Design Team (or, I couldn't think of a non-cheesy title for this post).

1. Volume 3, p.36 2. William Morris 3. Mobile (I found this via Pinterest with a link to Voila Gallery, sadly it looks like it's sold).

For those of you who have had a look at our new shop you might have noticed that we have a new logo also. We're planning on building a website in the next month or so, and wanted to really think about branding and how we wanted to portray ourselves in the design sense. While it is pretty weird looking back at past blog headers and business cards, I've never been unhappy with previous logos looks. At the same time they've often been a bit slapped together or made in isolation and we wanted to be a bit more thoughtful this time around. This is not to say that I won't still make and order totally new business cards on a whim, I am a slightly impulsive dreamer after all.

Neither Richard or I are trained in design (apart from a jaded year of art school each) but we both have a pretty strong sense of what we like and are self taught in Photoshop and Illustrator so we thought we'd give it a go at doing it ourselves. Plus we're pretty broke after our move, so. 

1. memoon 2. Leaf motif 3. Inalux via 2modern blog

We decided to both collect images that we like and threw them all together to see if we could find links between them. Colour, pattern, fonts (this is still a little up in the air), etc. Also, I tried really hard to not be a control freak about it all because of course Richard has a really great design sense and tempers my penchant for too much dusty pink and gold. I really loved the process of bringing all these varied ideas together, it took a bit for me to be confident about my choices though and led to long talks about why didn't we know that we could have studied art and taken on board what we liked while ignoring the annoying critical theory lecturer. Or, how great is the internet that we get to do this and build a business for ourselves without having to sit through the entire critical theory course! 

Our idea was to design something that we could use and manipulate lots of different ways (to suit my indecisive nature), but would still be timeless. We wanted to be able to combine something that felt organic but still had clean lines. Evie was kind enough to act as a sounding board for us - we're pretty lucky to have such a creative group of friends (thanks again, internet!) and it reaffirmed how much I thrive on working with others.  I'm really happy with the result and of course I've already tried playing around with it, using bits of it here and there, changing colours, mixing colours and adding backgrounds. I can't wait to work on the rest of our site now! 

We've used it to make new packaging for our bookmarks, something we've been meaning to do for ages but never could never totally decide on how to do it. Or find the materials for that matter, it seems that New Zealand is a bit of a wasteland for packaging supplies. Bookmarks now come individually packaged in a cello sleeve with lovely textured card for the packaging. I love that the rays give a bit of a midcentury but a lot of witchy, third-eye type feel. Speaking of bookmarks, we're giving some away over on our Facebook page if you'd like to tell us your current or favourite summer/winter read! 

Love Transforms

We're over at Poppytalk Handmade again this month for their Love Transforms market (I've just updated our table with the new Raumati pieces!) and I always love finding new designers and artists when we get to hang out there. Jan always puts together a great selection of things, so I thought I'd do a little round up of my favourite pieces*. I'm on the lookout for a new couple of candles and that one sounds pretty hippy and amazing smelling. Perfect!

1. Focus Synergy Blend Candle by Aromacandles - $16 2. Personalised Cosmetic Bag by alissa jacobs - $40 3. While I still think that Emma is the queen of the witty pencil, I did think this Classic Rap Pencil Set by One Up Design were pretty funny. You Be Illin' is my fav. 4. Matte Stephens - Selected Works - $45. I love Matte Stephens' work, so a signed art book would be great. 5. The prettiest Party Crown of them all by Madeline Trait - $10 6. Tiny Cat earrings by Datter Industries - $54. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll take one of each of her jewellery pieces!

*sorry about the tiny writing, i had my file set to the wrong size and didn't realise until i uploaded it. it was too late to bear doing it again!

Open

Just a quick note to let you know our new shop is open, filled with lovely new pieces from the new collection. We're so happy with it and feel like it's a pretty good start to the new year, even if it is a slightly crazy time to be asking people to buy things. Ha!

If you head over, you'll be able to see our look book which I'll talk a little more about later. For now, hopefully you all find something you like in our little ode to summer.

xx

Raumati: A summer jewellery collection

Hine Raumati - the summer maid

It feels like we've been working on this collection forever, it's been quite the labour of love. So, I'm really excited to let you lovely readers know that we'll be releasing Raumati, our summer jewellery collection, tomorrow! We've been inspired by sea glass, sun and ocean weathered stones, bewitching summer nights and hazy horizons. There was a point when we were shooting the look book where the ripples on the ocean were sparkling, the light was all hazy and the shells were sun bleached and bone dry (and the skin on my feet felt like it was about to burn right off, the black pebbles and sand was so hot. Standing in the water for the rest of the shoot was the best idea we had all day, this is not so glamourous as it sounds. trust.) and I felt so proud of us that we'd captured exactly what we set out to. Our model, Emily, is a family friend and at first I was worried she might be a bit young but I am so happy with how well she did. She was a little nervous, too but seriously - that baby Laura Dern/Jodie Foster face and those freckles. What a stunner!

As you can see I got a little over excited about multiple locations, but I had this idea to capture all these different facets of summer. I'm working on the look book now, editing the rest of the million photos I took and trying to make everything a little more cohesive. I'm really excited to show you the rest of our collection tomorrow and hope you'll like it as much as we do. We worked hard on creating designs that are all part of one story. In the past we've just kind of made pieces up as we went or produced one off pieces, but for Raumati we wanted there to be some kind of thread running through them all. In light of this, we've decided to release it as a limited edition collection with only five of each piece being available. Also, we're moving our jewellery over into a new shop that we will use now for our main store with Etsy moving more towards being a secondary or sale type store over the next few weeks. I'm not usually one to embrace change to be honest (in my head I love it, in reality less so.) but this fresh start feels so good.