Persimew Designs

How wrong I was! When I gave it a go, I discovered how much fun it was to use original art in designing products and even made a few sales. A new hobby was born! The illustration above is a Tadpole original, it features in the book Tadpoles Illustrated and I first produced it in 1986 and recently released again on Lulu. Some of the poems and drawing are a little cheeky, but others I thought would make great designs for shirts, mugs and posters. So two lines were born, Amber Blue and Amber Purple!

As a general rule of thumb, creative people create and sales people sell. As a musician and poet I am far more interested in the creation than the fee, but we need to live so I am learning to sell. Oliver Tadpole is even less business minded than I am. He will, like many artists, paint over an absolutely beautiful picture because he sees the mistakes he made! These mistakes may well be invisible to us, but not to him, it is for this reason that he prefers to be known by his stage name with respect to our Zazzle partnership and I respect his decision.

Need a cute hedgehog calendar?

Check out Old Guthram's Almanac!


Old Guthram's Almanac 2010 by persimew

Old Guthram's Almanac has given birth to a whole range of mugs! The first one has the same cover illustration and a vital message on the reverse side....

Then there are the months of the year! Each hedgehog picture has been used to create a wrap around hedgehog design that is just superb for birthdays and other occasions. Check out the Halloween October mug!

Birthday coming soon?
We even have a hedgehog mug for every month of the year!


Guthram Hedgehog November by persimew

Of course, with digital cameras and computers you don't need to be an illustrator to make your mark on Zazzle. You can use photos you took on holiday. You can make personalised gifts for family and friends with snaps of animals or loved ones. The choice is yours, and you really don't have to sell if you don't want to, you can make your own private projects. I turned some of my holiday pictures into product lines though and happily sold items!

Love it or hate it, you can alter your photos, mix them, pastiche and collage them, add text to images, add colours to black and white - the possibilities are endless. My Lady of Shalott design puts some of these into play in a very 1980s record sleeve type of design. I think it looks well as a poster or a T-shirt but only time and the market will tell!