Bok Bok B’Gerk

Guest post time everyone. Looking forward to having many more of these! Take it away Michelle..

Hi! I am Michelle from Bok Bok B’Gerk and I have recently started up a home-based business selling laser cut wooden jewellery and accessories, both wholesale and on Etsy. Today I am going to share with you the process of how I turned some rough sketches I drew into a product I could sell.

For a while I had been doing some very basic sketching for fun, gaining inspiration from various sources such as fabrics, vintage children’s books and even my son’s toys, but I was never really sure what to do with them. Late one night while I was laying in bed I had an epiphany. I had become a fan of wooden laser cut jewellery, so why not start creating my own based on my little sketches! When it still seemed like a good idea in the morning, I decided I had to give it a go!

I sketched and re-sketched designs over and over until I was completely happy with them. I then used the internet to research how laser cut jewellery was made and soon found out that in order for the designs to be cut by laser they needed to be drawn up in Adobe Illustrator – a software program I had never used. Undeterred, I spent the best part of two weeks learning everything I could about the program, asking everyone I knew for some help. Finally it all started making sense and I was able to create my designs digitally.

It took a few weeks (and a LOT of asking around) to find a local business that could laser cut my designs out of an eco-friendly wood. It was well worth the wait though, as supporting local business and producing a product as eco-friendly as possible were both very important to me.

Perhaps the best thing though, was finding that the business operates from a workshop roughly 5 minutes from my house, so I could easily go down there to discuss my designs. The wait to get the sample products back was excruciating, so I focused all of my attention on producing some packaging for my products. I was incredibly happy to find that my newly acquired Illustrator skills came in handy for that too!

It was a very exciting and surreal moment when I held the sample products in my hands for the first time. A simple sketch I had done on a whim was now a tangible object ready for sale! I would have to say that for me, the best part of having designed a product myself are the compliments I receive from others when I’m wearing it. That gives me a real sense of achievement!

Buy Bok Bok B’Gerk products on Etsy.

If you’d like to be our next guest blogger, contact us and tell us your idea!

Thanks Michelle!