As the seasonal family gathering becomes a happy memory and 2017 begins, I have begun taking stock of where I am and what I hope to achieve in the next year.
After a very busy Christmas season, I enjoyed a bit of time away from the silk and the cards. But not long till I felt the creative urges once more. I am focussing on restocking my retail outlets before working on some new designs. That’s the exciting part.
Delighted to have been selected to showcase and sell my work at the NI Assembly Gift and Coffee Shop from December 2016 until May 2017.
Based in Parliament Buildings at Stormont, the NI Assembly Gift and Coffee Shop showcases high quality work by local makers. Working in partnership with Craft NI on the New Designer Makers’ Initiative, the outlet stocks a distinctive selection of quality contemporary craft products from across Northern Ireland.
Further information about visiting the NI Assembly here.
I’m excited to have been selected to take part in the Craft and Design Collective pop up Christmas shop event – The Big Bauble 2016 which takes place in space CRAFT shop and gallery right in the centre of Belfast (next door to Sawers Deli). It runs from 1st November to 24th December and features some of the best craft in Northern Ireland. Great for unique and fabulous Christmas presents.
I’ve been busy developing my range of Christmas cards, including some ‘from Belfast, Northern Ireland, County Down’ etc. As well as the Christmassy reds and greens, I’ve used some frosty blues and silvers and some jewel colourways. I love not only the traditional images – robins, trees, snowflakes, but also abstract ‘scandi’ designs and quirky images. Here’s one of my Belfast Christmas cards featuring the city’s iconic Samson & Goliath cranes.
Just received some professional photos of my work. Facilitated by the wonderful CraftNI, they were taken by Sohaila McKee of Vizz Creative in Newcastle, County Down.
Images courtesy of Craft NI. Photography: Vizz Creative, 2016
Exciting news! Tourism Ireland contacted me – they loved my cards and were particularly interested in my Dark Hedges cards to promote Game of Thrones tourist attractions. They placed a big order, which, as the annual camping trip was rained off, I was able to fill quickly. I sent the cards to Tourism Ireland offices in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris and Milan. They are forwarding them on to numerous key journalists/bloggers/media across Europe and GB. Imagine!
Re-stocking both Doris & Jeannie shops in Belfast with greeting cards today – hopefully time for a coffee in Ann St shop. Need to buy some more Annie Sloan chalk paint too – I’ve greatly improved the concrete flagstones around our house with watered down chalk paint – they look like slate now! And, yesterday I bought a 1950’s china cabinet from a charity shop which I will upcycle and slightly distress to house my mum’s Poole pottery coffee set and very pretty pink flowery china tea set. I think I’ve decided to paint it ‘Chateau Grey’ which has a lovely green tinge and the interior back wall ‘Graphite’. Will sit up tonight fraying pieces of silk and watch the results of the EU Referendum…..
Well, I finally got around to it! For some time, existing and potential customers and retailers have asked for my website address and I finally realised that the time had come. Although I had bagged my domain name aliodesigns.co.uk over 10 years ago and regularly renewed it, to be honest I had been more than a little frightened by the jargon and mystified by the process. Being a child of the fifties who limited new technologies to email – ‘webhosts’, ‘widgets’ and ‘plugins’ sounded like comic book characters I read about in the dentist’s waiting room (never any Bunty for Girls comics around).
My techno-savvy sons both live overseas, him indoors is even less e-literate than me, and my daughter prefers to create with pens and pencils rather than keyboards, so I dug into the world of tutorials and live chats and here we are. Got me a webhost, built a basic site, already uploaded too many pics -quantity over quality right? Maybe not. It’s not perfect and I will make changes as I learn more about this magical land that I think is called the ‘interweb’.
Please contact me if you like my work or want to know more.