#nofrillsfriday 03 - a disappointing eclipse and a more laid-back week

Kirsty and I dutifully spent this morning out on the top step of the studio.  The sky was bright blue, and then became duller and slightly darker as the impending eclipse began.  We'd prepared our own little eclipse viewing cards, with scrap card and a hole punched in.  We didn't see much, and it didn't even go very dark.  What we COULD see on the roof of our neighbour's studio was the frown mouth of the moon passing the sun.. but our arms got tired, so we didn't stay out very long. 

frillyindustries-eclipse01.jpg
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This week we posted out some orders, including a custom necklace for photographer Marianne Chua who wanted to see if we could combine our origami animals into a menagerie of a necklace.. so if she's shooting your wedding, you might spy it! (We think it looks FAB with that gorgeous stripy shirt!)

Thank you for my post @frillyind loving the wax seal!!

A photo posted by Marianne Chua (@mariannephotos) on

Wearing my @frillyind necklace with a deer on to a wedding in Richmond Park!

A photo posted by Marianne Chua (@mariannephotos) on

The remainder of the week saw us recovering from the frantic project launches of the previous week and generally taking stock: realising we'd completely lost ALL of our needle felting tools and ordering more; researching how we want to present ourselves at the forthcoming fairs we'll be at (we've been furiously pinning ideas and checklists and all sorts!); obsessively labelling all of our Really Useful Boxes as a way to manage and catalogue stock (Adrienne didn't really end up with RSI, just achey Dymo hands!); looking over our wholesale offer; and figuring out what our presence on Not on the High Street might look like - NOW THAT WE'VE BEEN ACCEPTED!  It's going to mean reshooting a lot of our products to match their neutral aesthetic, so we're figuring out how to align our ideals and theirs.  

RSI-inducing labelling for @frillyind #dymo #notdymo

A photo posted by Adrienne Frances (@adafrilly) on

And yes - this #nofrillsfriday is actually being posted on Saturday..  because we've been hard at work with the AMAZING Hannah Molloy of Pawfect Dogsense who is helping us learn how to be confident dog owners - how to understand Louis better, and how to help Louis be even more awesome than he already is.  We'd not seen Hannah since before Xmas, so our session yesterday stretched on longer than expected.. and so I'm only just getting this out now!  On the plus side, Sunday is going to be mine and Louis' FIRST AGILITY SESSION! Yep - I'm going to be working with Louis to sprint through tunnels and wiggle between poles.  I suspect Sunday will be much more about sitting on one spot until called though.  Baby steps!

In other doggy news - I'm in the studio today finishing off some more dog designs for our blossoming Frilly Menagerie range... all will be (hopefully!) revealed next week!

#nofrillsfriday 02 - 'moving on up' (sung in a Heather Small style)

This week has been a real mixed bag.  We've had some super awesome Frilly Industries news, but we've not been able to act upon it yet as we've had a number of We are Frilly deadlines all colliding at once.  Fortunately, Louis has been providing us with ample licks and snorkles (he snuffles like a pig!) and has kept us entertained and reasonably destressed via his sun-dial antics shifting himself across the studio floor as the sun moves around the room.

Sun worshipper 02 #bostonterrier @frillyind #frillyindustries

"Sun worshipper 02 #bostonterrier @frillyind #frillyindustries"

Sun worshipper 01 #bostonterrier @frillyind #frillyindustries

"Sun worshipper 01 #bostonterrier @frillyind #frillyindustries"

SO: what's the news?

Firstly, we found ourselves featured on Folksy which was a lovely surprise (which they then tweeted and facebooked and all sorts!) and has led to a lot of interest coming from their direction! Thankyou Folksy for the vote of confidence!

Secondly, we've been accepted as a 'Partner' for notonthehighstreet! 'Partner' is a posh way of saying we can sell our laser cut loveliness through them to a wide range of people.  We LOVE NOTHS - their branding, and their curated range of artists and makers.  We're hoping we'll fill a little Frilly shaped niche with them - but we won't be able to get started with all of that until next week at the earliest.  It's most exciting of all as they claim to only accept 5% of those who apply to sell with them - so it feels like a nice bit of validation that we're heading in the right direction.

We've been tinkering with our packaging a little bit - we've kept prices as low as we can, whilst still sending items out in beautiful packaging.. we've sourced some boxes locally in the Jewellery Quarter (handy!) which are thin enough to be posted Royal Mail 'large letter' (instead of 'small package' - which makes a big difference, despite no difference in weight!) - so we've been figuring out which items fit in which box.. as well as playing with NEW WAX COLOURS - in case you forgot:

Exciting post from @backtozeroco for @frillyind makes working on a Saturday less hateful! #packaging #wax

A photo posted by Adrienne Frances (@adafrilly) on

We've applied to sell at a number of markets across the year - we're still waiting to hear back from some of them, but the next one in the calendar is in April which feels like it's rapidly rapidly RAPIDLY approaching - we're talking to Karlus G Tailor (our local badass tailor!) to make some custom Frilly stuff for us in time for the market.. photos will be forthcoming! 

And lastly we've managed to make SOME time this week to play with Bertha.  As well as fulfilling orders trickling through, we finished up a couple of custom orders (including a hot young Michael Caine, which may or may not appear in the shop in the future.. keep your eyes peeled!) and have been finishing off some custom boxes we designed for a We are Frilly project where we've been working with The Lace Guild in Stourbridge.:

Laser cutting boxes for our lace-inspired geocache trail @Thelaceguild @we_are_frilly @frillyind

A photo posted by Adrienne Frances (@adafrilly) on

The box designs were made from photographs of lace from their collection which we vectorised enabling us to engrave their delicate patterns into box lids.  These boxes will be used for our geocache trail around Stourbridge as part of a bigger project we've been working on with the Guild - you can find out lots more about that over at the Load of Bobbins project site!

Ok - shushing now.  It's the end of what feels like an incredibly long week for us.  If you want to see what kind of weird, fun, shiny, odd things inspire us - then go and follow us on Facebook as we post a lot of links throughout the week to different blogs and sites we've stumbled on that we've found interesting.  And now, time for an episode of Community and then BED!