For a limited time, the handmade and vintage marketplace, Etsy.com is offering £5 off your first order. To sign up and claim your discount (we suggest you shop wisely and treat a little person in your life to a Mimi & Will t-shirt), simply follow this link.
We had a visit to Smile Acorns, the first retail outlet where you can buy a small selection of t-shirts from our range! Located on lovely farmland in the North West of England, Smile Acorns is run by Emma, a fellow mum and maker of lovely childrenswear.
The shop is part of a larger farm complex, called Inglenook Farm. Other shops on site include a guitar shop, traditional farm shop showcasing the best of the region’s local produce, including Lytham Coffee, and the main product of the farm itself – essential oils and soaps from the fields of lavender growing outside! The stars of the show at the moment have to be the newly-arrived twin baby goats.
There’s also a traditional team rooms and a barn for hire. Last week was an Easter fun day for children, but chickens were also welcome, and keen to get stuck in!
You can find Smile Acorns just off what my dad calls ‘the Southport Road’, or the A570 as the rest of us know it. It’s close to Haydock, but even with race meet traffic on a busy Saturday, we drove there in about half an hour from the outskirts of Manchester. A good time was had by all (I went with my daughter, niece, nephew, dad and sister – a real family day out!)
Every October, World Space Week celebrates mankind’s greatest achievements in space. This year, the focus is on the exploration of Mars.
In recognition of World Space Week, here are some space-themed reads, activities and goodies:
The Comic Strip History of Space– read a review here
Aspiring Astronauts Space Dress by Sewing Circus. Sewing Circus make clothes that encourage an interest in STEM subjects regardless of gender. As well as the space dress, check out the dinosaur skirts and space trousers.
Make your own constellation viewer– a DIY by Glasgow Science Centre. The Science Centre‘s a great day out if you’re in Glasgow. If not, try this DIY at home.
Inspired by vintage 50s and 60s flashcards, here’s the first octopus in space: Space Octopus Card by Ketchup on Everything.
Doodle on the Moon . Printable activity by Mr Printables. Draw on a giant moon for your wall, or a smaller one for doodles.
Space Shuttle Cushion by MyWifeYourWife. For space shuttle fans of all ages.
Australia’s Lotta Magazine produced a space issue with lots of activity ideas, from baking alien cupcakes to making your own space station. Buy the magazine or check out the activity templates.
And some reading material for the older/ big kids amongst you…
The Amateur Astronomer’s Journal by Neil Slorance. Neil’s story about a girl who escapes the stresses of everyday life by stargazing was nominated for several SICBA awards. Read a review here.
Read an interview with NASA’s spacesuit designer and find out how to cook your own rocket fuel in Oh Comely, issue 17
They most certainly are. Here are some of the marvellous things they create:
Cats and Castles cardigan by Jolly and Hodie.
The Classics notebook by Lucy Farfort.
We’ve got two weeks left of our indiegogo pre-order campaign. Here’s a quick round up of what we’ve been doing over the last few weeks, in case you missed anything!
We have seven designers on board for the launch collection and have six sample shirts (we’re still waiting for Lucy Farfort’s design to come back from the printers, but you can see a proof below:
We visited the Children’s Wood for their Bake-Off. Laura Donald came to visit us and blogged about it.
We also sold some of these badges, which we’ve decided to offer as a limited edition reward on Indiegogo.
And that’s about it! Remember, if you want to guarantee a shirt before Christmas, pre-ordering is the way to go!
As ever, give us a shout with any questions, queries, or just to say hello!
Here’s the seven t-shirts in our launch collection. We have had a few enquiries from shops about stocking our t-shirts. If you’re a shop and are interested, please do get in touch!
Good morning! Welcome to anyone who’s recently found us through Facebook or twitter. I hope everyone’s looking forward to the weekend. We’ve apparently got ‘approaching cold fronts’ here in Glasgow- you types down south better remember your sunscreen though!
A couple of updates from Mimi and Will HQ for you; firstly, we updated our campaign page on Indiegogo to make the t-shirt ordering process clearer. In a nutshell, you choose the number of t-shirts you’d like, and click the relevant reward (one, two, three or four t-shirts). You don’t have to give us your design preferences or size information yet. Towards the end of the campaign, we’ll contact you to get your sizes and choices. We’ll get all orders to the printer and you should receive your shirts at the end of November, in plenty of time for Christmas.
We’ve also added another reward to our Indiegogo page. We now have ten shirts available at £15. There are only ten though!
Finally, we should have another announcement later on today. We’ve confirmed another two designers will be contributing designs to Mimi and Will. Stay tuned for updates! In the meantime have a browse at our collection so far: featuring designs by Emma Henderson of Showpony, Neil Slorance, Laura Donald and Kim Gurney of Poosac
We’re going to be updating this blog with pictures of the final t-shirt designs and some more about the artists and designers who we’re working with. First up is Neil Slorance , who designed Supersaurus for us. It’s available in white and is screenprinted onto an organic cotton t-shirt. Like all our designs, it’s suitable for boys or girls. Find out a bit more about Neil after the pics:
Neil draws things and does comics. You can buy his acclaimed book (nominated for several Scottish Indie Comic Book Alliance awards, don’t you know) , The Amateur Astronomer’s Journal from his etsy shop or buy it on Kindle.
Here’s a pic I took of a painting of Neil’s that I have.
I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s been described as follows:
“The dragon guy is firing the robot and it has made him not very happy. I like it, it is orange”
You can see more of Neil’s art on his tumblr.
So. Here we are, about to launch our t-shirt collection. You may be thinking, who are Mimi and Will? And why are they doing this? As we get closer to launch, we often think this ourselves, especially in the wee small hours of the morning. Only kidding! We’re very excited as we prepare to launch our funding campaign, so we thought we’d reflect a little on who we are and why we decided to start this project.
The team behind Mimi and Will are Katy and Jo, sometimes otherwise known as Girl Industries and Stella My Star.
Katy was looking for a toddler-sized t-shirt, and really liked this one by Neil Slorance. However, it didn’t come in kid sizes. We discovered that because of the range of sizes across children’s wear, it just wasn’t possible for most independent designers to order shirts in sufficient quantities to sell, unless of course that was their core business focus.
So we thought, well. What if someone worked with a number of designers, licensing their images for use on kids’ tees and overseeing production? And then we thought, why don’t we do it? So we approached some designers, who said yes and here we are!
At present we have sample shirts from four designers: Neil Slorance, Emma Henderson of Showpony, Kim Gurney of Poosac, and Laura Donald. Some have been created exclusively for us, others have been licensed. We’re working with the printer on final designs, and will post detailed images as soon as we have them. We also have a couple of other designs and designers waiting in the wings, so stay tuned for more info!
We thought long and hard about financing our campaign. In the end we decided to go with Indiegogo, and use it to finance pre-orders of our shirts. We felt it was the sensible option for us, allowing to accurately gauge demand across sizes and designs.
So that’s who we are, and where we are. We’ll post updates as we have them- stay tuned!
Mimi and Will 