Creating Limited Edition Holiday Reserve Packaging for Green Hive Honey Farm

WHAT a fun project!! Here is the finished packaging for Green Hive Honey Farm's Limited Edition Holiday Reserve luscious honey with honeycomb. There are only 120 jars available of this nectar, the last bounty of a wonderful season, packaged with a special label, gift tag, hand numbered with tissue cap. You can still order your jars, ready for the Holidays, by clicking HERE:
or by e-mailing Green Hive Honey to find out where Holiday Reserve is available for sale.

First we begin with a 20oz jar of honey complete with about 4oz of divine honeycomb...isn't it beautiful??...those bees are so clever! After James and I had packaged and extensively photographed this jar we then had the chance to taste the honeycomb...it is very delicious, a tiny bit chewy at the end and surprisingly lemony...very, very good!! Can't wait to make something special with it...blog post coming when I have perfected this secret recipe...do check back!!

Here are close ups of the actual artwork...I have darkened the label background colours and changed the yellow/orange hexagonal comb, honey lettering and the outlined bee to gold...a complicated and I have to admit very clever Photoshop palaver which involved many numbers of steps...it looks gold but is actually printed in normal ink colours.

Here is the tissue 'cap' artwork gleaned from the original hand painted watercolour artwork...James drew a large honey bee for me which I scanned and reduced and added three copies to a background of more golden honeycomb.

Each little tissue cap...and remember there are 120 of them, plus a couple of extras, were hand cut ready to be lovingly applied to their jars.

 This is the layout for the outside of the hang tag which on the inside has one of three different excerpts of poetry/prose about bees, see below, and a place to write TO: and FROM:. As you can see pictured below a gold medallion was added to the white space on the tag and is hand written with it's number in the series.

The final touches are an antique golden ribbon secured with another gold medallion printed with the graphic below....

 

But, for the point of wisdom, I would choose
    To know the mind that stirs between the wings
    Of bees...
    GEORGE ELIOT, 1868

We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thereby furnishing mankind
     with the two noblest of things. which are sweetness and light.
   JONATHAN SWIFT

  The pedigree of honey
     Does not concern the bee;
     A clover, any time, to him
     Is aristocracy.

   EMILY DICKINSON