Personalised and Hand Lettered Client Gift Cards

Today I'm sharing some client gift cards I made to send to my awesome clients earlier this year. I wanted to give out something with a bit of a concept, something interesting instead of just a pretty card. I thought this coffee idea would be great as most people love coffee, or even if they don't, everyone enjoys the smell of fresh coffee beans. I thought it also tied in well with a new year and a fresh start. 

Sending end of year gifts and cards has become a bit too much of a thing and people just get bombarded with season's greeting from all angles. No one expects to receive gifts in January unless it's their birthday, so I sent these in January as a happy surprise to start the year off on a good note. Since I have a fairly small and really lovely client base, I took the extra time and effort to individually customise them with their names, either hand painted or digitally illustrated (I tried two styles as you'll see below) to make it really special and show them that they're important to me. Here are some examples...

Here's a look at some of the rough practice work that went on beforehand...

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts so don't forget to leave a comment :)

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Recent Illustration, Lettering & Doodles

I realised the other day that I post lots of sketchbook illustrations and process work to Instagram but haven't been sharing that much here at all! So here's a look at a few recent Instagram posts showing you some recent illustration progress work and fun doodles, in case you're wondering what I've been up to...

One of the goals I mentioned in my last post (where I shared the March free calendar & planner) is to draw more, so what you see here is partly practice and experimentation, partly random sketchbook doodles and partly progress towards planned pieces.
If you liked this, follow me on Instagram to see more. I also share some general life pics (mainly cats and nature).

In case you missed it the other day, the March free calendar & planner is out! Go grab your copy now, share it with your friends and get planning! There's also a brand spanking new exclusive newsletter starting soon, so sign up now.

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Watercolour Doodle

Hope you had a lovely weekend! I decided to have a real weekend for once and just chilled without work, blogging or too much computer time and more sleep, book-reading and doodling time. It was great! Here's a little watercolour doodle I did that I quite like. Will probably feature on some stationery products soon! What do you think?

A quick doodle...

A quick doodle inspired by the cool plants at The Factory Cafe...

So I impulse-bought some calligraphy pens...

I've never attempted proper calligraphy before and don't know the first thing about it really, so if you're a calligraphy master don't go getting your judgy pants on! I thought they'd be fun to play around with and might produce some interesting results. They came in a pack of three, each with a different width. These are some quick doodles I did with them (above), and I worked it into a watercolour pattern I'd created previously (below). What do you think? 

Looking forward to playing around with them more :)

A Recent Illustration...

Hand-drawn Postcards

A batch of hand-illustrated and painted postcards, soon to be for sale. (The gold is metallic paint - doesn't show up much in photos.) Had fun doing these and pretty stoked with the way they turned out. What do you think? Your feedback means a lot to me :)
Drop me a mail if you'd like a pack. Customisations welcome!

Sneak Peek - Watercolour Illustration

Here's a little peek at some stuff I've been working on. Really digging watercolours combined with pen work, so have been having fun experimenting with that. What do you think?

Planning on using these for some stationery stuffs - watch this space!

I've also just started using Dribbble a bit, check it out.

P.S. Blog cleanup is still in progress! Designing for yourself is always the toughest - can't make up my mind on a look for the header and sidebar stuffs! Soon, I hope.

Winter doodle doo...

Spookasem

This is one of my favourite things and favourite words :)

For those who don't know, "spookasem" is Afrikaans for candy floss or cotton candy. It's a lovely word because it literally translates to ghost breath. What a beautiful, eloquent word.

Oh Monday...

Happy Bunny - a quick doodle

Running extremely low on time and energy and had some internet trouble for a few day, so unfortunately haven't been able to prepare the posts I want, but I've appointed this trusty happy bunny to keep you company til I get some time xx

Watercolour Explorations...

Been playing around with watercolour painting...
Haven't ever done this before and don't really have much knowledge on it, so don't judge too much, haha. These were done using very amateur paints, brushes and paper, since I'm just feeling it out for now before I invest in the good stuff...

Would love to know what you think :)

Always W(a)nder

doodle

Doodle

Flying Cat of Wonder!

I've been having a very low-energy, too-tired, so-much-to-do-so-little-time-and-energy kinda week, so while I bring myself towards myself you may find some amusement by casting your gaze upon this wondrous flying cat that came outta my pen.

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Lines of Thought...

Last night was the opening of an exhibition at the Collective gallery titled "Lines of Thought". The brief: You're given a blue ballpoint pen and a notebook - do whatever you want as long as it's in blue ballpoint only. It was a very cool idea coz it was open to anyone, so it was an unintimidating platform for people who aren't "artists" as such to participate. 

I really liked how it was displayed - the notebooks were all hung from the ceiling so it was almost like an interactive installation at the same time. It was cool that it got people moving around the room and talking, in a way that doesn't happen when stuff is displayed on walls. 

The exhibition is on for 2 weeks, and you can buy the notebooks for R150. Go check it out :)