Have you heard of the megacorp Montana? If not, let me enlighten you...
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Montana is a fantastic creative brand because they actually use their product themselves. The team behind the company formed within graffiti and art cultures and they’re still active artists today. The brand has sky-rocketed thanks to their development in spray can technologies, but also because the Montana lab work alongside world-renowned artists and together they from an amazing collective.
The bond between the street and science has become the backbone of their development, which is evident in all of their products. No gimmicks here, just pure passion and quality. 

WATER BASED | UV RESISTANT | REFILLABLE | COLOUR MATCH

We absolutely love their acrylic paint markers and they come in 4 different sizes:

The 0.7mm is the smallest nib size and is available in 14 colours- great for smaller detailed work like adding highlights etc.

Next is the most popular (so we have found) which has a 2mm nib and comes in 37 colours; great for drawing and outlining.

The 15mm is the next size up, chunky isn’t the word. Great for doing larger pieces on canvas or walls etc. This one is available in 24 colours.

Finally there’s the 30mm nib, which is a beast of a thing. Again, this one is perfect for larger work.
The paint itself is light-fast, high covering, water- resistant, and abrasion proof, and writes on pretty much all surfaces. It’s solvent free and non-toxic you’ll be glad to hear!
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We stock a variety of the 0.7mm, 2mm, and 15mm but if we don’t have the colour or size you’re looking for we can always order them in for you.
The colours of the markers are matched to those of the Montana spray-paints, which is super slick. This means if you’re painting a large area with the shock-blue spray-paint, you can outline or fill in areas with the shock-blue marker and they’ll blend in. Nifty or what? 

​Not sure what all the fuss is about? There’s a New York City-based artist who goes by the name ‘Buff Monster’, and his artwork is based around little melted characters. His cartoony style is not to be scoffed at; he’s collaborated with some massive names over the past 15 years including Disney, Converse, and Coca-Cola. Montana sent him over a care package to try out, check the video below...

After seeing that, do you not just wanna go draw some little pink creatures?!

You can also buy refillable Montana markers, meaning you can purchase an empty marker and a bottle of paint to top it up when you’re running low. Awesome! This has the added bonus of mixing your own colours, which you’ll be able to make over and over again.

We hope that’s given you a better insight about what paint markers are all about. Here’s a couple of local artist who buy them from us. Go check out their work!
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Have a great week x

To the left is a WIP by Terry Bradley and to the right are some of Once Upon a Dandelion's up-cycled wall art.

​Tommy for example will say he can’t draw, but in actual fact, when he puts his mind to it, he’s pretty good and over the last few months his drawing skills have rapidly improved. Practice really does make perfect! But that’s not all he has to offer. He has a huge passion for writing- hence his blog for the Belfast Times. He’s written a book for adults, as well as a cool children’s book, of which he’s currently writing a second.

Music is a BIG part of our existence too. An avid record collector, Tommy’s also a singer in band, he can play guitar and piano, and he tries his best to play the harmonica but it’s a lot tougher than it looks! He’s brilliant at making things out of nothing- an amateur up-cycler, joiner, and mechanic, he can sew as well, and not just sewing the odd button on, he can properly stitch things back together. He’s also in Mensa- he’ll kill me for telling you that! 

Me on the other hand, well I guess I’m a jack-of-all-trades, but a master at none.
Painting textures using an airbrush is great fun, but tricky, and I haven’t practiced in an absolute age. The green car above was my first car, and was also the first entire car I ever painted when I worked as a car-sprayer. I died a little inside the day I sold it on, and now it’s driven past me twice in the past couple of months- gutted! I’m also a Product Design graduate, hence the table which you may have seen on Facebook this week, you can check that out here. 

Here is one of my watercolours flowers and two bombay ink doodlings.  

​As for painting and drawing, well acrylics and oils melt my face- I never did get the hang of them, same with pastels. But I do love watercolours and inks. They’re great fun to use, watching the colours swirl is always a joy and I love how delicate they can be. I was forever being told to ‘loosen up’ my work while at school, and using inks has given me the confidence to do that. 

Left is a Copic Ciao marker drawing and the right is done using Faber Castell Polychromo pencils.

For drawing, it’s Copics and colouring pencils every time. The brush tip on the Copics are super forgiving, and so easy to blend. The colours, highlights and shadows that can be created with them are superb. I hadn’t used colouring pencils in years, and once I drew that little mushroom, it ignited my love for them again.
Unlike Tommy I can’t sing, but I can play piano and drums. I haven’t practiced either in a few years, which I have to agree with my mum is ‘an absolute sin’, so they’re on my to-do-list.
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So that was an insider into the two monkeys behind this little shop. It’s also proof that just because you can’t draw or paint, doesn’t mean you’re not creative. You just have to broaden your horizons a little!
TTFN x

After work this evening I went to Tesco to get a few things and I have never been so disgusted in all my life. The nerve of some people! I am fuming!
I picked up a basket and started walking around to get a few things and I noticed this lady was staring at me in the same aisle - no big deal. I moved to the next aisle and here she comes, again staring at me. So now I’m like “What is her problem?” I finish up my shopping and head to the tills, and guess who’s there ahead of me.. the staring lady! She turns around and starts staring at me again. So I start playing on my phone because at this point it’s getting weird and really uncomfortable!
Next thing she comes over and I’m getting properly freaked out, but to my surprise she starts to  apologise.. “I want to apologise for staring at you, but you look just like my daughter who passed away.” So it all makes sense now and I felt kinda bad for thinking she was a weirdo and told her that I was sorry for her loss. She then says, “Thank you… but I have a favour to ask. I know this is strange and I’ll understand if you don’t want to, but can you give me a hug and say "Bye Mum"?
I was like what the hell is going on, but I know people have different ways of getting over a loss, so I went ahead and did it. She smiled and thanked me, and then left. At this point I was like "what just happened...?!"
Anyway the cashier rings my stuff through and the total come to £100.87. I’m like eh, I just bought a few things that I knew  would be 20 quid at the most... The cashier woman tells me that my total was included with my mums, and I’m like WHAT???? She said “Your mum told me you were paying for her stuff along with your things?” I told her that woman was NOT my mum. She said “Well I saw you hug her and heard you call her mum!” I’m like OMG, I can’t believe this is happening right now! So I flew out of the store looking for this absolute cretin, ready to drag her back into the store!!! I spotted her putting her shopping bags into her boot and started running towards her. She saw me and jumped into her car so fast. I got to her just as she was putting her leg in, and I started pulling her leg. She struggled but I kept pulling and then her wooden leg came right off in my hands!!! I’m thinking OMG! Is this really happening right now?! So I dropped her wooden leg and grabbed her other leg and started pulling…

Just like I’m pulling your leg right now! :D Happy Hump Day guys!

Courtesy of My Sisters Closet blog- too good not to share! 

Paint it black. Just the thought of this makes most parents hair curl, but really it’s something you needn’t get into a pickle over. When we made the decision to paint our shop in a dark hue most people were horrified, but as it turns out we were ahead of the game, as this spring/summer it’s all about being brave and going a few shades darker.
When we first moved into our shop it was a terrible shade of parmaviolet. We only had a few weeks to get the shop up-and-running, so we quickly opted for white paint to take the bad look of the place. Quite possibly the worst decision we could've made. We instantly lost our personality, and it felt like we were sitting inside a huge fridge all day, with the temperature to match. Depression central! It was time to take action. We wanted to steer away from the bleak mono look and bring intrigue and a little subversion design to the table. Fast-forward a few months, the entire shop is painted out in the most sumptuous grey ever; needless to say we haven’t looked back since. 

Our inspiration came from seeing a gallery painted entirely grey and it looked amazing. Suddenly the surroundings of the gallery melted into the background and all your attention was focused on the artwork, as it should be.  Then we happened upon interior designer Abigail Ahern. She is the ‘high priestess’ of all things dark. She has a couple of shops in London, both of which are painted out in inky, sludgy hues and it doesn’t look or feel depressing contrary to popular beliefs. Instead the space pulls you in, it’s intriguing, its cosy, and it's rather sophisticated. Don’t believe us? Hear it from the experts:
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“For me, black is actually the ultimate mood-lifter. It’s atmospheric, moody, cool, and comforting at the same time.. it instantly elevates everything in the room to look way cooler and more expensive”.  Abigail Ahern, Interior Designer.

“Dark backgrounds are the new neutrals, whether navy, chocolate or charcoal. They cry out for added colour, which could be pastel, primary or neon. The darkness behind brings the colours forward and makes them pop.. Pictures look so much better on dark walls.”   Kate Watson- Smyth, award winning blogger ‘Mad about the house’.

“Black enhances other colours. It brings depth, mystery and chic.. Black is the go-to shade for making colours stand out.”  Sacha Walckhoff, creative director of Christian Lacroix. 

Tons of businesses and homes have jumped on the Scandinavian bandwagon, and as lovely as it is, everywhere you look coffee shops and retail spaces are being overtaken with pale shades, reclaimed wood and concrete; instead of standing out, they’re all starting to blend in.
Instead of going with the flow, why not go against the grain, it could be the best decision you’ve ever made! We must warn you though, once you paint one room dark, you’ll want to re-decorate the whole house- it’s rather addictive. We started with the shop, and now it’s slowly taking over our house, check out the before and after of our living room!
TTFN  x

With the dust now settling, 18 months after opening our doors, we feel that we have a pretty good grasp of how the whole ‘running a business’ malarkey works. So far so good anyway!

In recent times we've had customers in-store who are here on their holidays and have wanted to buy our products online when they get home, as well as others who don't live near Belfast and have asked if they can purchase from our website, and to date they can't. However that's all about to change as we decided that it was about time we got into selling online.

It was a little overwhelming at first as both of us are complete novices, apart from selling our unwanted crap on eBay, which isn’t quite the same. But as with most things, self-education is the way to go, and we've spent the last few months swotting up on all things e-commerce. Etsy articles make for great reading, and we came across this one to do with the importance of good photography when selling your wares.

We decided that to hit the ground running with our e-commerce proper photography of our own prints and frames were a no-brainer, so we began trawling the internet for local commercial photographers, and by jove did we come up trumps.
While searching for ‘the one’ we found that most commercial photography was lifeless, clinical, and sort of plain- Jane-esque. The images quality was superb but they lacked personality. Being a creative start-up, we felt lacklustre photos just wouldn’t do. All hope was lost until we came across Fine Art Imaging, which is owned and run by the lovely Margaret O’Hare.

Needless to say her work is incredible, her attention to detail is second to none and she goes above and beyond to deliver a fantastic customer experience and service. Don’t believe us? Check out her skills with our prints and frames below! 

We love Fine Art Imaging and you should to. So for all your photography or web-design needs, we highly recommend. A truck-load of thank yous to Margaret for all her hard work, and I think it's plain to see we're more than happy with the outcome. 

That's all for now guys... Have a great week whatever you're up to! x

​As I’m sure you guys already know, each month we take part in an amazing artisan market at the Crescent arts centre.
The Fine and Dandy Market is a local craft market which hosts over 30 different makers, creators, and crafters, all thanks to Kellie Mairs who’s the brains behind the whole show. If you haven’t visited before what are you playing at?! Pencil it in the diary (if you’re fancy like that) or slap a stickie note on the fridge and come along to the next one, which is on the 24th of April. If you can’t make that one, the market runs on the last Sunday of every month.

I digress.. With running the shop solo 6 days a week while Tommy works his full-time day-job, we always leave it until last minute to decide what we’re bringing to the market. That means trying to think of quick, make-shift ways to show off our wares. It got the point where on many occasions our display didn't look quite as good as it could do, and that doesn't reflect our brand as well as it should.
Enough was enough and we decided to do something about it. It’s only until you start searching for table-top display items that you realise how limited they are; unless you’re selling make-up, there’s literally 1000 different kinds of plinths to display your nail polish!


First and fore-most we needed something to put our A4 prints in so that our customers could flick through them easily, but the only solutions available were print racks which:

A. We weren’t really fussed on
B. Most were FAR too big
C. The one’s that were 'all-right at best' cost a million pounds!

This called for some creativity; we made our own and they turned out pretty good. It’s amazing what you can do with a £2.75 box from Ikea, 4 pieces of black foamboard, a stanley-knife and a squirt of UHU. Voila!

Ta Daaaa.. Before and after!

I’d like to share something I read in the fantastic “Fuck It” by John C Parkin, that he calls a “jetpack moment”.

When we’re young it’s like we’re on a clear plain; no problems to block the path to our visions and plans. But as we grow older our problems, like trees, spring up around us; work, bills, relationships… sometimes it feels like we’re sitting in the middle of a forest, with our hopes and dreams so completely obscured that there doesn’t seem to be any way through.

Then we’ll have a “jetpack moment;” an emotional occurrence such as the death of a loved one which will launch you above the canopy and allow you to look down upon your problems, seeing them for what they really are, and putting everything into perspective.
But the jetpack will quickly run out of fuel and we’ll come back down to Earth, and more trees will spring up, and our hopes and dreams will once again be out of sight.

The trick then is to be able to strap the jetpack on at will. The ability to take a step back and objectively assess your problems is something that will have a wealth of positive repercussions, and it helps weed out those dramas  in your life which really aren’t problems at all.

Life's too short to be spent worrying about trivial bullshit. Will it matter in 5 years? 1 year? 1 month? 1 week? Tomorrow? Probably not. Deal with it, move on, and enjoy every moment.
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The Destination CQ BID (Business Improvement District) is an exciting venture for businesses and organisations in the Cathedral Quarter to enhance their trading and working environment.
The Cathedral Quarter already boasts
 
• Festivals and events which attract over 400,000 people annually,
• The Cathedral, The MAC, and the Central Library, which attract over 550,000 visitors annually,
• Ulster University Belfast, growing to 15,000 students by 2018,
• The 600+ stakeholders within the proposed BID area currently employing around 4000 people – a number that will likely increase significantly as new developments are completed,
• 4000-5000 people on an average weekend evening enjoying a night out in the area’s restaurants, pubs, and clubs,
• Hotels offering 357 rooms with 55 more planned for 2016. Hundreds attend weddings, conferences, and other gatherings.

The CQ BID initiative will build upon this by recruiting the local businesses to join forces and donate a set amount of cash per year, based upon their rates payments, which will go towards making the Cathedral Quarter a better place to work, study, visit, and do business. There have been over 200 other BIDs throughout the UK, so the model is tried-and-tested.
​The objectives include

• Supporting and enhancing cultural activities,
• Improving the trading environment by enhancing the public realm and creating a welcoming atmosphere for clients, staff, visitors, audiences, and students,
• Promoting local businesses and events,
• Retaining talent by creating opportunities for graduates and entrepreneurs,
• Working in partnership to drive down costs and shape the future of our area,
• Growing our evening economy further and developing out daytime offering to increase visitor footfall, dwell-time and spend.

Late last year our good friend Debs came to us with an idea for a charity event. For as long as we’ve known her, she’s always doing something to give back, whether it’s volunteering or participating in the annual Colour Run. This time she wanted to bring it back to something she loves, and having studied Fine Art at Hereford College, she had the idea of organizing a local artwork auction with all the proceeds going to the mental health charity Mindwise.  Obviously we jumped at the chance to hold the event in-store, and that’s how this whole amazing memory began.

We decided to run a campaign to get as many local artists onboard and donate some of their work, and my goodness, they did not disappoint! We still can’t believe the generosity of them all; 52 fantastic pieces showcasing all styles and mediums were donated! Unreal! We actually had so many offers that we just couldn’t accept them all, but we are so grateful for each and every one who got in touch with us.

Debs and her mum are to thank for all the nibbles and tipples which helped loosen the purse strings a little, as well as Debbie’s boss who generously made the best brownies and lemon drizzle we’ve ever tasted; pure beaut!

Debbie also called upon her super-talented musician friends to set the mood for the evening with a wonderful set from Frances and Chris followed by a solo set from her friend Maitiu. Both sets blew the roof of the place, and really brightened up a quite miserable, rainy evening.
It was our good friend and artist Brian Kielt who put us in touch with our comical auctioneer in the form of Marcus Keeley from Voicebox comedy. He helped lighted the mood and kept the bids coming in with his witty banter.