unfold uk

vicki eggs - discovery

I met Vicki Eggs at a summer fair in Cambridge.  She was selling her handmade greeting cards and ever the paperphile, I found myself ooohhing and aaahhhing in no time.  She's a clever photographer, and her designs feature shots she's taken on various jaunts overseas.  I'm particularly drawn to - no surprise - the photos she's taken in America. 

 

She uses real photo prints [no scans here, thankfully; I'm not anti-scan but real photos add more depth] and inserts them into die-cut windows that frame the shots really well. 

  

We met for coffee and had a bit of a chat [as they say on this side of the Atlantic].  She's relatively new to the business, and she's working hard to get her name out there.  And it's paid off:  she just signed a deal with a large publisher who is going to distribute these cards as well as license a range of Vicki's other designs.  I'm going to use Vicki as a case study on how an artist builds their own stationery brand, and I'll write regular posts to see how she's doing and what she's dealing with at any given time.  She's off to a strong start.

points for originality

Everyone thinks, or would like to think, that what they create is unlike anything else out there but it's pretty rare to see something completely novel.  I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, to find a couple of things at the Top Drawer trade show recently that I hadn't seen before in some way shape or form.

it's plastic by any other name

These little square cards by Stooshie Design feature a 3-D perspex ring that frames a particular design element [in this case, a Scottie dog]. Perspex, by the way, is British for acrylic.  They are created by Linda Carlin, an incredibly sweet Scottish woman who educated me in Scottish slang.  A stooshie, you see, is an argument or fracas, as in after one too many pints, their lively debate degraded into a right stooshie by the end of the night.  It's a bit of a strange name given that Linda hardly seems the argumentative type. Whatever her mood may be, she does make cute and - better yet - original cards.  

   

 

put it together 

I've never seen a card made out of jigsaw puzzle pieces before.  Maybe it's been done before and I just missed it - wouldn't be the first time - but I think this is clever.  While the White Cotton Card Co.'s designs aren't really my style, I like the way they execute this concept and it's fun. 

They've tested the cards and reported that they don't cost anything extra to send and the postal service will deliver the envelope full of puzzle pieces without a problem.  Will wonders never cease.

lighten up

Last week I attended yet another trade show in London. For such a small place, England hosts a disproportionately large number of gift and design shows.  This most recent one is called Top Drawer, which is a smaller show of higher end, cutting edge home accessories, jewelery [or jewellery as it's spelled here] and paper products.  There are no seminars, no big events other than the exhibition; it was small and manageable and a really pleasant day.

Since I'm a sucker for brightly colored profanity, these cards stopped me in my tracks:

 

They are the handiwork of Laura Bowen and Jack Gardner of Room 7, a small design team from Somerset.  Jack wrote a book called words are not things, which is a collection of aphorisms written with the express purpose of provoking thought.  I'm not typically not a fan of the Tony Robbins and Dr. Phil-style of navel-gazing, but I have to say that this book did what it set out to do: it made me think.  That's some accomplishment for a tiny little book, since thinking isn't something I do often or well. 

I'm not entirely sure what it is about a collection of interesting thoughts that inspires a greeting card to scream 'fuck', but strangely enough it works.