Hello all you fabulous Christmas fairies!
From Kirsty Bell of My Happy Journal
Thank you so, so much for responding to my post - we were blown away by how many of you would like to be involved!
I am unbelievably excited about the opportunity to include your phenomenal products in our brand photography images and that it gives us all the opportunity to create a LOCAL Christmas catalogue off the back of our photoshoot.
Now, for those who know me or follow my social pages, you will know I'm pretty much super excited and glittery most of the time.
However, I need to be very practical and crystal clear when it comes to explaining our intention for the photoshoots and what you can expect.
I need to ensure you know exactly what to expect if you do decide to loan us some products for the My Happy Journal brand images.
Who we are and what we do
I am Kirsty Bell, the creator and founder of My Happy Journal, a creative positive mindset journal for children.
My mission is to encourage children to practice mindfulness, gratitude, and positivity at a young age, so it becomes part of their natural behaviour for life.
Me, Kirsty Bell, plotting the next Happy Journal adventure!
My Happy Journal aims to do this through subtle mindfulness practice, the celebration/ gratitude for the favourite things of each day, encouraging creativity, celebrating imagination and most importantly fun.
Our brand vision is based around celebrating the little things in life, being in the moment, exploration, and fun.
Our images on social media are based around a slightly nostalgic vibe, imagination, adventure, wonder and fun. We promote the use of the child's imagination, off screen adventures, and family communication.
I’ve teamed up with Donna Green, a phenomenal brand photographer I’ve been working with for some time now.
Donna’s on a mission to help female business owners step up and be seen by providing them with high impact, on-brand professional photography for all their online needs, strategically designed to attract more of their ideal clients, grow their businesses, and make more money.
Oh and I’ve also seen at first hand how much time having your own stash of unique, on-brand photos of you and your business saves in digging images out for social media!
About this initiative
Although the primary purpose is to promote My Happy Journal, we thought we’d expand on this and produce a catalogue, giving some local makers the opportunity to showcase their products too.
The idea is that we'll produce a digital catalogue displaying a small but diverse range of Christmas gift and decoration ideas, focusing on the fact we are a lovely group of local makers who have come together so people can shop locally - which is perhaps more important this year than ever before.
Readers can find out a bit about the people and businesses behind these beautiful products at the same time.
What will it cost?
Nothing! Well, apart from the time and fuel costs it will take you to drop the products off at my house!
I propose to borrow the items and return them as supplied.
The exception to this would be consumable goods like food, cakes, balloons etc. (I’d pay for these in advance so we’d need to have a chat about that.)
What you'll get out of it
What we'd like from you
For the photography sessions
For the catalogue
So all products receive equal coverage and promotion, we need you to give us:
The photography sessions
The primary purpose of our photoshoots is to promote My Happy Journal and the theme will be Christmas Eve. Your product is supplementary to this - but we’re still very keen to feature it and give you the chance to promote it!
We plan two shoots: one indoors, one outdoors.
Styling details are still to be finalised, but so far we plan:
Indoors: 4-6 September
Location
We’ve organised a lounge style setting with a large bushy Christmas tree, real flame effect gas fire and mantlepiece etc. We’ve lined up children to model for us, and no more are required.
The entire shoot will be based around My Happy Journal and Christmas excitement, but we also want to provide scope for showing off YOUR products where possible!
Current styling ideas
- Children in PJs under the tree unwrapping gifts with the journal as the focus
- Christmas stocking with toys and journal peeking out
- Big plate of Christmas cookies all ready for Santa
- Decorating tree
- Looking in wonder at the tree, the gingerbread house, cupcakes etc
- Drinking hot chocolate, reading book, filling in the journal etc
Vibe
Magic, belief, excitement, slight nostalgia, warmth, and fun.
Outdoors: mid-September 2020 tbc
Location
This will be a winter style shoot in either Dreghorn or Mortonhall Woods. The timing is a bit loose on this one as we need to have suitable weather.
Current styling ideas
- Walking with a Santa sack
- Children in winter clothes
- A wreath over the shoulder
- A big bunch of balloons
- Having a winter picnic
- Playing with a wooden toy etc
- Carrying sweet treats as if going to a party
Vibe
Fun, outdoor adventure, the anticipation and magic of Christmas.
The products that are shown in the images will be part of a lifestyle shot/ lookbook idea but My Happy Journal will be the main focus of the styled shots.
How to proceed
If you’ve managed to get through this giant post and are still keen to do Christmas in September with us, then YIPPPPPEEEEEEE! We are over the moon that we can use your products and we can all potentially promote each other!
Once we have a final agreed list of the people who want to be involved, we'll then contact each of you with sign-off sheet and have a chat about products, details etc.
We can then discuss logistics, promotion, and catalogue ideas with the full 'team'.
Thank you so much for reading all this and for your interest! I am trying to be practical and business-like about all of this, but at heart I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited about this and need to do a bit of jumping up and down first!
Much love,
Kirsty
07855 740 716
