The design of my first ever product in the wild

After a few months of working and perfecting, having had such good feedback from Etsy I received a batch of them (plus some of the other designs that are looking really good!!) on the post, check them out!

Was really chuffed on how it turned out.

Sooooo… As I did get a few I am thinking of doing a cheeky giveaway! All you got to do to get your hands on one is share the following on Twitter and the winner will be randomly picked on the Saturday, 6th of August:

“Ohhh Weee! Mr @kyanos is having another giveaway! RT this tweet to get your hands on a limited edition Tea Towel! http://goo.gl/qEjrr”

For more good licking products visit my Etsy store and say hi!

What is BigLittleCity? Basically it was a concept founded by Dan Green as a celebration of Cardiff and Cardiff’s creative talent for photography, art, film, writing, music and performance, animation, illustration, painting and graffiti. BigLittleCity is about the city and the experience of its residents and as such we are extremely focused on collaboration.

BigLittleCity is staging a rolling four-month exhibition to help launch Cardiff’s prestigious new people’s museum The Cardiff Story at the Old Library building, The Hayes, in the heart of our city. By rolling it means that every few weeks the work is changing to accomodate for a bigger load of works, which makes this exhibition really interesting and never boring!

I was invited to be part of this project by Dan to develop artwork that celebrated in any possible way Cardiff. After struggling to settle in an idea I just threw everything I had thought for it and decided to wing it, looked around my neighbourhood, set my mind to it and there it was, the inspiration for the piece I will be showing until the 15th of May. I am very proud to be part of it and exhibiting there.

The doors open at 5pm and close at 10pm – admission is free. There will be a glass of wine going (while they last!) and many of the artists who have contributed to the exhibition will be present, I will be there. It would be great if you could come along and have a look, its a wonderful exhibition with many fantastic artists.

Don’t forget to follow the whole experience on their facebook page and on twitter.

So far we covered the whole of downstairs, furniture is there and we only need some little knick knacks, new blinds and more wooden logs to fill our half full chimney hole. Also we are in the lookout for a funky 70′s Danish Bureau, so if you have an idea where to get one, do hit me up with a link. I would really appreciate it.

Basically our place is getting there, still a bit of a mess but less than before. I thought of putting up some details of the place, as soon as the days get lighter and house tidier I will do a super post with how the rooms are looking. But first the upstairs, which has been started with. Baby room is now painted, only ours to go and lots of drilling.

It was a pretty cool night where I had the chance to meet loads of great artists, a privilege to be exhibiting with them. I would recommend everyone to pop over to Roath to visit it. I know my favourites, which are yours?

For more information you can check my previous post on the exhibition.

The prints are also  for sale at my shop soon.

Real happy to be exhibiting alongside names such as Poked Studio, Matt Joyce, Matt Needle, Matt Jones, Ben Thomas, Huw Barret, Liz Price and Will Hodges.

The Sho Gallery is a small & vibrant place with lots of different goodies on show, mainly works as a shop selling cool prints from cool/great illustrators alongside with trendy knick knacks such as tea towels, vinyl toys, home decoration, stickers, etc. What I like about the shop is that it has the whole independent vibe around it, it is situated on a little road just off Albany Road, in Roath (Cardiff) and the owners are a very cool & relaxed couple. A very local shop which makes me think that we did the right thing in moving to Roath.

If you are interested and want to come along the opening is this Friday from 5.30pm. Just show up and you get to know lots of different cool people + the artists. I’ll be there. If you can’t make it the show will be on until the 24th of March, do hop along if you can.

You can find the shop just there.

As always the prints will also be for sale on both my shop and my etsy.

This year I am setting myself a different task, to actually get my work out there in a commercial sort of way, not in a hurry though, still need to learn lots.

So far I’ve completed 308 days out of the 365 I set myself to. I don’t know if I will ever finish it but I am giving it a more relaxed and thought measure by not trying to aim to finish the overdues in a week, but instead whenever I can.

As I said before this year I want to take it up a notch and face this whole design/illustration business a bit more serious. I will still endeavour to at least make a design/illustration per week for the fun of it.

Keep an eye out!

Here are some of my favourites that I’ve done:

All in all it is sounding pretty sweet! I hope yours will be as sweet as I hope mine will be.

Here’s some of 2010 highlights:

For the upcoming weeks we will be moving, tidying, painting, knocking, shouting, sleeping a lot! But as I said before it really is exciting, we are finally going to be able to put all of those amazing prints we’ve been collecting up on the walls, also that dream of having a more sustainable lifestyle might be close as we’re planning of having a vegetable patch and some chickens. Can’t wait! Will definitely post some WIP pictures of the place as we’re doing it.

On a different matter and having seen mrYen’s blog post on shipping dates I decided to nick them to here too, specially because I am going to Portugal for Xmas and won’t be round to post stuff.

Last dates for shipping in time for Christmas:
UK:
Thursday 15th of December:
1st class

Places that can no longer get things in time for Christmas (sorry!):

South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, USA and Canada.

There are still plenty of Xmas cards and prints for sale, so go and check ‘em out, will be posting them as normal during our move.

Basically I’m giving away for free a limited edition ‘Go there’ A3 print. Click here for more details on the print.

All you have to do is leave a comment on why you like the print on this post by the 13th of December.

On that day I will pick my favourite comment and announce the winner. Only condition being is that I have to get a minimum of 10 comments to actually give the poster away, so if you are on twitter or facebook just post this message to help you maximise your chances:

“Win! 1 x A3 limited edition print up for grabs. RT this message, details on how to win: http://goo.gl/pwwII”

Does that sound fair?

Best of luck guys! Looking forward to read your comments!

————

This giveaway is now closed and I got a great bunch of comments guys, thanks for being part of it! It was really tricky to choose a winner but in the end the chosen one was:

Carys (will email you and ship the print asap)

The whole project was part of a submission to the ‘Your curious story’ contest by ArjoWiggins, one of the big names in paper production.

This isn’t all that Paper Donut™ have to offer, be sure to take a look at their site for some more awe inspiring paper creations, very in the line of Julien Vallée‘s work.

As they say ENJOY AND BON APETIT!