Meet our Quirky Doodllery Jewellery
Posted by LittleMoose on April 25, 2015
Doodllery, our collection of kawaii, character based jewellery will always have a special place in our hearts. It set us on our journey towards Little Moose and our first full collection of playful jewellery and accessories in 2014.
The story of Doodllery begins more than 10 years ago, before Little Moose had arrived on the scene and laser cut perspex / acrylic jewellery was still a thing of relative mystery (to us at least). It really is amazing to think how far things have come, to the point where you can now pick up a laser cutting machine that can sit on your desktop and churn out your ideas whilst you have a tea and biscuit!
So let's jump into the Little Moose time machine and take a look back.
Doodllery came to life from the sketchbook pages of doodle wizard Carrie Lewis, one half of Little Moose. Inspired by the cute characters and kawaii style that is so popular in Japan, and brilliant illustrators like Tokidoki and Tado, initially, Carrie's doodles were just something to pass the time and keep a creative mind busy.
In terms of my inspiration - I have always loved character design and particularly the Japanese kawaii style. Anything that is cute and has funny characters on I tend to love and this definitely has an influence on what I like to draw.
- Carrie Lewis
A typical page from one of Carrie's many sketchbooks.
After developing a small collection of bespoke greeting cards in the doodled style, it wasn't long before we were looking for a way to take the doodled creations off of the page and turn them into something else. Initially we were thinking about vinyl toys, this was just about the time when Kid Robot had launched their first series of Dunny toys, then we looked at clothing before finally settling on jewellery.
I didn't feel that there was much character based jewellery around. So I decided to try and turn my doodled characters into necklaces and brooches. After various failed experiments I managed to come up with a way of making them out of acrylic.
-Carrie Lewis
Back then, the process wasn't easy - laser cut acrylic might be a term most craft aficionados are familiar with today, but back then it was harder to identify and even harder to find someone who could help. We didn't even know what to search for in Google, so how could we possibly begin to research it!
One of the main challenges we faced was replicating the doodled style and intricacies of the characters. Without wanting to simply cut out a single shape and print a flat design onto it, we explored our options. We had to think outside of the box and create separate pieces for eyes, teeth, mouths and more. We couldn't simply get a shape cut, we needed to devise a 3D jigsaw for each and every Doodllery character. Insetting pieces of acrylic to create jewellery allowed us to create depth and retain the unique hand drawn style.
Our first collection of Doodllery featured weird and wonderful characters lifted straight from the pages of Carrie's sketchbook, a quirky monkey necklace, a cute cloud, a friendly skull and a variety of monsters. Each character came with a personalised character card which described the personality of the Doodllery. Take a look at our Doodllery collection of cute and quirky jewellery here.
With doodling at the very heart of Doodllery, ideas for quirky new creations are always coming thick and fast. Carrie is a master doodler who is rarely seen without a pen or pencil in her hand. It didn't take us long to develop more Doodllery designs, but we decided to curate them with more definite themes and styles - woodland critters such as badgers, foxes and owls now sit along side our original collection of quirky character necklaces and brooches.
Over the years, we've experimented in other materials too, including a range of sterling silver charm necklaces.
One of the fab things about having sketchbooks full of ideas is that you can pick up an old one and flick through the pages and be struck by fresh ideas. Even more exciting though is when you find a cute idea scribbled down unwittingly on the back of an envelope or receipt. Our Doodllery Lion necklace only came into existence when a scrap of paper with a doodle was re-found.
Of course, doodling hasn't just led to Doodllery - our Dont Be Square collection of quirky jewellery and playful accessories was born from a page of triangular doodles too!
We're excited for the future of Doodllery, with smaller, more tailored characters on the horizon. We're also proud to say that all of our Doodllery is made by hand in our South Coast studio, with the same love and care that we afforded the first quirky characters.
Have you taken part in our Doodle Club? Who knows where your doodles might take you? Each week we're asking that you spend a couple of minutes doodling one of our themes - this week, it is a Pink Elephant of A Unicorn
Tagged as: doodllery | jewellery | handmade | laser cut | laser cut jewellery | kawaii | character |