A new design for Green Hive Honey's Bees Knees

Here is the original 40 oz jar and label design of "The Bees Knees" from Green Hive Honey Farm of Camden, Maine. Just recently Magy and Clay decided to do some smaller jars containing 1lb of the delightful elixir so a new jar was resourced and a new label needed - a much smaller, rectangular one. So the original was 3.3" diameter thus:

...a nice amount of space to fill - and the new size is 2.5" deep by 1.5" wide rectangle - a mite trickier to work with and get all the visuals and the necessary type in - but I rose to challenge and here is the result:

Front label

Back label

Luckily - or smartly for I am being humble - I had originally created all the attendant motifs for the design and logo as individual parts when I painted them in watercolour so after I had scanned and cleaned them they are easy to move around as necessary and resize for new layouts.

I printed the labels up on full sticky sheets and cut them out individually with my trusty Xacto and a cutting board that is as old as the hills.

Don't you love the way they look all laid out together - they look like old fashioned trading cards or the cards one - not me but one -  used to get in cigarette packets in another age.

...and here are the new jars filled and ready to go off to "Fresh off the Farm" in Rockport - see the Green Hive there in the background?

A new design for Green Hive Honey Farm.

Green Hive Honey Farm of Camden, Maine found some lovely 1lb Muth bottles for their delicious raw honey and asked me to redesign the original label (see a few pics down) to suit this new silhouette - an arched label for the front and a narrow label to hold the ribbon around the neck.

The neck label layout and a mock up of the finished (unfilled) bottle

 I printed up 120 of each of the new labels and I love how they look all laid out together like this - each of the arched labels were cut out by hand - always more service than seems necessary!!

 Seeing the design laid out like that above gave me the idea to do a textile design for my Spoonflower print-on-demand store and below you see the result of this idea.

 

 Above is the original label and below a print I created from all the component motifs which is available as an archival print from my Etsy shop.

These lovely Muth jars filled with wonderful Green Hive Raw Honey is available from Fresh Off the Farm in Camden.

The Bees Knees revealed....

Green Hive Honey of Camden, Maine has a new product and I am the happy one who had the enviable task of designing a new label for The Bees Knees "A Sweet Arthritis Remedy"!! Yea for me....below is the original label/logo I created for their raw honey and we used this as the starting point for the new label which will be categorized in the
Bee Healthy section of their business.

First I created the handpainted type, as you see below...something I derive a great deal of pleasure from, type and fonts have always fascinated me and remind me of the days when I worked in a commercial art studio hand laying Letraset by the ream, what a different world that was a couple of centuries ago or so it seems.

Next I silhouetted the banner from the original watercolour painting of the Green Hive Honey logo....

 

...then I found James' lovely drawing of a pretty bee to add to the label....

and THEN I scanned, cleaned and corodinated, or even coordinated although I do like the word corodinated - all the component pieces in wondrous Photoshop...which allows me to add the small type and not drive myself insane with drawing minute type.....we choose to use a pale yellow background and a round label to differentiate the regular eating honey from the beneficial honey...and Ta Dah...here is the label

Then off to do the photoshoot for me to upload to Etsy and James to do a new page on the website - just couldn't resist a pink background here

A little still life of jar, lettering and labels for the soothing of thine eyes!!

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!!