General Studio News

The last portrait for overseas delivery has just been packed and its ready to go to the post office. We received our new lot of mailbags and this time we have bright purple!  We have different colours each time we order our mailbags and its wonderful, it really keeps things interesting. We have had apple green, pillar box red, deep purple..not the band! and now bright purple. I took a photo of it (and Tom) for the blog. Tom was under the packing table the whole time. He even gets strewn with bits of tape and ends of bubblewrap but he doesn’t seem to care!

Hopefully I will be adding a number of posts over the next couple of days. Nicks very nearly completed the portrait of Scrap and Ellen so ill add some photos and final scan and I have also completed the montage – which is packed in the parcel below, so ill blog that too. Back soon!

Pet Portrait Packing - with Tom helping

Last Saturday I took the afternoon to finally put together the chickens shelter for the winter and thought you would like to see the outcome as its turned out pretty cool. We saw something similar in a zoo in south Wales to shelter wallabies and thought the idea was perfect to shelter our chickens from the wind, rain and snow over the winter months. Also so they can hide from the Buzzards too. Of course they have a proper chicken house that they are locked in at night. I used some branches that we had collected from the trees we had felled in the little woodland. I even made a curved door shape for them at the front which I was really pleased with. I think it turned out pretty well and quite arty and creative too! I have added a couple of photos on the chickens page here >>

I will post photos of Nicks next portrait later on today : )

Eco Wigwam for the chickens

We are absolutly thrilled with our new promotional material. I was quite apprehensive opening all of the boxes to view them. Its one thing to design it all on the computer getting it how you want – its another to actually see the items in the flesh, hoping they are how you had planned them to be.

Melanie and Nicks pet and Family Portrait Promotional Materials

We ordered double sided business cards, double sided postcards, A4 flyers and some Christmas cards. All of the promo material has the same style / design running throughout, black background, creamy text with clear images for people to see what we do. Hopefully they work well with the design of our website and our overall theme is constant.

My stipulation this year was to include a QR code on all of the material even the christmas cards.  For those of you who are new to QR codes, they are little black and white squares which hold website details. If you have a smart phone you can download a free QR app, hold it over the QR code and it will automatically take you to the website.  So in theory anyone with a smart phone passing one of our flyers or viewing one of our cards can access our website immediately and bookmark all of our details.

You can see them in the images below, I have taken a photo of my mobile hovering over the code and then one showing our website. We have had some experience of QR codes in various places this year (for instance National Botanical Gardens of Wales) and found them really useful.

The Smart Phone App Hovering Over The QR code

The Smart Phone Showing Our Wbesite

The Christmas cards came out really well too, we only ordered 20 but will order more when needed. We have used a portrait I painted a few years ago, Cody the dog was portrayed in the painting with a lovely red and white fluffy collar with bells on. The client allowed us to add a Christmas hat digitally and it makes just the perfect card. So all in all we are thrilled and are now set for sending all of our portraits out this festive season!

Melanie & NIck's Pet Portrait Christmas Cards 2011

I have been updating our websites and facebook today, trying to catch up a little. I have packed Divas portrait ready to be posted and it will be on its way to its owner in Germany soon. I took photos of the process while packing and have added the photos to facebook. Click the image below to visit our page, don’t forget to ‘like’ us if you haven’t already!

I also added Diva onto our dog portraits website, where you can view a scan, detail, the progress photos, the reference photos and a lovely testimonial from our client too : )  Lots of people have commented on Diva which is wonderful and I really hope the recipient loves it too. Diva’s Page >>

I have also added photos of Mike and Margaret with Nick when they came to collect the portrait of Sally and Phoebe. I have been meaning to add them to the testimonials feedback section for ages and they are finally there now : )  Sally and Phoebe >>

This week for me is a very much an organising week. I am arranging everything in the studio getting ready for the Christmas portrait, I have ordered a bundled of lovely canvases which should arrive soon  and one of my next jobs is to design some new promo material, xmas cards and gift voucher cards…so that’s going to keep me busy over the next day or so! Hope you are having a good day too!

Photos of Diva's portrait being packed on Facebook

We have been away for a couple of days as we took Tom to Exeter (South of the UK) for his final visit to see the behaviourist. Tom did brilliantly. The first stop was at a park where Peter met us with a local dog walker who was walking two dogs, a chocolate Labrador and an old collie – the perfect dogs for Tom to walk with. After even only 3 minutes we were all waking around the park, all dogs off the lead and Tom did not bark once. He was just being a happy go lucky dog – which we had never ever seen before in Tom around other dogs.

We then worked with the behaviourists rottweilers and Tom really didn’t mind those either. Peter used his most dominant male Rottie with Tom and there was no problem at all. We then took a trip right into Exeter City centre, walked around the whole area which was hugely busy with people, kids, buggies, dogs, performers and we saw the beautiful cathedral, we walked around the outside where people were picnicking. Tom did extremely well and wasn’t at all phased by all the hustle and bustle. He was energised but that was to be expected. It was a huge success and a relief to now have even more confidence with Tom and we have a clear path forward. We will obviously still need to work at his problems but it will be so much easier for us in the future.

I have taken some time to rewrite  Toms page on our website as I felt that after everything we have been through, it not only needed updating, but I wanted to write his full story to date.We have met, emailed and spoken to many other people who have been in our situation, dealing with dog aggression, I hope that the success and path we have taken will help others. Its a pretty long read, but I know I read website after website looking for the answer and so hopefully it will help someone.

Toms Page – Dog Aggression - Resolved!

While we were away my inbox filled very quickly and so im a little behind on my emails now : )  But one wonderful email that did jump out to me was from Banjos owners. They have recently had their portrait framed and it looks amazing. Hopefully they are going to take a few more photos of the portrait when its actually on the wall which im looking forward to see. Always love to see the paintings in situ : )

I will be scanning Nicks horse portrait tomorrow and I will blgo it asap.

Happy Clients – Framed Oil Portrait of Banjo