The madness behind the magic - written by Christianna Heideman
Creating a new collection here a Damselfy is sort of like building a house. You start with the foundations, and add in fittings, furnishings, and everything in between, then change your mind a million times... and pin 47,237 pictures on Pinterest in the meantime.
Then you have to build the dream team behind it all to make sure everything ends up with that dash of magic...
When we begun the process of imagining our new 'Wild hearts' range, we knew we needed to raise the bar with our creative process and hunt out some shining stars to collaborate with us on this project.
So we reached out to local QLD artist Bree McDonald to collaborate on some epic new artwork & original typography to feature throughout the collection. Sitting down to debrief, we knew instantly that she was the kind of girl that saw life through the same lense as us. Quirky, and whimsical, her work is bursting with a life and vibrancy that encapsulated the feelings we were hoping to capture.
Before Bree could begin, we have the delicious, but lengthy process of creating our new bespoke scents for the range. Smelling, trialling, re-smelling, then starting all over again is just part of the delicate job of getting the fragrances perfect. We sniffed everything from gardenia to garden peas and back again, hunting for just the right combination. Whilst we LOVE this part of the job, we all began to start smelling candles in our dreams over this period, and I'm fairly sure the entire office lost their scent mojo after weeks on end of sniff testing.
From there, it was back to the drawing board to lock in the perfect quotes to encapsulate all the 'feels' of love. Trust us, this actually is one of the most pain staking parts of the process, landing on the right words that express exactly how we feel takes countless hours of workshopping, gallons of coffee and the occasional champagne session at end of a long week. There were heated debates about the perfect words, and the right phrases, and what felt like an exploding mood board of never ending options.
Think that is where it ends for us? Oh hell no... that's just the tip of the iceberg. Crack out the Pantone colour palettes, it's packaging time. Knowing we wanted tonal textural detail to be a key detail, we must have gone over a zillion different shades of silver, rose gold & blush before settling on the perfect pick for our original brushstroke packaging. That's right.. even the artwork on the packaging was created in house by hand to ensure absolute perfection.
We leave nothing to chance when it comes to our product development. It may seem like it's a simple brush stroke to the innocent eye, but before that comes a trillion versions and meetings and analysis about how thick each stoke should look on the corner of the box and if the paint splash is in just the right place...
To be fair, the level of OCD our team has to get it all right could turn the average person mad. Emails and phone calls can happen in the middle of the night to reassure each other that the rose gold detail isn't too 'rose gold', and we've ordered sample after sample and held our breath countless times as the courier arrives at the door with the final product.
Finally, at the end of all this madness, enter our adorable printer to make sure the quality level was bang on, and finally... drum roll please... we have a range ready to go!
In the eye of the storm, a collection like this can seem like an endless wave of decisions and second guessing, but once the long road has been travelled, we are ecstatic to have created something we are 100% proud of. (Even if we have a few grey hairs to show for it...)
Here's a little sneak peek into the not so simple world behind the humble candle.
CH xx
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