merry christmas

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!
Love from the Dotty Wrens x

advent 24

Christmas Eve..and our last advent post!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas time 

love 

The Dotty Wrens

xxxxx

advent 23

Two more sleeps xx

Sue x

advent 22

Hoping all your presents are being safely guarded by cute little pugs. ;-)

x

advent 21

If you haven't started your Christmas shopping yet now is the time to get your skates on!
Me? All done. #smugface
Dawn x

advent 20

Have fun and celebrate the weekend in Christmas styley ....day 20 

love Wendy

x

advent 19

This ones just for you Lizzie, HO HO ! XX

Sue xx

advent 18

A good dose of extra glitter... if you haven't quite had enough from me already! 

x 

advent 17

It's getting closer people...hope you're more on top of the situ than me!
Dawn x

advent 16

Day 16! still so much to do x

advent 15

Monday has rolled around again...last full week before Christmas ! dont panic people ! day 15...

love Wendy

x

advent 14

Why not deliver all your presents by camel this Christmas! :-) 

advent 13

Don't forget to buy presents for your pets, folks!
Dawn x

advent 12

Advent halfway!! pick a tree....any tree.. have fun filled weekends ....

day 12 love from Wendy

x

advent 11

Hello,

its Day 11 already!

advent 10

Sending you all some early Christmas love.... x

advent 9

We went to buy a tree last night. It was a relatively stress free operation for a change. This is because we went without the other half. And the kids weren't fussed what it looked like. So I got my own way. We picked a good one :)
Dawn x

advent 8

Happy Monday folks ! this week kicks off with some festive front door foliage ;)

....day 8 love from Wendy x

advent 7

Hope you are all having a good weekend, not so sure Mr Polar Bear is a fan of his hat!!! x

Sue x

advent 6

Wishing you all wonderful wintery weekends. Good luck if you're Christmas shopping!

Lizzie x

advent 5

Happy day 5 people!

Dawn x

advent 4

 ...Some dotty wren baubles for your tree ...haha, I actually wrote exactly the same thing this time last year....de-ja-vu !! but least the piccies been updated ......day 4 love from Wendy x

advent 3

Its only Day 3 already! I haven't put my tree up yet, have you?

Susan x

advent 2

Presents... don't forget to buy yours! I fear that the little space in my brain I had reserved for present buying has now been filled with daily advent designs. So, chances are, no-one will be getting anything from me this year. :-O Lizzie x

advent 1

If you're doing something for the second time ever can you say it's "traditional"?
Good, I thought so....
So here's the traditional Dotty Wren advent calendar that we do every year folks...day 1...
Dawn x

Designers For Hire

Print and Pattern's  'Designers for Hire' Directory launched this week, and we are so pleased that Marie Perkins from the brilliant Print and Pattern blog invited us all to be part of it.

The directory is aiming at being a go to place for Art Directors and buyers looking for experienced designers with a talent for designing for all markets including, fabric, Stationery, Home, Children's. and many more.

Here's a little peek at our banners.

 Go Check it out

http://www.designersforhire.net/

bonfire night

Yay it's bonfire night! Lock up your pets and stay safe people :)
Dawn x

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Wooooo... halloween on friday... 1 more day to pimp up your pumkins...have a spooky friday night everyone !! 

love Wendy x  

lovely day

Apparently last month, September, was the driest since records began. 

Never fear though... the entire of Autumn's rainfall has decided to pour directly on to my house today. Might need to get the canoe out! 

Stay dry peeps! 

Lizzie x

dotty wren day trip

We had a Dotty Wren Studio meet up on Friday....in London. It was so nice to see everyone. We chat to each other every day but it's not the same as a real life get together is it? Wish we all lived closer. We could have a proper studio together. We could spend all day chit chatting and all night drinking wine. We'd never get any work done but it'd be a right laugh...
Dawn x

interview

Hello people! 
How have you been?
We've all been mad busy since Surtex,  working with new clients as well as all the old ones we already had....so there's not been much time for our poor neglected blog!

I did, however, find time to turn into Know-It-All-Norman and answer a few questions on Ali Benyon's fab blog today. Go over and have a nosey...

Norman x

new york new york

Oh we had such a fab time in New York! It was AMAZING!!
We got up early and went to bed late in the city that never sleeps...and we laughed our heads off all week!

We had an idea of how we wanted our booth to look before we went but we didn't do a proper plan. We just took a load of stuff with us, piled it up on the floor then set to work....and it must have turned out ok cos loads of people came over to give us a "booth of the year" award... not actual real life official awards you understand, just made up pretend ones with no trophy and no plaque...but we accepted with thanks and a big smile anyway.

We arrived on Friday (in the rain) and went to set up on Saturday (in the sun)...here we are with our bags of stuff outside our hotel...

 

Our booth was a big white space when we found it. But we soon changed THAT! We chucked everything on a big pile in the middle of the floor then just cracked on with it. No-one really decided who would do what, we just found a job and did it. There were also lots of lovely Javits men on hand to lend us screwdrivers and spanners. (Language top tip: a spanner is called a wrench in America!)

After a while the big white booth looked like this...

By 3pm we'd done as much as we could and we jumped in a cab to Ikea...in Brooklyn. We knew what we wanted. We'd seen them in Ikea at home. A couple of $10 rails and 4x $5 stools for us to sit on. We could've hired extra Surtex stools to park our bums on but it seemed excessive at the $170 they were gonna charge us for each one so a trip to Ikea seemed like a good plan.

Some people go to New York to shop on 5th Avenue or the fab boutiques in Greenwich Village. Not us. We are Ikea chicks!

Unfortunately getting back wasn't so easy. We found there was a distinct lack of taxis waiting to take people back to Manhattan. We had to sit on an Ikea shuttle bus for half an hour till there were enough people on it for the driver to deem it a worthwhile journey. He then dropped us off at a subway station and we had to do the whole subway thing with our stools and flatpack rails in tow. Oh what fun!

The Javits is massive and it was basically all we saw of New York for the next 3 days.

Here's our booth... some might say "award winning" booth....(unofficially of course...)

We met the most amazing people in the world EVER. Everyone who came to see us was just sooo lovely. And funny! We had a right laugh! We were expecting serious business types but people were just really amusing. 

We had hoped to be all Sex in the City before we went. We failed. But we succeeded in being the Golden Girls! We couldn't believe the number of people who said "You girls are soooo cute!" Clearly "cute" has a different meaning in America cos we are all in our 40's and no-one ever calls any of us cute at home! Could have been the accidental co-ordination of our outfits that did it maybe?...

Anyway we had a really great show. Our booth was busy the whole time. We even had queues on the first day! We sold loads and had a lot of interest in licenses and commissions going forwards. We made some great contacts and also met tons of lovely people we had only known online before the show.

And we laughed.

A lot!

It was a bit sad having to dismantle our booth at the end of it all and we defo want to be back there next year.

We didn't really see much of New York though. We could've been in the NEC at home for all we knew! Next year we definitely need to add at least another day in for proper shopping and sightseeing.

We did go for some lovely meals on a night. (Mostly Mexican. Every place we fancied turned out to be all guacamole and frozen margaritas!)

And on the day we flew home we had an hour and a half in Macy's. To do some speed-shopping.

And the good news is...we all got on really well. We are all completely on the same wavelength and it felt like we'd known each other for years.

I'm so glad that this is just the start of our big adventure and the Dotty Wrens will be sticking together ... so stay tuned for our next big adventure! 

(And if someone could tell the Surtex organisers that we need an actual real life best booth award that would be great thanks)

Dawn x

  

We are off to New York... in 10 days! We're so excited... and nervous, it's going to be an amazing trip whatever happens. We would love to meet you if you're going, so please pop by our booth, 834 and say hello. To book an appointment and view our work, please email us at info@dottywrenstudio.com 

See you there! 

Featured on Print and Pattern

Hey,

Sorry we haven't been around here much! We are really busy with projects and getting ready for Surtex that our lovely little blog has been a little neglected,

The lovely Print and Pattern blog featured a mothers day range I designed for Tesco today, here's a couple of snaps from the blog and the originals underneath.

 

Thanks P&P

Sue xx