Changing styles and colours

When I started Laikonik 3 years ago I had no idea of what exactly it was that I was going to be selling or making, who I would sell it to or where I would sell it. The very first things I made and sold were these small hand made photo albums which were covered in hand painted cotton. I fell in love with the process of painting on fabric and have never really deviated from that too much.

My very first stall was at the St Ives Heritage Craft Fair market in Sydney. Only my friends who came to the market to share my excitement bought from me. No one else did. But that wouldn't stop me. i loved making and decorating things. Anything really but the whole thing about paper and fabric and painting and gluing and creating something useful made me feel great inside. So below are images of the very first albums and notebooks that I ever made.

I haven't looked at them for a long time and when I dug out these images today I realised just how much I adored seeing them all together on my little market stall each month. I also just realised that colour is what I love most about my designs.

These were A4 dry mount photo albums. I made the pages in different colours to make them different from the standard black.

Smaller photo albums. Also dry mount but A5 in size.

Notebooks covered in hand painted cotton which was always fun to paint. These notebooks were stitched by hand and included a button for winding the cotton around and "closing" the book.

These were great and always sold very well. Tiny little pocket books about A6 in size with multi coloured paper inside.

Mixed collection of all the photo albums and notebooks.

Later on when I started making the Once-A-Year books (for chronicling the first 18 years of a child's life) I would hand paint the covers. Since I was only selling about 5-10 books a month I could get away with that and the covers were always different. Below are some of the designs I used to sell. Now I have the designs screen printed onto the fabric in various different designs and colours. The books now sell all over Australia and in Belgium and have been featured in several popular printed publications as well as on other blogs.

The very first Once-A-Year book designs.

Later I made the designs more elaborate as I started having fun with fabric paints and fabric paint pens.

These designs were a short fad, although I always loved them they were too labour intensive to keep up on a regular basis. By this stage I started thinking of screen printing.



A few more of the early hand painted range.

What I realised having looked at all these designs from the past is that I truly love colour. And so I have decided to start injecting more of it back into all my new designs which I am working on at the moment. Will keep posted about this...

If you would like to see the current design range of the Once-A-Year books please visit my website http://www.laikonik.com.au/

I am also planning on bringing back notebooks and pocket books for possibly this Christmas. If you'd like to be notified of all my new products and special offers please go to the website's contact page and email me to join the mailing list.