designosaur: October 2014

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

Meet our Stockists! Pyramid Gallery

We mentioned before that we have around lots of stockists all over the place and we have started to interview them for our blog, the last one we did was about Jolly Brown Vintage and this time we have gone further north to York! Meet the guys at Pyramid Gallery!

TERRY, FI & RUTH
PYRAMID GALLERY
YORK

Describe your shop...

Terry has owned Pyramid Gallery for 20 years, and his fun, eclectic and soulful taste has kept the shop a firm favourite with locals and visitors alike. Here, you will find work by important British artists like Peter Blake rubbing shoulders with jewellery sourced from British designers [such as designosaur] and the most exquisite objects d'art. Our shop is a 400 year old Grade 2 Listed Building with no straight lines and far too many stairs. People love to shop here because they are after something unusual, well made, a whimsical; many of our customers are creative themselves so the shop acts as a sort of hub for local creatives.

Which designosaur design do you personally like the most?

Fi - ALL OF IT but particularly the dodo necklace, of course
Ruth - I'm partial to the Cockatoo necklace
Terry loves the brooches

Which designosaur piece do your customers love?

They all get a lot of comments, Fi tends to be wearing a piece every day so people often have a look at the cabinet once they are told they can get them here. We have a very mixed demographic here at Pyramid and there's really something for everyone in this shop. Customers are often captured by the shiny cockatoo.

How did you find out about designosaur?

Fi has been a customer for a long time, having been gifted a beautiful T-Rex for a present back in 2012 which she wears (almost) daily and gets LOADS of comments about. Ruth got the bug after meeting the team filming the Etsy advert [hello from Moth and Magpie!]

Have you done anything particularly creative/ different with the way you display our products?

We've given flight to the Pterodactyl (see photo) and we've used your packaging within our display. If it was up to Fi, there would be a full Jurassic scene with sand and mountains but I don't think the boss would approve of that.

What do you hope will come next from designosaur?

We have so many ideas, this is great fun!
A moose would be amazing, or a sloth on a branch. Foxes, stags and birds/bird cages are super popular here in York, we could sell those a million times over! We love your Brighton Pavilion necklace, but it's not appropriate for York... Minster could be a bit far fetched but maybe other buildings could work. Ruth has just said GODZILLA - of course! And then there is one of my favourite mythical creature of all time... the KRAKEN! Please release the Kraken, it would make me very happy.

Thanks to Ruth and Fi for answering our questions, what do you hope will be next from designosaur? Let us know in the comments!

ROAR!

Photos taken by Ruth and Fi.

Monday, 13 October 2014

The Blog Hop!

We have been nominated by our uber colourful, wonderful crafty partners in crime hello DODO to do the 'Blog Hop'

Jam and Ali from hello DODO and Jacques when we were at Renegade last year!

What's that I hear you say, well I said yes I'd do it before I even knew what it was but luckily it's nothing too crazy! I just have to answer three questions and then nominate two other people to do the same. Easy peasy.

So here goes...

What have you been making at your desk this week?

If you don't know about us here at designosaur, it's me Karli, and I do all the blogging, social media, answer your emails and manage our shop. Jacques does the designing and we both do all the creative brainstorming to come up with new designs. It is very much team work as we both did Product Design degrees but have different strengths when it comes to running a small business!

One of 4 ROARball designs!

This week we are resting after having just launched the new ROARballs! We are getting a lot of custom requests so are working on designs for these commissions, but we can't say much more about that! Our stockists have started to place orders for Christmas so we have been making lots of stock for them. There are always a lot of George's to assemble 'cos he's a popular guy and it's been fun to make some of our newer designs such as the sabre tooth tigers and toucans.

George - Photo from hello DODOs instagram

We have a collaboration in the pipeline which we don't know whether we will be able to get out before Christmas :S and we also have a new product to launch in the next couple of weeks which isn't laser cut! (yes you should be excited!)

It's always very busy at designosaur HQ will a million projects running side by side working all hours of the day and night. Jacques and I talk nothing but plastic and dinosaurs, Jam from hello DODO even commented about how strange our conversation was when I told Jacques in the pub to be careful when we got home as the Sabre Tooth's eyes were laid out on the table"

Putting together some Sabre Tooth Tigers!

Where are you currently finding your inspiration?

Inspiration comes from everywhere and anything, Jacques is very good at reading my mind, if we come up with a concept together then usually what I have in mind is what Jacques then draws. We love going to museums and exhibitions and are out and about whenever we can be.

We have been working on several collaborations recently, you will have seen the ball of yarn rings which we created with Claire from Yellow Bear Wares and we are working on other secret collaborations which you will find out about soon so our inspiration comes from the people we work with too, it's great to get a new perspective and there's plenty of creatives to bounce ideas off in Brighton!

Ring from our Yellow Bear Wares Collaboration

How important is being creative to you, and how do you blend this with your work/life/family balance?

Being creative is important but it's not something that we need to think about to make it happen. If we aren't designing for designosaur then we are being creative in a heap of other ways. I'm pretty into what I wear and I get to be creative in that way. Jacques is a maker, and a problem solver, he's creative by making or fixing things around the house, we have several laser cut lamp shades as Jacques has broken the previous ones, and Jacques is very proud of the custom mud guard he has made for his bike (it's the small things in life ey)

Rocket Lamp Jacques designed and laser cut (photographed
in an oddly none colourful area of the house! :S

Everything falls into place balance wise, it probably isn't very balanced but we are having lots of fun!

Passing the Blog Hopping Baton

Now I'm nominating some others, I hope they get involved!

Rockcakes - I have been fangirling over Rockcakes since I came to Brighton in 2007, learnt about her awesome husband LOMOKEV and found out about her incredible jewellery. This is one clever lady, not only does she make fantabulous precious jewellery, I have her diamond bracelet and TV ring, she also makes a heap of fun laser cuts too!

Rockcakes TV ring and designosaur unicorn ring

Woah The Pickle - Vicky is a linocut printer, her designs are fun, intricate and super awesome, I have several of her troll prints and they all have iridescent hair. They are AMAZING.

All the trolls, photo from Vicky's Etsy shop!

Thanks for reading, let me know in the comments if being creative is important to you too!

ROAR!

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

ROARBalls are back!

Back in 2012 we released our very first Christmas decorations. There was one dinosaur design (which is now part of the new collection) and three other Christmas designs. The dinosaur design was by far the most popular the design and now for Christmas 2014 we have four dinosaur designs to adorn your tree, house, or dog* with!