Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate

No, I've not gone back to my primary school and skipping games in the playground. Instead I spent the day at Norfolk Jelly in Norwich - getting on with my own work but not down in my studio on my own, but rather in a room with others getting on with their own work. It's a great way of working, sharing and brain-storming.

Jelly started in New York in 2006 when a couple of friends realized that they loved working from home, but missed the creative brainstorming, sharing, and camaraderie of a traditional office. They started inviting friends to their home to work just one day a week and soon found that working alongside new and interesting people resulted in new ideas and interesting conversations.

And thus Jelly was born.

I've no idea why "jelly", but why not? And it's an excuse to eat jelly beans as I discovered today.

Jelly Norfolk was started by Sophie Garrett and Cassie Tillett and has been running successfully for a few months now.

So is it worthwhile for me to drive to Norwich (45+ minutes), park at £4.50 for the day, spend the day with others who work on their own and then drive the 45 minutes home? I'd say so.

Today I entered all the tedious petty cash receipts into my accounts package - I really do drink too much tea and coffee while away at trade shows - far too many receipts!! It's a tedious job which gets put off when in the studio, so that's a job well done. 

I then prepared the email letters to be sent out tomorrow to all the customers and visitors to my stand last week - I couldn't send it today as I needed to work on a few photos which I don't do on the laptop. But they're ready to go 1st thing in the morning.

This was followed by an incredibly useful bit of brain storming with Sophie, then some lunch, and then a bit of work on the website. Thrown in for good measure was the ability to pick the brains of others on anything that came to mind - Facebook issues, ecommerce web developers, laptop problems, and why some of the jelly beans brought in by Cassie tasted good and others were disgusting!!

The question I ask myself is, would I have done all this while in the studio? The answer is definitely no, as I would have done other jobs. But I could focus on the jobs I'd planned for today which more than likely would have got put off and put off, and get them done - with the added bonus of picking other people's brains, learning new stuff and actually having quite a decent fun sort of day.

I recommend it as a way of working. Come and join us, or find one near you, if you work on your own.

Spring Trade Fair - our display

Another 5 days spent at the NEC, Birmingham at the International Spring Fair - well, that's 5 days of the show, but another 2 days setting up. We had alot of interest in what we'd planned for our display this year, so the following will reveal all.

The stand, after unloading the van

Emma painting the blocks of Farrow and Ball colours onto the wall

This year we are rebranding slightly and will be using a colour palette of autumn/spring colours - yellow, green, orange and brick, all chosen from the Farrow and Ball range of paints.
Blocks of colour were painted onto the wall as a backdrop to the various card designs. We had to carefully work out the size of each block of colour, depending on how many cards were to be displayed - fiddly to mark up, but worth it. 

 
We then stencilled some large scale animals above the blocks - stencilled which we'd cut beforehand - sheep (of course!), hen, dog, cat and hare.

The Farrow and Ball paints along with our stylish stencil brushes

Painting all done, just some product needed now

Emma got the lovely job of pegging up the cards along with their label

And this was the end result - better photo to come later

We used string from which to peg the cards - the string was painted in our colours, as were the pegs - it was much admired by many - inexpensive and very eye catching. So much so that we now have to replicate it several times for some of our retailers.

And then we had to take it all down again!