Week 4 Blog Entry: w/c 12th October 2020 - Creative Enterprise

This week, I had almost completed my proposal and business plan. I was asked to send my proposal to my lecturer, so that she could check over what I had done. My feedback was very good, but I was told that my lecturer wasn't 100% sold on the idea of jigsaws. I was inclined to agree with this, as jigsaws are just too expensive for me to be looking into at the moment, especially as the products are supposed to be created on a shoe string budget. I also feel that creating jigsaws takes a lot more time and planning, particularly with trying to find suppliers that would create my jigsaws at a decent price. Instead, I should focus on creating Christmas cards. This way, it's a simple product that I can try experimenting with especially with some more artistic and textile techniques.

Two things that were suggested to me were gold foiling and sewing into the card, both of which I've found really interesting. Firstly, I looked up how to sew through card and found a website that showed me a step-by-step guide on how to thread through card. It seems like quite a simple process, so I will definitely be trying it with my Christmas cards. My intention with this would be to sew some letters, like "Merry Christmas" into the card. I think if I tried to sew anything else over an abstract image, it would be way too much and it'll look messy as opposed to artistic. To do this, I would probably look on websites such as Dafont and find a font that fits the theme of my image and would print it out. I would then make little holes along the letters, so that I could sew the letter through the holes. I would need to take the images first to see what colours are used and then pick colours of threads once I've got my colour scheme. I think they would add something a little bit different to my cards and I would also be able to sell them for more.

I've looked into gold foiling before. I wanted to create some "Thank you" cards with some of my photography using the gold foiling and I found that I could create some flat (not folded) cards with this technique. I had a look at Vistaprint, which offer a huge range of different effects for cards, but they only offer flat cards with this technique, which I don't think will sell as well, as you can't stand these on the mantel. I had a look at another supplier (Helloprint) who create gold foiling with folded cards, but they were very expensive at £32.95 for 10 of these. This would only be for one design. Unfortunately for this project, gold foiling on folded card is too expensive and I wouldn't be able to sell them for a fair price. I might make some of the "Thank You" cards anyway to add to the collection of products I'm going to sell. These might end up being a good fall back plan, just in case I don't sell any Christmas cards. There also might be an opportunity to create these flat cards for Christmas, especially for those who want something very simple to give to someone that they perhaps don't know that well. Some people have hangers on the wall or a card stand that you can put their cards into, meaning there wouldn't necessarily be a need for folding cards. This would add more choice to my product collection.

Next week, I'm going to be presenting my proposal to the class. After this, I intend to start taking my photos for my cards so I intend to set aside one day to do this. I will class these as test shots and will show them to people in the form of a survey to see which ones they prefer. This way, I can garner interest in my imagery and see what people are more drawn to and what is more likely to sell. It might be difficult at this time of year to get any shots of landscapes or wildlife, so I will definitely use a photo I have taken before as one of my potential final outcomes. I will be trying light trails, macro and bokeh for techniques and see what works best. I'm a bit sceptical about light trails, just because I dont think a black background will fit a Christmas theme, but for this I could change the background colour to something more festive. In this case, I will also try editing my photos as well and try some different techniques with this, to see if I can create something that is a little bit different to what is already out there.