A Little Hat Friend is a gift shop for everyone and anyone at all, with a range of weird and wonderful, high quality, design-focused products.
Nothing characterises A Little Hat Friend better than the greetings cards I design and sell. They’re as strange and delightful as I want them to be and it warms my heart and turns my cheeks all pink to see what an exquisite response they’ve drawn so far.
Though I stock some of the best-of-the-best in terms of brands and individual items (in my opinion, though my opinion is pure gold because I’m a long-term connoisseur of gift giving), the greetings cards still receive the most praise. I’m grateful and flabbergasted by the support and it makes me believe that there are a whole assortment of people out there who would also enjoy my odd drawings and joyfully unsettling artistry.
I’m hoping to get the word out about my shop and it seems no better time to do it than in preparation for A Little Hat Friend’s first ever pop up shop! Hosted at Red Door Alchemist Gallery in Rye between February 2 and 14, I’ll have just two weeks to grace the general public with my absurd and nifty gifts and greetings cards in a physical location.
I hope seeing the cards in person makes your heart skip a beat, but more importantly I hope you buy lots and lots and lots of things because starting a business is terrifyingly expensive.
Though I’d love to be a cool and ruthless businessperson, I must admit that the main aim for starting A Little Hat Friend was not money, fame, or power. I created A Little Hat Friend because I was untethered without it.
Almost 10 years ago, I became very unwell. This has informed the path my life has taken since I was just 14 years old.
Throughout my GCSEs, arguably the hardest time I spent being ill, I would sit with friends at the library while they revised, and doodle weird and wacky fellows on sticky labels. They’d make my friend Katherine laugh so I kept doing them.
That same minuscule sense of productivity, joy, and innate humanity I felt from doing something creative with what little energy I had and having someone smile in response to it (during GCSE biology revision of all things) has been magnified a hundred times since sharing my card designs to a wider audience.
I adore making people chuckle, I truly do. And giving gifts is a massive part of how I show my love. Owning a nifty gift shop was simply the only logical solution for employment. Plus I’m very afraid of lots of things and terrible at hand to hand combat, so I could never work a traditional job.
There are three main fears that have followed me over the last decade: losing my independence; losing my sense of humour; and never being able to support myself financially, let alone doing something I was fulfilled by or found any joy in.
Since starting A Little Hat Friend, it has given me hope beyond measure, and I dare say is allowing me to take baby steps to prove all my fears wrong. I’m honoured to have the opportunity to be on track to do this, and it wouldn’t be possible without the sheer joy friends, family, and sweet strangers have brought me by supporting A Little Hat Friend.
Thank you.
Image Credits: Emily Percival .