September Bows and the Designing Process

Hi!

I am so excited to be starting this blog for Chic Pipsqueak.  I used to be a health and mommy blogger back in the day and came to have some pretty amazing opportunities that came along with it.  I tried keeping up with blogging after I had two kids but found I just didn't have the time.  Over the years I have thought about starting up my blog again (maybe someday soon) and this is the perfect way for my to share my love of writing a little bit about myself and the brand I love, Chic Pipsqueak.

I am so excited that we are shipping September bows next week, but at the same time when I look back I have no idea where the last 8 months have gone. It scares me just a bit that I am already into planning January and February bows.  

With that being said I wanted to give you guys a little sneak peak into what goes into planning the monthly bows.  It is probably a lot more than most would guess.

I always start out with two things in mind when planning what bows will be for what month. I look at colors and textures.  Often times I write in my monthly bow notebook about what images evoke in my mind when I think of the month I am planning.  I like to visualize my childhood and memories usually start flooding back to me.  I think of the season, how my parent's house was decorated, favorite outfits of my past, smells from both outside the house and inside and see what emotions start flooding in.  Then I start visualizing the bows.  Like I mentioned above I always keep colors and textures in the forefront.

I usually pull out swatches and fabric color charts and start clipping the fabrics and taping them into my notebook.  I am also always lookign over Pantone's Fall/Winter/Spring/Summer/Year colors.  Over the next few weeks I visit my notebook almost daily and add in more fabrics and colors I like or un-tape them and take out what I don't think fits.  

I also send too many texts to count to my CP girls as we go over all the bow ideas keeping in mind with past bows too.  From there we usually finalize the details of the monthly bow packs and then I start on the add on bows or collections we are releasing during the month.

With all that being said, I wanted September to have some nice textures so that is how the floral bow print was selected.  I loved that the fabric was thicker and had almost a corduroy texture but was thinner.  I loved the deep mauve color for September and loved the light weight almost chiffon texture (fun fact, I had this bow picked out for six months for September).  Then I knew I wanted an amazing fall textured fabric and have been wanting to do a gray forever.  When I felt the most amazingly soft suede fabric in the most gorgeous slate gray color I knew it was perfect for September (fun fact- I almost traded the slate gray bow and held off on it for October's pack but was too excited to get the bow into customer's hands to wait)!  Then the final bow for September is the gorgeous Fall Stripe.  It is one of my all time favorite bows as it has such beautiful fall colors and will look so good with so many outfits!  The off-white almost oatmeal background is the perfect neutral for the stripes.  

So there you have it, a tiny glimpse into the thought process and creation of how we decide on the monthly bows.  It's a long process but it is necessary as it gives me time to be thoughtful of each bow and the details that goes into planning every month.

xoxo, Kjirsten