New Plans and Big Decisions

HELLO!

It might have seemed a little quiet on these parts but that's because we've spent the last few weeks making some HUGE DECISIONS!

As you know designosaur is run by myself and my business partner (and boyfriend - cos I know you're nosey) Jacques. I've been running our small business as my full time job for three years, and Jacques has recently made the decision to become full time designosaur too!

I say full time designosaur but what I really mean is Jacques no longer has a "day job" because he has been doing designosaur more than full time since the beginning.

To be able to make this big change, lots of things have been shaken up. We want to purchase our own laser cutter, and to be able to get the power and precision from the laser cutter we want, we have decided to set up a second business, called 'YEAH laser', cutting other designer-makers work!

As you can imagine there's been a lot going on behind the scenes, but now we want to share it all with you! You can find out more about our plans here.

We are crowd funding to buy our laser cutter, and in exchange we're offering a bunch of exclusive designs from us and our crafty friends including Hand Over Your Fairy Cakes, I Like CATS, Pork Chops and Rock Cakes.

AND if you're a fellow designer-maker you might be interested in our "laser time" perks too!

We're really excited for our next adventure, and as usual we'll be taking you along for the ride.

ROAR!

Karli (and Jacques)

Round Up | 2016

I love reading round ups, and especially putting everything we have achieved in as a brand in one big list! What I don't like is creating these posts as they take FOREVER, so I really hope you enjoy this. You'll find a mix of things we did with friends and family as well as everything accomplished with designosaur 2016... so pleased this post only has to be created once a year!

We started the year off going to London Lumiere - festival of light, it was a city wide exhibition of light installations and it was EPIC.

We were invited to Sussex University to run a jewellery making workshop alongside other Brighton Etsy Team members, the heavily pregnant The Pigeons Nest, and the ever so lovely Georgie St Clair.  Photo Credit | Juream Box

Meet Lulu, the Orca we created for the World Cetacean Alliance to raise money for this endangered species.

We finally got George a girlfriend! Georgette met George and they fell in love, you can read more about their story here.

We held the first ever Brighton Etsy Sample Sale, where we've never seen customers like it! You all queued before the venue opened and then ran to the table to get your hands on as much as you could! It went so well we are currently organising this years event!  Photo Credit | Oh Someday

We created our second collaboration with i Like CATS 

The collaboration came from writing the prompts for Toby's #yayeveryday2016 hashtag project. This Banana sketch is one of Jacques' #yayeveryday2016 drawings.

We went to Florida for three weeks! It was the first holiday Jacques and I have been on alone, and it was SO. MUCH. FUN. Here's us on a Fan Boat in the Everglades. 

The collection we released on returning was inspired by the art deco architecture and the alligators we saw!

We also couldn't go to Florida without going to Disney World and the NASA Space Centre. Here's Jacques in a shuttle... maybe we were a little inspired to create space dinosaurs too!

May is when the Brighton Artists Open Houses are held and we were part of the exhibition 'Gifted' at Unlimited. We're still stocked in Unlimited now too!

May is also the Brighton Festival (and Fringe!) the best thing we saw was this Dr Blighty projection onto the Pavilion, just look at the colour!

In the summer we were commission by Laurie Winkless to create this epic future skyline commission, for her to wear at her book launch.

Then whilst promoting her book Laurie wore her commission piece on Sunday Brunch!

We did a few Cult Milk workshops at Patterns. They are always loads of fun, and the cheapest workshops we run. Hopefully we'll be back again this year.

We designed the totes for Blogtacular with Hello DODO... Photo Credit | Courtesy of Mollie Makes© Will Ireland

But we were unable to attend the conference because we were at Sonar Festival in Barcelona! This meant we did some cultural stuff too, this is the Sagrada Familia, if you haven't been - you should go!

We celebrated Pin Club's first birthday by collaborating with them in August and creating a flamingo floatie pin!

For my Dad's 60th Birthday we went to Barbados! So much sunshine, so much rum punch, so much fun.

We held our first Hen Party workshop, with the wonderful hen Tanya - their party was Superhero themed and they all created awesome dino necklaces.

We went down to Cornwall to visit friends and practice being wholesome/ getting really drunk.

We designed our first pair of socks! There's more of these coming, hold tight!

My third European Captains' Summit, this time in Paris, and my ninth Summit in total! As always it intense, informative and I got to see all my captain friends.

We were stocked in Le Bon Marche, Paris thanks to Shop at the Museums Pop Up Concession.

We were at Renegade for our fifth year! It was so fun as the Brighton crew had a whole section to hang out in!

Our first BUST craft fair, the entertainment was AWESOME! Love these girls! Marawa's Majorettes!

Our third Etsy Made Local market, which we spend most of the year organising with the Brighton Etsy Team leaders.

We were back at Crafty Fox market in Peckham, our last market of the season, and then it was online orders all the way to Christmas!

As another year came to a close I wrote about if we'd achieved last year's resolutions and what we want to accomplish this year if you want to read that post you can here.

Lemme know in the comments, or send us a tweet or a message on instagram or wherever you want to say hello, let us know what you got up to and HURRAH it's well and truly 2017, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Karli x

New Year's Resolutions

I always say that I am going to blog more, and I love having a slightly bigger space to tell you about the things going on at designosaur HQ and what we've been up to, but it always trails off towards the end of the year as things get BUSY and blogging is not my first love.

I know the internet is kinda anti the whole new year new me mantra, but it is a good time to stop doing the things you don't enjoy and start replacing those things with things you do enjoy, you know, whilst you've still got a pile of chocolate to help you through.

Looking back on 2016 goals...

Blog every week

Again I didn't do too badly, I blogged weekly from January until August and then didn't blog again until.... right. now. BUT I noticed more engagement, more views and I enjoyed what I was writing about more. Having a new fancy camera definitely helped.

Get to 10K instagram followers

Smashed it, I know that followers is a fairly empty number and engagement is where it is at, but it did feel good to complete a quantifiable goal and it seems that more opportunities are opening up to us because of our increased following, the year ended on 15.1K followers, HURRAH!

Work on secret plans

These changed throughout the year, but did end in moving at the end of the year and having a dedicated studio space, we've also got plans for early in January and are very pleased that although it's slow, progress is happening, and we're not standing still.

Publish our website

OK so again I worked on this all year, and with some tweaks of our branding it had several "delete everything and start again" moments. I'm all for this don't put all your eggs in one basket mantra, but we also have been incredibly lucky with the opportunities that have been offered to us through Etsy, so although our site will be a place where you can find the blog, a bit about us, information about commissions and wholesale, our main store will still be our Etsy store, as that's what works best for us, and we haven't heard any complaints from you guys!

So overall I'm going to look at this year as completely positive as we achieved a lot of goals, and plenty more things that weren't even on the agenda before they came up!

Plans for 2017

It's good to make goals, even if they change as you get closer to them, so this is the plan for this year... although as I already mentioned it's OK if they change throughout the year.

Design new socks, tights and leggings.

Jacques is going to draw something weekly (for fun)

I'll get our full new colour range up in our colour charts

We will finally publish our website

I'd love to know what your goals or plans are for the next year.

ROAR!

Karli