflecting my speech bubble logo and secondly because I wanted to add graphics in a more organic why, making the text a prop in the photos.

I would highly recommend working with a professional photographer the results are so far beyond anything I could have achieved on my own. Thank you Emily.

One final note to thank my boyfriend Scott who has been beyond amazing through out this difficult process. A very talented designer in his own right with a sharp eye for detail. He's not let me settle for first goes or oks. It's not always easy to hear but I'm grateful for honest thought out feedback on tap. I'm also grateful for his endless surport, encouragement and love.

Allbell studio

This is just a short post about a few things happening this Friday night in and around Allbell studio, Dunedin (the building my space is in). The talented photographers Emily Hlavac Green and Alex Lovell-Smith have partnered up to form a new business venture A&E Studio, it's their opening at 5.30pm, then another studiomates, Moodie Tuesday (Official), are launching over the road at The Attic and after that The shocking and stunning are playing The Attic Rattle.

It sounds like that's friday night taken care of then. If you'r in Dunedin you're welcome to drop by and say hello. I'll be hanging around for the first half of the evening at least and if you ask nicely I might let you take a quick tour of my space:) 

Level 2, Allbell Chambers, 127 Lower Stuart Street Dunedin.