Summer in the studio

Summer is about relaxing, having fun, having adventures and making memories. For me it’s this and much more.

As a child who grew up on a farm it was very much about all of the above plus a lot of hard graft as me and my sister helped out on the farm over summer. So as much as I still think that summer is all about relaxing, having fun, adventuring and making those all important memories I still have ingrained in me the sense of getting things done over summer and ‘getting ahead’ for the start of the new term. The geek in me always looked forward to new stationery for school and a brand new start in September. Now I find myself working on designs for stationery and looking ahead to the new term in the stationery calendar instead. We have plenty of notebooks and memo pads to plan both summer adventures and the start of a new term.

What are we up to over summer in the studio? Having married a farmer and therefore saddled myself with the same position as I was in when I was young (i.e summer is time to work!) there’s no long hot summer break in the Hardcastle house unfortunately. Our eldest is on school holidays and our youngest is only 15 months so I’m not in the studio as frequently as usual over summer but I’m still working hard on my summer tasks – designs for an exciting collaboration, planning the coming months, designing our new ranges for Autumn 2017 and Spring 2018, designing the 2018 year planner and booking trade shows for next year. That will keep me very busy. I might still have time to squeeze in the odd adventure, picnic and trip to the beach though!