In a previous life...

My ceramics featured in Woman's Day

Last week, I was paging through the latest edition of Woman's Day, having a good look at the food styling on the recipe pages.  I opened up to this double page spread and thought "huh - that looks familiar...And so does that....Wait a minute..."

Woman's Day had styled up the food using 4 pieces from my range back when I was a ceramicist.

Here's a bit of the back story:

I once took a ceramics class, wanting to find out a bit more about how pottery was made and absolutely fell in love.  I started making some pieces, putting them online on my personal social media and started getting a few requests from family and friends.  It snowballed a bit and I found myself setting up a table at markets, starting an online store and getting more and more busy!  I had notched up a sizeable following on Instagram, was stocking quite a few retailers around the country but all the while struggling to maintain a work-life balance given the intense effort ceramics required.  I worked from my home studio, a wheel and had 2 kilns (in the hopes of keeping up with the demand).  The business was growing, but at a significant cost.

I had quit my full time job to focus solely on ceramics, starting work at 5am and finishing off well into the early morning hours, running myself ragged trying to fulfil the flood of orders coming in.  Magazines were featuring my pieces and the demand continued to grow.

My passion for it had started to wane because the hours I had to put in were killing me.

And then I fell pregnant with baby Alice and I knew then that something had to give.  We bought a bigger house to accommodate our growing family and I just felt that I had to choose between a growing business and my growing family.  If you've ever dabbled in ceramics, you'll know that it's incredibly labour intensive.  From prepping the clay, to forming it on the wheel, allowing in to dry just right (otherwise it starts to crack - making it a useless piece of pottery), throwing it in the kiln, painting and decorating it, glazing it, wiping off the glaze, firing it again and sanding down the bases to get ready to ship off takes a lot of time, effort, money and sweat.  It's not an easy gig.

So the business had to go.  And I was at peace with that decision because I knew it was the right one.  I sold off my equipment and the remaining stock I had on hand and moved into our new house to spend the next 4 months managing its renovation.  

During my time working with ceramics, I spent quite a lot of time doing product styling - putting images I'd taken of my product online and using it in press releases and editorials.  Friends with businesses took notice and asked for a bit of help with their own digital profiles.  

That's when Shout & Co. was born.  Admittedly, it had started long before it had begun but it's brought me to this point.

Although I've only been going since December 2017, I really feel grateful for all of the support and love you've sent my way - I appreciate each and every brand that sends me their beautiful product to photograph.  

If you'd like to chat about what I can do for you and your business, get in touch - I've love to meet you: info@shoutandco.com

Have you signed up for my newsletter yet?  You'll get a free copy of my Product Styling Handbook when you do!  It's full of great advice if you're on a tight budget but need to up your product photography game.  Find out more here.

Did you know that I also do Social Media Diagnostics: I can help you develop a kick-ass social media profile to get you noticed, to get you sales.  Find out more here.