A Fairy Tale Job.

In June 2014 I was invited by Katrina at bareMinerals in San Francisco to create the illustrations for their ‘Fairy Tale’ Holiday range. It’s common to be sketching out baubles and Happy Christmases in the summer time, but I don’t think I’ve worked on Christmas a whole year and a half ahead!

What a job though. It combined Things Mole Loves: ink, make-up, sparkly and scary things. What we can safely call ‘a no-brainer’. The theme was ‘Enchantment’, and before we’d even had the set-up call they'd lasered right in on what I so obviously like to draw - the comfort zone of detail, thorns, natural objects, snowflakes, stars and hidden things. So this was a joy to do from start to finish.

Among other folio pieces, they were inspired by this illustration created a few years ago for a jeweller; clearly suggestive of night time and sparkle!

The packaging required several elements including details for the website, but we started with the big ‘hero’ piece, from which most of the packaging elements would be derived, everything sketched out in pencil, with a few rounds of refining, followed by ink on paper and finally, applied to the packaging at the designer’s end.

The packaging required several elements including details for the website, but we started with the big ‘hero’ piece, from which most of the packaging elements would be derived, everything sketched out in pencil, with a few rounds of refining, followed by ink on paper and finally, applied to the packaging at the designer’s end.

I often prefer the pencil sketches of the things that I draw, and these were good examples of that - there’s a soft organic side to pencil that the ink, although still clearly hand-done, doesn’t have - and this is the ‘spirit’ I have to protect when I’m being asked to vectorise something for technical reasons. It’s something I guard quite fiercely! Here’s the illustration for the Mineral Powder lids - and yes that is a spot for a real jewel in the centre!

There were details to make for the behind-the-scenes stuff too - spines and edges for boxes and products, web elements and little flourishes - here they are in their natural, unmade-up state!

Oof! these spines! I designed them to fit together a variety of different ways, to give alternative looks depending on the requirement:

And here are the finished things. Here’s ALL of ‘em, ‘cos I can’t choose. You can’t get all of these things in the UK, but they have a decent selection in bareMinerals boutiques within the UK.
Here’s QVC’s Christmas presentation!

or buy direct from Bareminerals here.

And finally, here is a strange shot of my excited by camera-awkward face holding one of the products in the nearest bareMinerals boutique. The ladies tactfully pretended they couldn’t see me. Bless them.