For today's #CrazyRebelliousArt, the topic is to write about one of your biggest successes and why was it a challenge for you. At first I was kind of struggling on what to do this for because nothing came to mind straight away but after a think I realised that actually my most successful project not just in terms of popularity or sales but also in the process and the way it came about was my 2014 Calendar I made back in College.

Depending on how long you have read this blog for or followed me on social media you may have come across my Calendar before and possibly read this blog post speaking about putting it up for sale. Anyway, I spoke in that blog post a lot about the trouble (and success) I had the day of putting it up for sale and that but there is a ton more to the story that I haven't shared before!

So yeah, the Calendar I created was one for a College brief that you can read more about here. To give a quick bit of details for it, I was to create a Calendar with at least 6 illustrations using a combinations of vectors and bitmaps. My initial challenge with this project was even anything to do with what I finally ended up creating. My original ideas focused around the kind of line art, flat illustrations like this and use certain symbols or holidays for those months to inspire and create the illustrations. However, after pitching my idea to my lecture, she pretty much shot it down and told me to think of an idea that would mean I could incorporate more hand made elements or things along those lines. Obviously I was pretty upset and annoyed because I really loved my idea- and my other lecture who I had during the week even said she would loved to see the final result for that idea- but in the end I know that what I did create was soooooo much better! 

After creating, developing and having a technique done for creating not only the 6 illustrations I had to do, I created 12 in the end. From putting so much work and thought into all my illustrations I really didn't want to leave them sitting just as piece of work I simply did and then moved on from I ended up going and selling them. After the process of getting my shop set up and telling all those who ordered Avon from me at the time I was pretty happy with it all! I think during the time from November 2013 to February (maybe March?) 2014 I sold about 20 calendars and plus a few extra for people as gifts or as 1st footing gifts at New Year. In total I made just over £130 plus an extra £5(?) from a pack of badges I made for my lecture. 

2 years on from originally creating these illustrations and the calendar in general I have learned so much about my practice and style that I would love to do more with them and perhaps make them more successful! But I do still love how they look and feel that I would only have to do a few alterations to a couple of the originals to be `100% with them to go out again.