A look back at some of the year's commisions - part 1

Seeing as I haven't managed to update this much through the year I thought I'd do some posts looking back at a few of the personalised items and commissions from over the course of 2012. For part 1 some hooded tops and t-shirts made for company and club uniforms.

From left to right the companies and clubs featured above are Girevoy Sports Union, Manchester Kettlebell Club, both sport kettlebell organisations. Toon Speak (a community Theatre company, Scottish Kettlebell Club, McCarthy School of Dance, Metafit with Meg, Sense and Serenity and Hillington Park Gym . Click on the pictures themselves or the names to visit them. Next time...part 2 with some personal designs.

Adult T-shirt Colours

See the picture below for the colours I can offer adult t-shirts in (click to see a larger version). I can apply your design in a choice of colour(s) too, including plain, metallic and glittery.

I take orders for one-offs (without any set-up fees) or for larger quantities, each can be a different colour/design colour too. Perfect for sports teams, company promotion, staff uniforms or even just casual wear.


Other types of items are available including hooded tops (see here for colours: hooded top colours) and childrens t-shirts.

For more information just get in touch: contact@birdcagecreative.co.uk

Week 8 - Custom birthday card

Just a short one this week, thought I'd show a few pictures of a card I made recently for the birthday of one of the children in my martial arts school. I thought I'd have a go at making a spinning card i.e. I wanted the figure to spin when taken out the envelope.

To do this the cutout black silhouette is in two identical layers, between which is sandwiched a thread. The ends of the thread are secured to the front of the card above and below the cutout window (the front is doubled layered too to give a neater final appearance with no loose ends being visible). The figure could then be "wound up" before being put in the envelope so that when it was taken out it would spin within the window.

 

 The design itself I did in illustrator and cut out using my vinyl cutting machine, it takes a few passes to cut through heavy card and usually needs me to finish it off by hand too. I'm trying to think of other designs I could use for the spinning insert now, any suggestions welcome!

Week 7 - Ten of the best creative infographics

I've always been drawn to infographics, a discipline which involves conveying information, data or knowledge in graphical form. Infographics take many forms, from simple road signs and pie charts to timelines, maps and diagrams which show complex relationships and interations between the data being examined. A good infographic makes the most complex information easier to understand, and a great infographic, in my opinion, not only does this but also manages to present it in a visually appealing, creative manner.

In that vein, here, in no particular order, are ten great infographics. They all contain quite a bit of information so it's well worth clicking on them to see the detail.

The Very, Very Many Varieties of Beer
Links between the major styles of beer along with examples of each type and glassware recommendations
Author: Pop Chart Lab

Underskin
Tracing the routes of the systems of the human body
Author: Sam Loman

Periodic Table of Typefaces
Author: Cam Wilde

 The Apple Tree
A visual history of Apple products
Author: Mike Vasilev

Geological Time Spiral
Showing the time scale of the evolution of life on earth
Author: Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy

Waiting Time
Infographic detailing time spent waiting in one week
Author:  Ruth Tsang

Trustworthiness of Beards
Judging the trustworthiness of a person based strictly on beard style
Author: Matt Macinerney

Burning man Festival
The history of the festival, from it's days as a simple gathering on a beach to the present.
Author: Flint Hahn

50 Years of Space Exploration
Traces over 200 space missions
Author: Sean McNaughton, National Geographic & Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics

Noob Guide to Online Marketing
A very comprehensive 6-month action plan for marketing your business online
Author: Oli Gardner

Week 2 - Mousemats

Second week of Challenge 52 and this week the focus is a new product. I have made several items for Anne of Anne Reeves Jewellery personalised with her logo in the past, including an apron for her workshops and a phone cover, so when she contacted me about making her a personalised mousemat I agreed to add these to my product range.

I make these items in the same way I do my t-shirts - with contour cut vinyl. Vinyl is an extremely thin sheet of highly coloured material that is heat activated to form a permanent bond with material. The manufacturers say that the bond it forms should outlast the life of the garment/item itself so it is a great alternative to screen printing, especially when one-offs are needed or when special effects like chromes, glitters etc are desired.

The first step in making something is to make sure the design itself can be cut. There are two main type of image files - vector and raster. Raster images are made up of pixels (like most "picture" and photo files) so the shapes and colours are made up of variations in colour of these pixels. As automated cutting machines need a shape or edge to cut these files are no use to them  and have to be converted to the second type of file, a vector file, before they're ready for cutting. Vector files contain mathematical information that describes the colours, shapes, lines etc within the image, essentially you can think of them being made up of actual shapes instead of a collection of dots. These my cutting machine understands as it gives it the shapes it's required to cut.

So my first task in making a personalised item for someone is usually vectorising their logo if they can't supply me a vector version (NB if you get your logo made up professionally they should supply you with this version as it's also the best version for print, it will usually be an eps, ai, or vectorised pdf file). Luckily in this case i had aldready done this the first time Anne ordered something from me. You can see her original logo and the vectorised version below.

Original raster image

Vectorised image

Once I have the vector version of the image I can then cut it in the vinyls I've selected to match the colours. In this instance Anne had told me previously she liked the metallic colours I used in her phone cover (I'd made one side with metallic vinyls and the other in a different process with her original logo printed full colour), so I used the same colours in this job - shimmery mettalic purple and shimmery baby pink. Once cut i then "weed" the logo and apply it using my heat press. I'll go further into this process in a future post I have planned where I'll take you through the steps I go through in making a t-shirt.

So the end result is I have a personalised mousemat ready to send out to Anne. I've added some pictures of the finished article below, the camera's not great at picking out the simmer of the colours!

 

Before Anne asked me about this I hadn't thought about making mousemats as I assumed that most people didn't use them anymore but I've been inspired to add them to my range in my online store.  I mocked up some pictures of mousemates with different logos on (including mine!) for the listing. If anyone's interested you can see the listing here. 

 Another Challenge 52 participant Louise from Nanuk Jewellery has posted up Week 2 as well, you can find her post here.

Challenge 52

Right - in a concerted attempt to try to write more often on this blog (and also to get working through my supplies stash!) I've set myself a challenge-for the next 52 weeks I need to complete a brand new project, photograph it and write about it here. This could be making a new product for my online shops, a personal project (making something for me or producing a promotional item for example), a tutorial showing you how to make something, a new design for t-shirts/hoodies or a new project in my graphic design business. Basically anything that's new!


I'm hoping this is a good way to keep my business moving forward and to spur me to spend time creating promotional material (something i always put to the back-burner) and discovering new product lines; and hopefully make my blog interesting for you to follow.

Big challenge I think will be documenting it all, finding time to write up pieces and, more so, photographing things as this is where the Scottish weather works against me. Here's hoping the spring comes back soon and we get some nice, camera friendly weather.

So wish me luck, and if anyone else wants to join in with the challenge just add your blog link below and we can start out own wee challenge 52 club!

Custom lampshade

I recently got commisioned to make a martial arts themed lampshade for a baby boy's bedroom. The boy's dad is the head martial arts instructor at Kuk Sool Won Glasgow and uses a sillhouette of a kick as part of his promotional material. I'd been asked to make some wall transfers for the room first with the child's name and the kick sillhouette and so I thought it'd be good to try to incorporate the same theme into the lampshade.

Packaging experiments

Like I said in a previous post I've been playing around with various types of packaging for my items in an attempt to work out which I want to use. I've mainly been using craft card finish boxes with a small sticker in the form of the bird in my current logo, tied with either twine or ribbon. But I've also sent out a few items with little canvas bags with my logo applied to them (see the photos), in these ones the items are first wrapped in tissue paper. You can see some variations on these in the photos below:























I'm determined to make time to do a proper set of branding materials this month (in time for my first fair in June!) and included in that will be my proper logo and a final decision on what packaging to use. I think I may end up using both bags and boxes as they both have their place. I've also got plans for packaging for my t-shirts/hoodies that I'll hopefully be able to roll out soon.

Currently I'm using up my hangtags I made for my t-shirts and altering them slighty so they work as business cards (which I send out with all orders). I plan to have new hangtags and business cards once I've decided on the design so in the meantime these are the one's I'm using (along with some wee badges I had done too):

Alphabetti Spagetti

I dont know if it's a side effect of my graphic design work but I really love typography based design.

These typography drawers are my absolute favourite, they're from Kent & London and are handmade. A little out of my budget though!






Typographic soap from Soapy Love, scented with crushed peppermint the soap was molded from a unique silicone mold.





A - Z shelves, used to be made by Pottery Barn but have been delisted...they're crying out to be home-made though, hmm - if I ever have time!

so adventures in blogging begin...

I design and make custom t-shirts, hoodies, jewellery and crafty things and am hoping to soon have some of my stuff up for sale on a couple of handmade marketplaces including Etsy and Folksy. I was hoping to have this done for the New Year but so much to do and so little time!

I thought I'd start off with listing some jewellery and add in my t-shirt designs and other assorted things as I get them finished. From other websites and shop listings I've seen I personally think photography makes or breaks a shop so I was hoping to get some half decent shots done of a couple of items to start me off...not realising it's really not as simple as it sounds!

Spent most of my day messing about with a rough-and-ready lightbox set up (based on this tutorial) but I really don't have the lighting required (or maybe just the skill!) so ended up spending most of the time adjusting my images in photoshop.

I think I'm going to buy a couple of desk lights and experiment with some backgrounds. And maybe with a bit of practice I get clear shots without having to spend time editing out the shadows of my hand, camera, head etc etc!

Anyway....some initial shots.