❄️ May-tastic! Winter is here, time to turn on the lights.
Well its official, winter is here, its wet, rainy, cold and dark. What we don't love about it's sudden drenching arrival are the beanies inside, the wet clothesline and the dark mornings. But being a neon flex studio, we can't help look on the brighter side, this part of the year is perfect for lighting up those neon flex signs.
Oh what a month it has been - we've worked hard, learned some new skills, networked and made copious signs. We started May with a communications workshop in the pristine Braeside studio of our friend Samantha Rogers* from DriveCreative (we have no doubt you would have seen a vehicle done by these wrap wizards on the road.)
The workshop was led by Scott Carson from The Business of Smiles. We won't lie, it brought up a lot of feels, a few stories and a pair of socks.😝 We walked away feeling moved, inspired and motivated. On the way home Danni and I agreed that the workshop confirmed for us a truth we've felt almost since the start - we communicate well, we're open, supportive and passionate about what we do. Which is partially why we do this blog!
Our adventures out didn't end there, we were soon off to a morning with Women in Print speaker series - 🌧️ oh boy did we get a drenching on the drive over - we arrived to hot coffees and a networking mingle with women from the print and sign industry. It was a pleasure to be in a room of so many professionals sharing stories and ideas. The speaker, Pascale Helyar OAM spoke on the series theme Financially Fierce which gave us some great insights and confirmed some of the things we're already doing - hooray us! 🎊
After all our gallivanting around we had to get down to work. Both Danni and myself have been flat out with the arrival of new stock being packaged - so many end caps! My venture into making of signs began with end caps and I think that no sign is complete without them.
I've glued my fingers on many occasions trying to get them to sit right and look great. I've come a long way since then, partially owed to Danni's tutelage, and partially due to our new amazing glue (I know, I know I won't shut up about it! 🙄 ). My go to tips on these are simple now, measure and cut to size trimming in smaller intervals to get it it perfectly aligned, use silicone primer on the cap and the neon flex, only then glue, using a tiny amount of the thicker 1500cps that we use on glueing wires into place. Now I save so much time fluffing around with these and the best thing is our hire signs are looking shmick-o! ⭐️
Danni's double life as a vinyl signs maker and occasional installer had her busier than ever - just the way she likes it. Our printer was running hot and the plotter wasn't far behind. In amongst the usual influx of print jobs, Danni squeezed in a couple of fun projects. The first was for the son of a long time client Need-a- Fork, making a smaller facsimile of his truck. Danni downsized his logo and replicated the tray with some black vinyl, it was huge hit with the little man!
Danni also made a 2 day install at one of Melbourne's long running institutions O'Gormans in Coburg, bringing life back into their display desk with a superb wrap.
These two love projects were a great addition to our busy month!
We're ending the month on a high - quite literally. A quick team building trip to iFLY had us test our camaraderie and ability to take risks. It was a thrill and we both came out a tad wobbly legged at first, but ultimately stronger. May has been uncharacteristically full of events, luckily June is near and both of us are back in the studio (in our beanies) making signs for our hire range. I finally learned to solder - is it normal to like the solder smell so much?! We're playing around with our online content, planning for workshops and as always having an absolute blast doing it!
*Look out for our extra blog post on Samantha Rogers and Drive Creative coming soon!
-irina.a