COLLABORATION WITH DINOSAURS DOING STUFF
The Beginning
I met Charlotte met way back in 2016 at The London Artisan Market, at the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in East London. We regularly saw each other doing various markets and soon discovered we both lived in Tower Hamlets, loved filthy food and were obsessed with dogs, in particular Ham my Border Terrier who was only 2 at the time. Doing so many markets together it made sense for us to share stalls to help spread the costs of the day and it also meant Charlotte could spend the whole day pretending Ham was her dog.
Ham always my companion at markets.
The market stalls at the Truman Brewery were massive, so there was plenty of space to share.
Sharing a stall made the day more fun.
The time we made Ham dress up as a dinosaur.
London Local Team
We were also both Etsy sellers. I had joined the London Local Etsy Team (LoLo), which was focused on creating a network of like minded people, offering support and organising craft and selling events across London. It wasn’t hard to convince Charlotte to join too. Both being self employed makers it was great to go to meet-ups and talk shop with people who really understood your day to day, share ideas and collaborate.
Babies
Soon business chat became baby chat when we both started the next chapter in our lives. We never imagined when we first met that we would be swapping morning sickness remedies and flashing our boobs at each other. Living locally meant we could support each other, especially with Charlotte’s family being in Australia, it’s been lovely to see our babies grow together. There is a running joke that we often converse on several social media platforms rather than talk to each other and we spend more time with each other than our husbands (pre lockdown obviously).
First came Olivia…
Then came Mia…
Followed by Serena.
Endless playdates (before COVID-19).
Collaborating
When lockdown hit, all our regular baby activities closed and we both finished maternity leave, talks of a collaboration started. The collaboration came from a conversation about tea bag tidies being my bestseller, which led to the suggestion of putting Charlotte’s Tea-Rex on one. A bit of back and forth and the Time for Tea-Rex design was born. Tea-Rex has had slight makeover from Charlotte’s original design, including an eye lift, veneers and a manicure. In the original illustration Tea-Rex is holding a plain tea cup, it was replaced with a Black Quadrangle mug. The play on words is a fusion of Tea-Rex with Time for Tea, another tea bag tidy design.
Original Tea-Rex illustration by Dinosaurs Doing Stuff.
Time for Tea-Rex illustration, with his new mug.
Having both spent the past 18 months consumed with babies and the COVID-19 pandemic, working together has been a great escape from the mundane aspects of being a mum.
We hope you love our new tea loving friend as much as we enjoyed creating him.
