Behind the scenes: How the 'Golden Moments' collection was created

Our next behind the scenes is all about the ‘Golden Moments’ collection. A brand new collection of hand painted illustrated cards celebrating those everyday moments we treasure.

When we were coming up with our concept and creating sketches we knew that we wanted the collection to be about special everyday moments that fill us with joy. With the pandemic happening during the design process some of our concepts really did feel like something to celebrate. Small things like going for a coffee with a friend, or a picnic in the park felt like real luxuries. I’m sure many of us have a growing sense of appreciation for these moments, which makes them feel even more special today.

I began working as a designer for Raspberry Blossom in early December, whilst working from home we became very used to this new way of working. Bouncing ideas back and fourth through a series of messages, phone calls, videos and voice notes worked really well for us.

When Rebecca first briefed me on this project we knew that we wanted them to be a die cut collection with a hand painted illustrative style, and gold foil details. An exciting project that I couldn’t wait to get started on. The beginning of a project is always my favourite part. I love finding inspiration, drawing up ideas and concepts and visual problem solving.

When starting the collection we began to pull together a mood board of different ideas; moments to celebrate, hobbies and colour palettes we loved. From here we could get the look and feel for the collection before beginning some thumbnail sketches.

Once we had decided which designs we loved the most from the thumbnail sketches, I began to creating tighter sketches working with our decided colour palette to work out some colour options for each design. Once those were decided upon we could see all the designs together and how the colour balance worked as an entire collection.

Next in the design process was painting! To paint the collection I used a mixture of Shmincke and Winsor & Newton gouache paints. Gouache has always been a medium I love to use and I really enjoyed the process.

Because of the way we would be editing the paintings for the fronts and backs of the cards it was important to paint in sections. 

Once the designs were painted we could begin editing. Rebecca and Mark had come up with the all important gold foil messages for the front of each of the cards. Rebecca beautifully hand lettered each of the messages ready to be added to the design, and then the collection was complete!

It was so exciting to work on this collection and really interesting to see it develop from the idea all the way to the finished product. I hope you enjoyed our little behind the scenes of the design process and love the cards as much as we loved making them.

You can browse the ‘Golden Moments’ collection and all our other newness here

Mia x