I’m giving away 20 copies of my Merry Mini Christmas hat for free on Ravelry to help everyone get into the Christmas spirit! Just enter MERRYMINIXMAS when checking out!
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mini-santa-christmas-hat
Hi there! Meet Luci Bunny, the newest addition to the MissNeriss Collection. I made Luci for very special order from a woman from my former life as a tour guide in Australia. She was looking for something similar to her own Mouse; the cuddly toy from her own childhood, who is too fragile for her toddler to play with. We exchanged emails and ideas until eventually we settled on something similar to what you see here. However, we were still undecided if we should make a mouse or a bunny. So I left it to the hook to decide.
As the mouse/bunny evolved, I just wasn’t feeling that she could be a mouse, so a bunny started to appear instead. I spent ages trying to get the ears and eyes just right, but in the end I think she looks perfect.
As is always the case, I’ll be very sad to wave goodbye as Luci Bunny packs her bags and leaves home today, but I’m still happy because she has fuelled some serious creative juices in me. I want to make another one.
The original pattern is by Sidrun on Craftsy, although I used heavier yarn and I altered the pattern quite a bit.
I’ve also started sharing my inspiration on Tumblr, so pop over and take a look at all the gorgeous images and patterns that I’m finding and sharing over there. missnerisscrochet.tumbler.com
When my good friend Becky started to push me (and I mean really push!) to start this venture, I knew that I would need some outstanding images to accompany the work. But, I had no idea what I wanted or even how I saw myself. All I knew was that all the best crochet people have excellent branding and if I wanted to even contemplate joining their ranks, I would need some too.
Enter the Amsterdam Small Business Network an Joanne Lew-Vriethoff. Via the network I saw Joanne’s work and was immediately in love with what she does. I could feel in my bones that she was the designer for me.
I approached Joanne and she came back with an excellent quote package to create a banner for my Facebook page and for this site, so I jumped at the chance.
I supplied a few images of myself and of my daughter, along with a vague, high level idea of what I had in mind. I had seen this image of my friend Tammy and thought to myself: that image sums me up too! I have so many things on the go at once, I should illustrate that.
What Joanne created for me absolutely blew my mind. I’ll be perfectly honest; from my description (or lack thereof), I wasn’t sure she had enough to go on to make something that I could connect with, but it was like she crawled inside my head and pulled all the best bits out and put them on paper!
Once the banner was created I was so happy that I knew I couldn’t stop there. Next was a postcard and then, business cards! I’m so over the moon with the results, now I have to just sit down and get them all printed. Can’t wait to have them in my hot little hands! I’m now also thinking about going down the Etsy route, so there will be even more work to do in that case.
Thanks again to Joanne, and to Sharon and Marjolijn from The Amsterdam Small Business Network for hooking us up. Now I just hope that I can pay it forward…
Tagged branding, crochet, cute, illustration, Joanne Lew-Vreithoff, logo, marketing, MissNeriss
