This other thing that I do

If there are periods of quiet here on the blog then it could very possibly be because I am tied-up with this other little endeavour I’m about to reveal to you (because, you know, having a full-time job, writing a blog and general household chores are not nearly enough to fill my days, oh no)!

Let me introduce you to PaperPaper; retro-styled posters for the modern home! It’s just a little hobby shop on Etsy right now but is about to leap into the big-time over the next few weeks which is pretty exciting (and exhausting).

I’m lucky that I get to be a graphic designer for my day job but you’d be surprised at how little actual designer-ing is required on a day-to-day basis. In a bid to exercise my creative muscles, and as I was already familiar with selling photos on Etsy, I thought I’d try my hand at selling a few graphic/typographic prints. To cut a long story short, compared to the photography my posters sold like hot-cakes so I focussed my efforts there and left the photography be the focus of my blogging – keeping the two ventures very separate. However, I feel the time has now come to smoosh these two worlds together; the photography and the design. (I think I always meant to do this – hence the strap line in my header).

Luckily there’s plenty of cross-over with these two subjects. I’m really excited about all the subjects I’ll be able to cover now; stuff I really know about and get paid to do (I’m thinking I should have been doing this all along).

I may have kept relatively quiet about the graphic-designery things up until now but that’s not to say I am not passionate about typography and colour and pattern. I see as much beauty in a well-crafted ampersand* as in any Ansel Adams masterpiece. Sometimes I just sit and stare at my Orla Kiely handbag, almost hypnotised by it’s patterned perfection. (And I’m embarrassed to admit to how much overspending I’ve done over the years because I’ve been lured in by the sexy packaging).

So yes, just to let you know you’ll probably be seeing more designer-y doings on this site in the future – hopefully that’ll be OK.

PS – if you do the facebook thing there’s a PaperPaper page to like – I’d love to see you there

 

*Talking of ampersands, I chose the typography for my logo based solely on its sexy ampersand (the font is called Playfair)