DaWanda Backstage

Hi there everyone!

… and welcome to the latest installment in our great new Monday series of interviews with DaWanda sellers. Today we get to meet Francesca, the talented artist behind Mrs Eliot Books. Francesca’s store features beautifully handmade books, greeting cards, bags, tea towels and more, featuring her delicate and whimsical illustrations of birds, trees, houses, milk bottles – an everyday fairytale type of world. Have a browse through the shop, and read our insightful interview to find out how Mrs Eliot Books came to life:

Please tell us a bit about yourself:
I’ll be 36 in a few days! I live in north London with my husband and two boys. I’m a bit of a control freak. I love Columbo. I cut my own hair. I got married in the botanical gardens in Sydney. I can be very silly or very sensible, no in-between. I’m always on time. I wear stripes too much.

How did you discover that you have creative tendencies?
I was at school and art was pretty much the only thing I really looked forward to. I was drawn to creating and it excited me. From very early on, I knew I wanted to go to art school and I was blessed with very encouraging teachers all along the way.

Where do you find your inspiration?
Everywhere – random shapes, mid century pattern design, colour palettes, words.

Do you have any role models/inspirations in the area of Design? If so, who and why?
Lucienne Day, a designer who really put british textile design on the map in the 1950s. Rosalie Gascoigne, an artist from New Zealand who had her first exhibition when she was in her fifties. I’m drawn to women artists and their stories.

How did you come up with the ideas fort he products in your DaWanda shop?
My little wooden books began as just sketchbook pages. I wanted to make an artists’ book that was not only a bit more sturdy than paper but could also be displayed open. Too many artists’ books sit closed on shelves, you can’t see them!

Which materials do you use to create your products?
Birch plywood, paper and pencil. I love pencil on white paint, the way it scratches into the surface.

Please give us a brief summary of your creative process?
If I force it, it won’t come, so I have many dry spells! When it comes, it’s usually pure serendipity, a happy accident. Once I have an idea I will play with it, play with shapes and colours, move words around. I usually scan in my drawings to my Mac so I can find the right composition on screen. It would drive me crazy if I physically had to move little bits of paper around, and take too long. I’m pretty impatient!

I like to work on projects too, so I can get a series of work out of one idea.

What characterises your products/your style?
That’s tricky. Whenever I try to explain my style, I say I like breaking things down into shape and pattern and colour. I love colour. I think my products gel pretty well, they go from the wooden books to the concertina card versions, to greetings cards and prints. But then this year I threw in the curve ball of tea towels and now bags. Sometimes I worry that it’s all too much, but I love each thing I make.

Who are your customers?
Who knows! Lovely lovely people who like my work. For some reason i’m always pleasantly surprised when a man orders something! Maybe just because there are so many women working and blogging and the moment.

What role does DaWanda play in your daily creative life?
DaWanda is brilliantly set up. It’s very user-friendly and very time-friendly, I love being able to edit and amend lots of listings in one go. You can’t do that on other sites. Dawanda helped me introduce my work to a European audience I hadn’t had before.

How has your life changed since you opened your DaWanda shop?
Although I’m still a relatively small business, my sales of course went up when I joined DaWanda. One of the best things about dawanda is that I found rosablue – the people that print my teatowels for me.

Please give us the names of three of your favourite shops on DaWanda:
vanpey
enna
nothingelegant