Pop-up shop, future planning and Christmas!

I'm going to apologise in advance for how long this post is going to be. I also need to apologise for not updating in so long but we've been so busy, what with the stall, college deadlines, Christmas shopping and Christmas itself! Add to this the fact that my laptop decided to break so I'm either having to work froom my iPod or on occasions Mike's tiny college laptop.  So here's what I think you'd like to know that's happened in the past 17/18 days and I will be back to my regular updates from now on :)

The stall ran from the 9th-11th of December and in that time we sold a fair amount of stock, including 2 pairs of our handpainted pumps. You can see pictures of the stall in production and almost finished below in a previous post (camera bloomin' ran out before we got more pictures!). I really enjoyed being able to interact with the customers and talk about our 'stuff' to them, made it really nice to be able to see who the item was going home with :) Some of the other things being sold were lovely! You can see how much I liked one girls designs in particular in the picture in the previous post, new love! I'm hoping to organise a pop-up shop or event of our own, hopefully with some of the other designers from the college's event, but any event ideas are welcomed :)

In other news, I got my university application sent off and they've sent me a task which I need to complete to even get an interview for the 12th January, so I need to get cracking on that asap, which is proving to be a bit difficult with no working laptop or camera :') It will be fine!

Christmas shopping was a nightmare, I started too late because of all the stall stuff but I managed it! Success! Got Mike a lovely Fred Perry bag, a Chuck Norris book, a laser-cut vinyl wall-piece, and I owe him a hat :)

I got a bigger version of the bag that I got Mike and it's gorgeous! Also got Hello Kitty headphones(!!!!!) and a 'Urban Decay' makeup brush from Mike's mum, as well as so many more things, she spoils us! Mike bought me a Victorinox multi-tool which will come in handy for jewellery, as well as some lovely sillicone teacups for making cupcakes in (complete opposite ends of the  present spectrum there!) and a gorgeous necklace which I'll show you when I've got a working camera! Yet to open any presents from my family as we've spent Christmas at Mike's, which has been so nice. We're going home tomorrow after we've had a meal with my Dad, then back to Mike's Friday for New Years Eve with Mike's family and friends :) Phew! Busy busy. (Might do a full Christmas day write-up another day).

We're now back to taking orders as usual and will be making more designs in the New Year :) We will be putting the money we made from the pop-up shop towards more materials, as well as paying for a stall at an event. I'm really hoping to get us a place at 'The Vintage Fair', so I will be emailing the lady in charge very soon!

That's all I can think of right now, anything else I'll let you know :)
Cheers guys! xxx

Just a quick something....

Hello!

Just a quick post to say the stall's running okay and just to show you my new necklace that I bought off one of the other vendors :) I love it!

It's very kyoot :3
Bye for now <3

First day of pop-up...my feet are in agony!

I'll probably do a longer post about this another time but for now I'm very very very tired and I think we're going to just go to bed.

I took some pictures of the stall after I'd set it up, the only thing that changed after this was I put some refreshers sweets into the 'eat me' cup and saucer for people :)

Here they are:

Today we've sold:

1 'Build me up' ring
1 'Build me up' brooch
1 pair of 'Lost my heart at sea' earrings
1 'Lost my heart at sea' ring
1 pair of 'pretty little lady' earrings
1 'build me up man' brooch
1 pair of 'roses are red' earrings
1 letter brooch
1 letter ring
and the vintage button with the silver scissors brooch
:)

Lovely!
Please remember, any prices shown are our original prices + the 20% we have to add on for 'artsmix'.

Cheers guys, off to pass out now x

Should bring a suitcase of 'stuff' into college more often...

Today we brought all our stuff mounted onto the cards into college in a suitcase because we had a few things that people had asked us to bring in and we thought we'd be best just to bring the whole lot in to keep it together. 


We've had the case open on the desk for most of the day so people walking past could have a look if they wanted and we've ended up selling:
3 rings
5 pairs of 'City lights' earrings
1 set of 'Build me up' cufflinks
and 1 pair of the limited edition kitty earrings :)


Pretty good I'd say. However, some of the things we've sold we now won't have to sell at the pop-up shop over the next few days as our online order hasn't come through yet and it's tomorrow :( Oh well, there'll be other times :)


We're just waiting at college now to go down to the shop area where we're going to put our table up and put the tablecloth on it ready to set everything up on tomorrow :) Then we're going to Mike's quickly to see the little baby owl, then have tea, back to mine where we're going to be very very very busy glueing and mounting onto jewellery cards. Phew!


More later, bye! x

First customer product shot...

This is our first product shot of something on an actual customer. This is my friend Rae, she's bought a dark blue pair of 'City lights' earrings and I also got her to model my own personal 'Build me up' ring, so pretty! :) I seem to use her for every project where I need a model at college so expect to see a lot more of her :')

That's all for now, just wanted to share that with you <3

Pop-up preparation...new cards!

Last night we sorted out the cards so that we could mount the jewellery onto them, and this is the end result. I know the picture isn't the best quality because of the lighting but we'll put a better one on when we've finished.

This is less than half of the jewellery we have available, we just ran out of cards because we need the guillotine at college so we'll finish them tomorrow :)

They're looking lovely! Put all the pictures up on Facebook too now and we've had a great response so far :D

In another news, a bird was stuck down Mike's chimney for the past couple of days and his parents couldn't get it out because it was too far up to get out so they had to leave it but they could hear it scratching and it was so sad, but today they've smashed a hole in their bedroom wall to rescue it and it turns out it was a little baby owl! They've taken it to the vets and been told they need to feed it cat food with some tweezers, but apparently it's just happy sat in a cat basket on the kitchen table :) We're going over to see it tomorrow before they need to try release it back out into the open, so cute! <3

More tomorrow! Byeeeee x

New 'about me'...

For the pop-up shop we have had to write a sales pitch to briefly explain what 'Lily Bones' is and what we're about. I kept it fairly short and simple but the more I wrote it the more I started to like it and I'm now trying it out as our new about me (with a few bits and bobs taken out). 
Here's the piece in full:


"‘Lily Bones’ was born from a love of all things creative as well as the need to bring affordable, innovative design to a wider target audience. Run by two graphics students (Derrian and Mike) from Leeds college of Art, we create handmade and upcycled ‘stuff’ using anything we can get our hands on, including mass-produced products, found objects and modified buttons. Our quirky jewellery and accessories will make the ultimate statement!

Influenced by attending many vintage and crafts fairs, we often take inspiration from these events and try to incorporate themes into our designs. The idea for ‘Lily Bones’ first came about after many occasions of seeing overpriced and badly made jewellery and thinking ‘I can do that much better!’, and that is what we do. We are always trying out new ideas and welcome any commissions. Our stuff looks good enough to eat, but we wouldn’t advise that!

We love what we do and we hope you do too!
                 
Find us at: lilyboneshandmade.blogspot.com
Email us at: lilyboneshandmade@live.co.uk"


Let us know what you think! 


Got our sales team meeting this afternoon up at the other building, and we need to get our prices sorted and such. 
Busy!

Keeping it simple...

Last night we sought advice from a professional graphic designer on how to enhance the look of our business cards and the cards for us to put the jewellery on. We've still used the original typeface that I used for the original cards, and also the illustration that Mike produced, but the image is now at a much better quality and there is less pixelation altogether. 

We've also made the whole design into a completely black and white image so that we are able to print on any type of card we like without having to change the actual design at all. This means we can change colours depending on the products and such. We have picked out a colour for the card we want to use (gorgeous creamy peppermint!) but we need to order it in (and get the money for it!), which will be after the pop-up shop so for now all the cards are in black and white, but they actually look really nice because of how simple they are. 

We've got a lot of cutting out and mounting to do before thursday so we're going to be very very busy getting the cards ready and mounting the jewellery onto their cards. 

Phew!

On a less relevant note, my uni application is almost done and dusted so that'll be gone by the end of the week, so that's good :)

Going to work on my animation brief now,

Byeee! x

It's a bit rubbish...

Please keep in mind the quality of our images does go down slightly when we add the watermark to it, which is pretty rubbish but I'd rather get credit for my images if somebody does wish to use them, rather than have my good quality images all over the place with no recognition. 


If you wish to see the images without the watermark for any reason please request this and we will see what we can do :) 


Thanks guys x

Even more new stuff...

These are some gorgeous limited edition earrings that will be available at the pop-up shop then hopefully afterwards in our usual stock (we will be trying to get hold of some more of the buttons to make more).

I personally love them and will be showing off my own as of tomorrow :) (The great thing about making my own jewellery is that I have the choice to only make one earring because I only have one available ear piercing on my lobe as my right side ear is body modified at 10mm so will not fit a normal size earring, rather than me having to buy a pair and waste half my money because I can only use one!)

However, a lot of our earrings can be used to fit in other ear piercings, rather than just the lobe, such as the pinna (top of ear) and tragus. I will be testing and showing this personally over the next few weeks :)

Today we've also made some 'Build me up' brooches and cufflinks, as well as some 'Rosette' brooches and 'Lost my heart at sea' rings before we went out to a family thing.

This is what I wore;
Dress - from 'New Look' (bought it ages ago and hadn't worn it yet!)
Cardigan - was my Nana's :)
Boots - vintage fair!
Cameo brooch - 'Blue Rinse' in Leeds
Not shown: I also used my new blue handbag from the vintage fair and wore one of our own 'Build me up' rings in red <3
                                 
I dress like an old lady sometimes and I love it!

We're hopefully getting the cards and everything sorted tomorrow ready for the shop on Thursday :) Got a rescheduled meeting on Tuesday to finalise things on the sales team, and also really really need to get our sales pitch and prices sorted D: Eeeek.

Thanks for reading x

Pop-up preparation..new stock!

Finally, here are some new updated photos of our new stock, ready in time for the pop-up shop! We've got some other stuff yet to show so keep an eye out :)

Please note; the items are much brighter in real life, the camera didn't pick up how bright they are, but we've worked around it. The colours are actually gorgeous :) Thanks.

Enjoy!

'Build me up' rings, pick a colour :) (Others available)

'Build me up' brooches, pick a colour :) (Other colours and combinations available)

'City lights' earring, pick a colour :) (Other colours available)

'Roses are red...' earrings (Made from modified buttons)
Also shown: 'Lost my heart at sea' earrings

Capsule vintage collection, made from modified vintage buttons (Limited edition!)

Thanks a lot for looking, and we'll be doing a complete price list post later which will include our original prices and the 'Artsmix' price (our price + 20% commission) that will be getting charged at the pop-up shop, byee  :) <3

Promotional...

This is the promotional flyer for the pop-up shop :) (Click to enlarge)


As you can see there is all the information needed, including a map and the opening times. 
and our names! Ooh exciting! My name's spelt right too! :D


Will be doing another update later so until then...bye bye! x

Who doesn't love party umbrellas?

Getting into the Christmas spirit with hot chocolate....and a party umbrella :')

We've got a snow day off college today but all our 'stuff' and making bits and bobs are at my house so we can't do any making :(

There's no buses running and there's still a LOT of snow, our meeting's definitely cancelled and I'm not sure how well the pop-up shop will run if the weather stays like this :(

Hopefully our online orders will still make it to us in time, and we still need to go sort out the cards and everything that we didn't get to last night.

On a happier note, we're wrapped up nice and warm watching 'the lion, the witch and the wardrobe' :)

Snow update...

Just checked our college website, and it says the college is definitely closed tomorrow and possibly Friday, but we need to wait and see what happens tomorrow before they decide about Friday.

I'm assuming the meeting is going to be cancelled seeing as it's within college, but I've sent an email just to confirm.

I'm happy but unhappy at the same time; it'll be nice to spend time inside and warm without having to try and travel and I'll be able to get some sketchbook work done, however our deadline for our actual animation for my brief is next Wednesday and we were supposed to start making them today, but seeing as we can't get in and most of us don't have the software at home I can't see this happening.

For now though, TV+sweets+hot water bottle :3

Snow standstill...

Have these awful pictures of me in the snow from earlier today :')

It's been a nightmare today, a very cold nightmare, where all the shops are shut :')
Here is the lovely, shortened story;

I went into college on the usual bus and got there at 8am, by 9 there was a few more people and we started the day but then parents kept ringing people and saying they needed to come home because of how bad the snow was. They ended up shutting our college at 11, and they never shut our college.

Mike and I then started to go home, we didn't know whether it'd be easier to try get to mine or his, so we chose his and in the shortest way possible, it's taken us 5 hours on foot to do a half hour journey. All the buses were cancelled and nothing was running at all, Leeds literally came to a standstill. We even tried a train but after standing on it for over an hour with no driver, all squished on like sardines we gave up. The snow was ridiculously bad, so thick on the ground and literally blizzarding, brr!  Today's been a nightmare and since we got in I've had a nap with 2 blankets and a hot water bottle because my feet were freezing still coz even though I had my Docs on I still got snow in them :(

I don't know if we'll even bother trying to get in tomorrow if the buses aren't running properly after the day we've had with it today, but we're supposed to be having a meeting about the pop-up shop after college and we were meant to be doing a redesign of the business and jewellery cards tonight too :(

Guhh, just want to sit in with a duvet, with lots of sweeties and hot drinks and films and never move :')

Such a long day :(