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How An Afternoon Printmaking Resulted In Our First Notebook Collection

As the month of September rolls in once again, we wanted to share what inspired us to create our first ever notebook collection.

As designers we often have an idea in our heads of what we want something to look like. So much time is spent trying to get it to exactly how we imagined it, we forget to look for the beauty in the experiments along the way. Sometimes these ‘experiments’ are just simply practise runs and help you complete your final piece. Sometimes they are really bad and get instantly relegated to the bin (You know..the ones you don’t want to subject anyone else to. EVER.) Others that have some potential get promoted to the draw nobody goes in (although your already doubting why anyone would pay for your artwork at that point……) And some experiments spark a tiny ignition of inspiration. These are the experiments that take your work in direction you have never even contemplated, and often turn out to be the best ideas. It is exactly this process that led us to creating our first ever notebook collection.

Back in August 2021 we had a nature mono-printing afternoon all planned out. We had ideas that we really wanted to progress with and began printing with determination. Only to find the idea we had, just wasn’t working out. As time went on we started to drift away from our original idea, and began just playing with colours, leaves and natural materials more freely. Now, no surprises given we live in the North West of England, the back end of August that year was wet and grim, and subconsciously our colour palette began looking very Autumnal. Although we were disappointed our original idea didn’t work, when we took a step back and looked what we had actually produced we were pleasantly surprised. The prints seemed so earthy, and natural, that they had quite a simple beauty to them. We quickly decided we had to use them within one our products. 

Our mini nature mono prints

The prints themselves we only small, around A6 in size, so couldn’t be used on products with a large surface area. However we had been toying with the idea of notebooks for quite a while. And then out of the blue, our new collection of prints seemed to be the perfect solution. So after whittling the designs down to five that we were happy with, we wasted no time in preparing our designs for print. Within a couple of weeks our designs were back with us having been turned into lovely little notebooks.

It’s often said that creativity comes from experimentation and in this instance it was true. Now a year after we first created this collection, we are please to say they are a hit with our customers. It was definitely worth our original idea not working out!

If you would like to look at each one in more detail, they are available within our Etsy and Folksy shops, as well as at http://www.cottagerts.com.

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