Spring has sprung...sort of 🌷 September thrills and news spills.

Well it has been a long time since we had an update on the activities here at the studio. September was kind of a whirlwind. We had activities both inside the studio and out in the big wide world - quite literally. The month started off with Danni going on a huge adventure to New Zealand Aotearoa. Thanks to our friend Sam from Drive Creative, who does an incredible job at wrapping cars for BMW, Danni was one of the few to participate in BMWs Snow and Ice driving adventure in Queenstown. Lucky girl that she is, Danni took a well earned holiday and came back refreshed for a super busy month. 

In addition to the snow and ice drift days, they also got up to some other shenanigans around town.

Nothing else was frozen however as Neon Flex Studio worked in the background to launch our inaugural LED sign making workshop this November! This is something we've been working towards for some time and now its coming together faster than Danni drifting at high speeds on ice. 😝 We're thrilled to share that only days after advertising it, the workshop was almost booked out with only 1 spot waiting to be filled at the time of writing this. 

Before Danni could unpack her suitcase however, she was off to Sydney for the annual Visual Impact Conference and Expo. Always a great opportunity to connect with sign makers from across Australia, see new technology, connect on ideas and ways of working. 

 

 

Danni went alone this year, but waisted no time talking to our suppliers on what is new in print, connecting with Women In Print society, and networking across state lines.  We value the opportunity to be able to attend and participate in industry happenings like this, they teach us a lot about signs and reinforce our strong values of keeping sign making industry vibrant and active. 

 

 

The workshop was busy from both ends of our business, with our regular vinyl graphic clients, putting through orders, Danni pumping out printing jobs and installations in between flights. Sometimes our old clients pop back in with news and new orders and its always a pleasure to be able to see their businesses grow and change. Its nice to know that Vinyl Angel Graphics may have been at the beginning of a business and is able to support it in its next steps, like our friends at Captain Darling barbershop moving into their new digs in Coburg. Danni was more than happy to pop down for the install and I loved being able to drop in a day later to remove the app tape, allowing me to see the design in all its glory! 

It's no secret that we love what we do, however the occasional appreciation post does warm our hearts. ❤️‍🔥 Avondale Heights Football Club, is one of our local clients, we make all kinds of signs big and small for them as a way to support our community and we're chuffed at their recognition of our efforts. 

This month we got to work on a bigger neon sign, with Her Doll Beauty Beauty room. We're pleased with how it turned out. This isn't our first sign for an industry partner and we've definitely got a kind of workflow now. As soon as we get the routed sign in, I go to work cleaning it up, sanding down the paper edges, cleaning it and prepping it with our Silicone Primer . Although I can on occasion start laying out the LED neon for Danni to put together later, with this design we determined this was best done once Danni was ready to start work on it.

Using our hot pink and warm white stock, which we feel worked really well in this combo, Danni finished the work, laying it perfectly and securing with our ultra tough  super glue. She used the 1500cps for the neon and the 200cps for the back wires. We would have also liked to see a warm white and mint combination in this design, perhaps another time. 

We love the opportunity to make LED signs for customers and our event hire signs collection as these give us a lot of time to play with our materials, test how they sit in new curves and bends. Each time we do one it builds on our experience, not only to keep perfecting our craft, but also to take it to our workshops. We've gathered quite a few tips and tricks along the way to help minimise waste, save time (especially on a tight deadlines) and its  something we look forward to sharing with our industry at our next workshop this November. 

We are lucky to be able run the workshop from Letter Tech in Caroline Springs and lean on the experience of our friend and colleague Pete Fitzpatrick, the founder of Signwise and Letter Tech. Although mostly retired, Pete has agreed to sit in on this workshop and give his insights on working with LED neon flex. 

This month we also focused on our hire stock. We're excited to think about new signs to make, as well as making packaging for signs to travel to their destinations. We also have exciting news on being the foundation partners for a new event hire website Pitchd, where all event hire, entertainment and venues are combined to make event planning easy and convenient. The site is yet to launch but we're excited to see what it may offer in the way of foot traffic to our products. We hope the interest leads to a scenario that allows us to support making quirkier designs.