Nice Day Designs: February 2013

27 Feb 2013

Vintage Style Handmade Civil Partnership Cards

A while back I made some Civil Partnership cards, but to be really honest I wasn't happy with them, they weren't my normal style at all. Last week I went back to the drawing board and had a think about how I was going to do them. It would be near impossible to get appropriate embellishments so I knew I needed to make them myself. I've been making my own images for my cards for about a year now, and I've been using lots of vintage illustrations and photography. They match really well with the papers and distressed ink I use. After much Googling and Pinteresting I found vintage images of gay couples. I was hard to find the ones with the right tone, that were romantic but not too trashy for a wedding card. I must say I'm really delighted with them, I know it's really hard to get civil partnership cards, let alone unusual handmade ones. I've made about ten of them, as yet I haven't sold any so I'm starting to think I might be better off listing some online. A farmers market is not exactly the kind of place that people go looking for a gay wedding card!

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25 Feb 2013

New 1" Badge Designs

I know I've been very silent of late, I'll find my voice eventually, I think I'm still trying to get my head together after the hectic Christmas and disastrous New Year. I have been tipping away at making new badge designs though since I bought my new 1" badge machine. I felt rather silly the day it arrived when I realised that I had no designs done, just a pretty machine and a load of parts.

I quickly realised that for the most part the designs for the 2" badges didn't transfer over, too much information in a small space. So I sat down for a about two weeks and scratched my head while living in Photoshop world. I've now taken to carry around a notebook for whenever funny one liners occur to me; too many times I've thought of something and not had a pen to hand, only to kick myself later when the idea slips out of my head/ear.

I have recaptured my love of 1" badges, and have been really excited about coming up with new designs. I've gotten great feedback from friends, and I've had them for sale at the stall for the past two weeks or so and they are selling really well. I've already updated my wholesale prices section on this site, and over the next while I will be listing badges in my Etsy shop. I came up with 100 new designs; time consuming but worth it to have a good selection on offer. A good portion of them are book themed since they are for sale at my Bazaar Tales stall(go follow my new blog please, it's lonely blogging to nobody over there), and they've been selling very well. It's nice to marry my two loves of design and books.

Here are just a few samples, but for a full album of images just head over to my Facebook album. They are €1 each, or 6 for €5, I also made up these little sets of three badges for €3, remember when I was drooling over other peoples sets here. Even though people mostly buy them singly at the stall, of of them have been designed to be part of a set of three, as they look really pretty when they are worn in a set.