I have always had an interest in producing product related to clay and ceramic materials but never found an opportunity before to produce things as its either been something which was impossible to produce or I have put it off to not having enough time to produce things for myself.
I may have not realised how busy I would be from January onwards with work needing to be produced for modules but I thought I may as well as take on the task whilst I have the time and fitting it around doing work for uni and utilising my free time a bit better.
I have never had my work put into the exhibition or shop before so I had made sure that I had thoroughly carried out my research before I started sketching out ideas and buying materials. I had started out by using websites that I would normally use to find and search for earring - as people have commented on my range of handmade earrings that I own so I had looked on Depop and Instagram mainly to see what sort of thing is popular among people and how I could fit this into my own designs.
I didn't want to rip off anyone's designs as well as doing this so I had drawn up some designs including the kind of shapes/colours which I would wear myself. I had categorised my audience as the typical art student/ a version of myself including colourful and bold shapes which can compliment most outfits.
I feel as though as towards the end of this - the branding of the products which I had made could have been a lot better but because I was very pushed for time I had to make use of resources which I had at hand. I had recently worked on producing a book for Adam French for my responsive module and I had 20 sheets of nice G.F. SMITH card stock and I thought that I may as well make use of this - so I had painted some textures on a couple of sheets of this and trimmed them down to the sie of the earrings and the bags which they were contained in.
Throughout my research I had found that I would be able to use a certain type of clay which I would be able to solidify without using the kilns at the university as I didn't have time to be inducted and to wait to be added onto a list to get an induction without ceramics so the more DIY approach was more suitable for this.
I had asked the staff at Fred Aldous about what sort of clay would be suitable for this kind of project which I was wanting to do and they had suggested using a FIMO Polymer clay to make the earrings - Although quite expensive their store does apply a student discount to products so I thought that it might work out buying the main materials through them.
I had been suggested to apply for project fund as well as I had heard that it might be a beneficial approach to getting funding for the earrings that I had produced - later on in the application process I had found out that this money is only allocated for future projects which are unrelated to work being produced for modules being worked on. I have still put my application forward and will be finding out this week if my application will be getting funded as I have already received a response that they have accepted my application and are very happy with the information that I have provided. I will be finding out the 25th of March if this has been put forward and will be funded.
In term of the production of the earrings, I had to work around being the work I do for my main university hand ins which meant that I had to utilise my free time as well asking for help from some of my friends to help me mass produce a lot of the earrings which I had made. Throughout this Eloise and Alice had provided me with a lot of help on making these and making sure I got everything ready to put in the Find and Seek shop which was based in Leeds Corn Exchange.
I had attended the Launch event for the pop-up shop which was very successful - there was a very large turnout to this and the people setting up the event - Ada and her illustration peers from the 57 Club had commented on how they would be buying a few pairs. The thing which had hit me about all of this was being able to see a girl who had bought a pair of earrings which I had made on that launch event which had put into perspective that what I was doing wasn't a complete waste of time - even though it was just one person this was enough to of a highlight to take from this event.
No comments:
Post a Comment