Colours May Vary talk

• They stock things they'd want themselves
• The fact it's a creative hub helps the to make connections
• Colours May Vary links to the fact you don't know what you'll find when you go into the shop
• What sells? Magic pencils - they're cheap and fun
• A range of prices is good!
• You need to know what people will spend in a city as opposed to a quiet town, and how much you can charge for what it is. 
• Your product must be have strong design as well as application. The combination of design, colour, craft and process is the most important.
• Do editions! People like the fact they're buying an edition of a print/zine etc.

How to be a stockist?

• Email/bring it in
• Concept 
• Process
• How you present yourself and your work

Leeds Comic and Film Fair

This was... interesting... and really not what any of us were expecting, I don't think. It was nice being among my peers with each of our different stalls. But I don't think the clientele were what we expected. We were situated outside of the event, so quite a few people wandered around the stalls LCA had, but it was quite obvious that we weren't why they were there. Nevertheless, it was fun doing this with friends and gaining the experience of it. It has definitely still encouraged me to do more art fairs in the future, and I look forward to them.

Business Cards

I took this cat design from a previous lino cut I made, I felt it was bold, simple and eye catching.

When printing my tote bags, I felt it was also appropriate to print some business cards. I played around with the lino print I made, and a minimal colour pallet. It was important for me to make sure it was eye catching, and after several experiments, I found the white behind the lino makes it stand out the most. I also wanted to play around with the layer on photoshop by misaligning the different shapes, I was able to create some lovely overlapping. In the end, I screen printed my cards, as it was a  cheap and reasonably quick way of producing a lot in a small space of time. Screen printing them also allowed me to gain some lovely textures within the white circle.

Tote Bags

I took a lino print from my 504 module and thought it'd translate well on a tote bag. After looking into how to lino print onto fabric, for the size I planned on printing and the time I had available to do it, it was impractical. I then thought about just using the positives from my lino prints, to screen print  Which also meant I could make separate layers allowing me to use more than one colour.

Screen printing the tote bags, I found was actually quite simple. It was a bit tricky getting used to marking out the position of the screen for each tote bag and remembering to do 4 pulls instead of 1 or 2. But other than that, I found it easier than screen printing onto paper. 

I'm really happy with how they turned out, I think they were even more successful than my prints of the same lino for 504. To compliment the canvas material of the tote bag, I decided to print using a pale pink and navy blue. I felt printing with black ink would be too harsh a contrast.