Last year we had the best time on Hayling Island photographing our products and today it was déjà vu!

Once again, March delivered and we headed down to the water. We love coming up with new things and took our latest editions to the beach today.

The misty morning cleared up just as we paid for our parking and jackets were quickly discarded - we were in for a treat. With help from our friends Q and Winnie - the photoshoot soon got going.

Our newest products are three beautiful cotton Tea Towels printed in Cornwall. The crisp white background takes our watercolour artwork beautifully and when ironed - as of course we did for the photos - almost look as if they are paper prints. We have three super designs, Ocean Collection, One in a Million and Sea Turtles and wanted to show them off to their best, but soft cotton can be difficult to bring to life in a photo - that is unless you have an amazing sun-bleached and ocean washed breakwater!

With the wind barely a breeze we draped our new Tea Towels on the wall and, with a kind offer of a quick photograph from Q, managed to capture them in all of their glory, while Winnie ran around finding driftwood, but looking very cute.

Thankfully, the playful twin labradors who decided to crash our shoot, steered clear of the table which had our beautiful Really Large Bone China mugs on and one of our shell filled Hurricane lamps. Otherwise we would still be there picking up the pieces.

We’ve also taken elements of our blue watercolour prints and made them into Giant, signed designs. Our Narwhal, Nautilus and Blue Lobster can now be purchased in large frames (53cmx53cm) and we think they look great.

So, all in all, it was a successful day and we look forward to next March or even sooner for our next photoshoot on the Coast. We really enjoy bringing new products to Oyster Moon and hope you enjoy them and seeing our photos.

Gina & Michele - Oyster Moon with our new Tea Towels

We’ve been drawing and painting for a long time and the most wonderful thing about art is that you learn something new every day. It always amazes us how each medium brings with it its own level of difficulty, pleasure and pure ‘tear your hair out’ moments!

Probably one of the most important lessons we have learned recently, is to leave some things to the experts. Oyster Moon is growing and our beautiful designs will soon be on 100% cotton tea towels and bone china mugs. Both of those things we have used all of our lives, but never designed or made. So after much searching we’ve found two great British companies to make them for us.

Todays lesson: When you decide to put your designs onto different products, nothing is easy. Take our new mug design. We had grand thoughts of putting our Ocean designs onto a plump, round, cradle in two hands, china mug, something to drink from while sitting in front of a warm fire. In theory it all sounds wonderful and there are some amazing mugs out there. But it turns out that if you take something like a Seahorse or a Whale and want to put it onto a curvy mug - things soon go pear shaped! Our flat, watercolour Seahorse design didn’t like being wrapped around in two different directions onto a bulbous mug and the Whale rebelled.

So after much deliberation with experts, we decided to leave the plump mug for a bit and instead we’ve gone completely in the other direction with a giant, white, bone china mug, with straight sides. The crisp clean lines take our watercolour Seahorse, Whale and Sea Turtles perfectly. The generous size of the mug feels at home either sitting on a dresser in a coastal cottage, hanging on a hook in a beach hut or on a mug rack in a city kitchen.

A drink of tea or a latte tastes beautiful from the bone china and if you love hot chocolate (who doesn’t), there’s plenty of room for whip cream and marshmallows! You are welcome.

The tea towel was a little easier, but getting our designs onto fabric and on a much larger scale also took some planning. We tried making our whales small and putting hundreds on one pattern, but it just didn’t look like us! So our new design gives you our Ocean collection on one tea towel, with our Whale Shark, Narwhal and many more designs all big, bold and beautiful and in fabulous detail.

In putting our new products together, we’ve found some great companies and very clever people in the UK and look forward to working with them.

Over the last few years, Oyster Moon has taken on a certain look, driven by our love of the sea and everything coastal. Our look isn’t fussy, it’s clean lines and beautiful blues and we feel going forward our products reflect just that.

Our cotton tea towel and Really Large bone china mugs will be available early in the new year and we hope you enjoy them and they bring a smile to your day.

A sneak peek at our Really Large Mugs and 100% cotton Tea Towels.