Hello Pretty

Pretty chocolates

I spotted these lovely, tasty looking bits of chocolatey goodness on the interwebz last week, and felt that it was compulsory to share: Chocolates That Represent Japanese Onomatopoeic Words To Describe Texture. I mean. Just look at them.

'There are many factors that determine our experience with chocolate: the type of cocoa, the percentage used, and the flavors. But when Maison et Objet, the pre-eminent design show in France, told Oki Sato that they were naming him Designer Of The Year and asked him to design a set of chocolates, he had to pause. The head of the Tokyo and Milan-based design studio Nendo needed to rethink the concept of chocolate.

Nendo has created “Chocolatexture,” a series of 9 chocolates, all the same size, but each representing a Japanese onomatopoeic word that describes texture.
“The 9 different types of chocolate are made within the same size, 26x26x26mm, featuring pointed tips, hollow interiors, smooth or rough surface textures,” says Sato. “And while the raw materials are identical, the distinctive textures create different tastes.”'

Pretty chocolates on http://hellopretty.co.zaI spo

Delicious as well as beautiful? I am definitely in favour of that idea!

Source.

Back To School With Hello Pretty

New year, new stationery - I'm surely not the only one who gets excited by new books with blank pages?

We're all about that new notebook smell!

Clickety click!

Hello Pretty's Birthday!

We had a birthday in December! We celebrated our public launch in the best way possible - with cake and nice people. (that's all you really want from life you know?) In terms of birthdays, it can get pretty complicated. There's the birth of the idea, the birth of the team, the birth of site itself (our private beta launch), and then the day we opened our metaphorical doors to the general public with our out of beta launch. So all in all, this tiny baby company has been around for three years, and is not such a baby anymore. (I feel like company years should actually work like dog years. We did a lot of learning during that time!)

Let me tell you, we're so proud of this cool thing we've built. People told us we were crazy, told us we were wrong, predicted that we were doomed to fail - and there we were, three years down the line, shoving cake in our faces.

Our success is reliant on the success of our sellers - the more we help South African small busineses thrive, the more we thrive. As Sam has said on occassion, we're like a pyramid scheme, but awesome!

There's no way to fully describe how satisfying it is to be able to help entrepreneurs grow - I wake up every morning feeling filled with purpose, and am incredibly grateful for that (Although it turns out that skipping around town delivering cupcakes is pretty satisfying too!)

Thank you all for your amazing and overwhelming support - to the buyers, the sellers, the bloggers, the magazines, the long suffering friends - we wouldn't be here without you all. We well and truly love each and every one of you for enabling us to do what we love.

Now I need to go before I get downright emotional. Hearts and puppies and kittens and stuff.

Pretty Personal with Riz & Resh of the Dollie House

Photographic duo Riz & Resh are long time friends and favourites of ours - they recently made us look fancy in our own little photo shoot, and we've had the likes of A Ring To It and Bow Peep turn to them for product photography. Bottom line is, they have mad skillz.

And to our delight, they've joined us as Hello Pretty sellers! They're selling product photography packages that are pretty darn great, and we felt that they deserved to be on the other side of the lense for a change.

Pretty Personal with Riz & Resh of the Dollie House

Products shown:

Styled Product Shoot

Hello! Tell us a little about yourself.
The Dollie House is the home to Riz and Resh Dollie. We're both simple beings who find great pleasure in food and greenery (not the bushy kind you're thinking of).

Resh is a quiet individual with a vision of living clean and building a sustainable existence for his family. He is the eldest of five brothers and is an avid yogi with an honours in Anthropology. He is also the prettier member of The Dollie House.

Riz has a great passion for people and Instagramming meals. Riz has worked in every sphere of media and has been messing around with cameras for over ten years. Riz's students gave her a pet name; B.B.D. (we will leave this open to your interpretation).

We both travel as often as possible and feel as that it's an essential part of the growth of a person.
How/why did the Dollie House?
The Dollie House was the love child born from our shared passion for visual pleasure. We both hail from art backgrounds and chose to focus on the anthropology of people and their memories. We're both fascinated by human behaviour and observation, and photography was a good way for us to express what we saw and experienced through sharing brief passionate moments of peoples' lives.
What do you love?
We both thrive in any natural environment and have a keen affinity to aesthetics of the visual kind. We love pretty things, appreciating good food and reading as often as possible

Riz loves talking and Resh enjoys silent conversations. Resh loves cooking and Riz loves eating. We love constant change, hence the choice to grow The Dollie House.
Can you tell us about the wonderful things the Dollie House makes/does?
We offer a range of lifestyle photography packages and visual styling for shoots and interiors. Riz focuses on events, family, portrait, maternity and wedding photography. Resh thrives in making things pleasurable for the eye and desirable for the soul; he spends his time styling shoots and visually merchandising store windows.
Tell us something unusual about you/your trade/etc that people generally don't know.
We shoot weddings most weekends and because we're so passionate about our jobs, we often become family confidants for the day. After a few hours with a client's family, we often feel like we're a part of the family. People always feel the need to share their family histories with you.

We both love visual storytelling, and voluntary information usually helps strengthen the visual depth of the photographs.

Pretty Personal with Riz & Resh of the Dollie House

These beautiful shots by Ronél Kruger Photography.

Our girl boss in Cosmo

So y'all, our bosslady Sam was in Cosmo this month! (She doesn't know about this blog post, because she's mad shy about having her face all over the place. Too bad for her, because I quite like her face.)

It was for the Awesome Women feature, ahbviously, because she's awesome. And as though that wasn't awesome enough (so much of awesome going on here), she got to go have an actual photo shoot. I felt it was my duty to tag along and get under everyone's feet so you could all see behind the scenes footage. Don't say I never did anything for you guys.

And guys, there was so much make up. And so many shoes. It was the best, and I wanted to keep everything. As you can see, Sam was never far from her laptop, so if you ever needed proof that the woman doesn't stop working to make your Hello Pretty experience better, you've got it. (So don't say SHE never gave you anything!)

After hair and make up came the most fun part: dress up!

That sparkly skirt is by KLûK CGDT, and still haunts my dreams. Want. So much.

While we waited we got to hang out with some of the other ladies in the feature, and dayum, Cosmo is right - they're awesome. (Feel free to kick my in the shins if I say awesome one more time. It's totes cool, you wouldn't even see the bruise in amongst the others.)

And then all of a sudden she was a schmodel! (I won't lie, it looks hard. I wouldn't be able to put aside my immense awkwardness.)

Nice hey? Best part is, those lols are real - and I'm pretty certain they were over something I was doing:

So ja, like, go buy a Cosmo man. Not only does the December issue have Sam in it, it also has Taylor Swift and pugs in it, which basically makes it the best Cosmo of all time.

Team HP hearts you bosslady - you're the bomb diggity.

In the studio with Smith Jewellery

I was recently lucky enough to spend some time with the lovely Anna of Smith Jewellery, and got to have a good ol' snoop around her office and studio - guys. So. Many. Shiny. Things.

It's obviously all absolutely gorgeous - I darted from pretty thing to pretty thing like a kid on a sugar high in a Reggies. (There was one hairy moment where I backed into something glass, and the seconds that it took to settle again were of the longest in my life.)

I asked a bajillion questions, and Anna was completely lovely and super informative - we've saved some of the juicy bits for you below:

Can you describe a normal day at the office?

I always start the day with a coffee, then I sit at my desk and go through my emails from the evening before. I then set my to-do list. By noon, I inevitably have some kind of errand to run. But I come back in time to have lunch with my assistant, where we chat about our lives and deal with any work issues that may arise. After lunch, I sit behind the bench working with Anine. Unfortunately, most of my day is spent doing admin versus actual benchwork.

What inspires your work?

Everything inspires my work. I am equally inspired by culture and nature, so I'm always on the look out for a new shape or design that I can bring into my work.

What's a normal design/production process for one of your one of a kind pieces (Like my dream floral hair clip, or the awesome hummingbird cufflinks you were busy sculpting from wax the day I was there)

So in both cases these were commissions. The hair comb I designed for my own wedding, which took place in one of Cape Town's greenbelts, so it was a natural step to create something inspired by plants. The customer who wanted the cufflinks had seen my other ones and asked me to make a pair or bee eater cufflinks specifically for her. I am just really trying to create a wax model as close to the bird as possible.

Is there anything specific that you do that you especially love doing/making/designing? - what is it about your job that you feel most passionate about?

My favourite piece of jewellery to wear are earrings, so I naturally start designing a range/collection from there and design around it. I like the shapes or design to find their own purpose, so I play a lot with orientation and scale when creating the rest of the range.

Any tips for potential clients that you wish everyone knew?

Yes, the design and manufacturing process takes time. When asking for a commission, it's always best to have at least a months lead time. Sometimes parts of the process have to be outsourced, which means being subject to someone else's time frame. Also, the more concrete your idea of what you want, the quicker things can happen. Having said this, I've also been known to finish a custom piece within a couple of days, so it really does depend on the design.

Nice hey? So nice. So you should DEFINITELY visit her Hello Pretty store. Because, you know, Christmas and stuff. *bats eyelashes*

Win with Heart Jewelry Creations! - CLOSED

Win with Heart Jewelry Creations and Hello Pretty!

Hey hey hey, just think while you've been getting down and out about the liars and the dirty dirty cheats of the world, we've been working hard to put a smile on your face - we're kicking of this week and December with an awesome giveaway!

Heart Jewelry Creations is giving away a R500 voucher to spend in their Hello Pretty store! A whole five hundred bucks, to spend on anything you like - if that doesn't make you feel like dancing on your own, making moves up as you go, I don't know what will.

To enter:

Leave a comment here, telling us what your favourite Heart Jewelry Creations item is.
Like Heart Jewelry Creations on Facebook.
Get an extra entry by tweeting @HelloPrettySA and letting us know in the comments below.

Take that Monday.

Good luck Pretties!

Entries close at 10am on Friday 5th December. Hello Pretty's standard competition Ts and Cs apply. Note that only one extra entry per channel will be counted.

Beat the heat with Hello Pretty!

Summer is pretty much here, and we find ourselves pining away for sun, sand and cocktails! But don't worry, we'll keep squirreling away to make sure you are all beach ready:

Think of us while you're out there looking fabulous!

Special Star

Catch a falling star and put it not in your pocket, but on a very lucky finger. This beautiful ring from HelenSilverSmit is upcycled by hand from a vintage 1925 silver coffee spoon. Given the nature of upcycled items, it's obviously one of a kind, so we'd suggest you snap it up here before someone else does!

We featured this item in our newsletter this week, along with a curated collection of our favourite items with a star motif. There's a new theme every week, so if you'd like to be kept in the loop, sign up below!

Win with A Thousand Paper Cranes and Hello Pretty

You guys have been asking for this for a while - and here it is. Another awesome thing for you to win, and this time there are cats involved which makes it doubly cool.

Meet the newest member of the A Thousand Paper Cranes family:

He (or she?) has two coats that he wears - a pink one and a black one - but no name. Shame.

A Thousand Paper Cranes is giving away one of her cat cushions this week, and it could be to you! Here's how you can enter:

Like Hello Pretty and A Thousand Paper Cranes on Facebook
Leave a comment on this post telling us what this cat's name is!
Get an extra entry by tweeting @HelloPrettySA and letting us know in the comments below.