Kirsty and I dutifully spent this morning out on the top step of the studio. The sky was bright blue, and then became duller and slightly darker as the impending eclipse began. We'd prepared our own little eclipse viewing cards, with scrap card and a hole punched in. We didn't see much, and it didn't even go very dark. What we COULD see on the roof of our neighbour's studio was the frown mouth of the moon passing the sun.. but our arms got tired, so we didn't stay out very long.
This week we posted out some orders, including a custom necklace for photographer Marianne Chua who wanted to see if we could combine our origami animals into a menagerie of a necklace.. so if she's shooting your wedding, you might spy it! (We think it looks FAB with that gorgeous stripy shirt!)
The remainder of the week saw us recovering from the frantic project launches of the previous week and generally taking stock: realising we'd completely lost ALL of our needle felting tools and ordering more; researching how we want to present ourselves at the forthcoming fairs we'll be at (we've been furiously pinning ideas and checklists and all sorts!); obsessively labelling all of our Really Useful Boxes as a way to manage and catalogue stock (Adrienne didn't really end up with RSI, just achey Dymo hands!); looking over our wholesale offer; and figuring out what our presence on Not on the High Street might look like - NOW THAT WE'VE BEEN ACCEPTED! It's going to mean reshooting a lot of our products to match their neutral aesthetic, so we're figuring out how to align our ideals and theirs.
And yes - this #nofrillsfriday is actually being posted on Saturday.. because we've been hard at work with the AMAZING Hannah Molloy of Pawfect Dogsense who is helping us learn how to be confident dog owners - how to understand Louis better, and how to help Louis be even more awesome than he already is. We'd not seen Hannah since before Xmas, so our session yesterday stretched on longer than expected.. and so I'm only just getting this out now! On the plus side, Sunday is going to be mine and Louis' FIRST AGILITY SESSION! Yep - I'm going to be working with Louis to sprint through tunnels and wiggle between poles. I suspect Sunday will be much more about sitting on one spot until called though. Baby steps!
In other doggy news - I'm in the studio today finishing off some more dog designs for our blossoming Frilly Menagerie range... all will be (hopefully!) revealed next week!