My Green Hive Honey Farm Label Design

 

Just recently I was asked by Magy and Clay King of Green Hive Honey in Camden Maine to design a label/logo for their delicious honey. How could I refuse when A. I was asked so nicely and B. they wanted a design with a pink background with gold foil accents and complementary fondant icing colours and C. I love honey...now tell me that doesn't sound like a dream job for yours truly...lover of pink and all things sweet??

So I betook myself to the place where their honey is made and availed myself of these photographs for visual inspiration.Above you see the Green Hive Honey bees doing their job...buzzing and dancing and busying their days away in their idyllic environment not far from the town centre of Camden, Maine.....

This is a corner of the garden where they do their work and make oodles of delicious amber coloured honey which is lovingly extracted by mechanical means from the comb.

"Organically raised “girls” busily buzz in

orchards, fields, and gardens making

exquisite wildflower honey. Brought to you

straight from comb to jar, our raw, boutique

honey is nature’s purest gift from happy

bees. Never heated, thereby naturally

preserving the healing properties only honey

affords."

Just look at that deep amber colour...so beautiful, and I can vouch right now to how divinely this honey tastes....Magy and Clay gave me a jar to sample and inspire the muse - help get the creative juices a-flowing

 

And thus they flowed. I started the process by designing three separate but similar layouts, seen below in the order in which they came to be.

...and the final sketch and winner was....ta dah, not only Magy and Clay's favourite but mine too...I'm so glad they choose this design below, although having created them myself, and thus being ever so slightly biased in that regard, I would have been more than happy to move forward with any of the three.

And so the work begins on the layout.....

and continues with the watercolour paint-up with my trusty Winsor Newton Number 7 sable brushes, Winsor Newton watercolour paints and Arches watercolour blocks....joy of my creative life all.

And here below Ladies and Gentlemen the final label design...scanned, cleaned up and with a computer added pink ground and darker pink border...for who in their right mind wants to paint a pale pink ground around such a complex outline...not me for sure. I have learned my lesson with that in the past...put the grounds on after you have scanned the handiwork and make your life SO much easier.
The word Honey, the honeycomb and the central bee outline will all 'bee' in gold foil on the finished labels...won't that be divine?

This design is already available in the Green Hive Honey Farm Cafe Press Store and will soon be available as archival prints from the Green Hive Honey Farm Etsy shop along with jars of the glorious honey. I'll post on My and Green Hive Honey's Fan pages when the Etsy shop is ready for business.

My sincere thanks to Magy and Clay King for being so gracious and easy to work with...it was my delight!! Now I must find a British dessert with honey as the featured ingredient and do a blog post on that...suggestions anyone?

And now to the Bee Loud Glade with you!!

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core. 

 Buzz Buzz everyone!!