New exclusive fabric collection // Brick and mortar pre-opening // Makerskwartier Den Haag

For some of you this might not come as big news, we have been posting some of our renovations and process on our Instagram and Facebook already but it is in fact pretty good news. Behind the scenes we have been working hard to move the studio to our super fine brand new location in the old heart of The hague. And we have been working on setting up our own production for the past few months.

Located in the old heart of The hague we are joining forces with other creative makers and creators in our street. We became part of the new Makerskwartier in the Boekhorststraat and old shopping street that needed a proper lift. The past year this area has been under the microscope to turn it into a new area for creative peeps to sell their handmade and up cycled items.



Makerskwartier
One of the first shops relocating in this street was Loft and Sound, run by our super cool (seriously be aware of his awesomeness!) neighbor Ard Regenboog. In his shop he sells the most beautiful vintage pieces: restored lamps, old industrial furniture and he is always polite enough to offer his customers a proper coffee.

Next to Loft and Sound you can find the small workspace Cecile, who makes leather handbags and accessories. Pop in and see how she creates these wonderful pieces.
Accross the street you can find Studio Joske, she is currently renovating her space but it is turning in to something mighty fine. She knows how to work her tools. She creates the most gorgeous pieces of furniture. Chairs, tables, pillows, all with her very own unique colorful style. Of you love color to enter your home, pop in!

Two doors down there is another very colorful shop that is part of our Makers. Liries Conceptstore run by Richelle has some bright and colorful paintings and other pieces of art, interior items and vintage. I love Richelles style, she mixes color with current themes and mixes different techniques creating stories with her artwork. This concept store is a mix of her personal work and some whimsical pieces made by others.

Pre-opening
At the end of the street you can find our brand new shop. We relocated last month and our space is divided into a shop and work space area. Since our pre-opening we have been welcoming lot’s of people into our tiny shop. I never expected it to be so much fun. We are not ready and working full swing yet, and we will still need to have the grand opening but we planned on opening the shop to clear out all of our samples and do a little testrun first, clearly we are pretty much doing this for the first time so yes, setting up an entire production and brick and mortar shop takes a whole lot of time, patience and effort. The shop has been pre-open for a month now and I never expected to get so many awesome customers in there, giving us the sweetest compliments and some very useful feedback.

We now sell our sample fabric, designs we ordered at our GOTS certifies producers the past few months. We have some fun boy prints, designs for girls and some cool gender neutrals and abstracts if you would also like to create something a little less kiddie-like. We are working hard to find the perfect match for our first collection. Hopefully within two months we can stock up and our shop both brick and mortar and online will be up and running by then. While we are already working in our new space we are also setting up our own production. This spring we will launch our very own exclusive range of designs that will only be available via our official Little Smilemakers Shop channels. But we are definitely not ready yet. We are waiting for our fabric, working on our visual communication and so much more. You’ll be the first to know once we have ur new collection available. Stay tuned!



Workshops & Sewing classes
My new business partner Anouck has been working her ass off (she pretty much forgets all about her lunch most of the time) on some sample pieces for our fashion collection. With her sewing skills she has proven to be a real sewing magician. We now have some new born fashion accessories, home decoration such as pillows and blankets, and of course a small collection of new born baby, toddler and kids clothes. If you visit our shop you can now handpick your fave fabric & product and Anouck can turn it into something custom made for you or your little one. But you can also attend one of her weekly sewing classes on Tuesdays. You can just join the class, sign up via Facebook or email and create your own Little Smilemakers pieces. Anouck has also planned some workshops on Sundays you can join her and make something from scratch and finish the same day. Usually she works around a theme; make a baby romper, or harem pants. You’ll be working on the same project with 5 other people and go home with a finished item at the end of the workshop. You can find more info on her Facebook page, check it out and sign up!

For now Little Smilemakers Shop is open from thursdays to saturdays 12:00 / 17:00 - Boekhorststraat 191 Den Haag - Netherlands

Announcement for Shutterstock buyers // License designs // Contact our studio directly

Some of you have noticed already: We are no longer licensing our designs via Shutterstock. Due to a crazy sh*tload of misuse, and no proper sollution to prevent this in the future, we decided our designs were not getting protected as they should and we decided to delete our collection. We are very sorry for all you buyers it had to come this far since we worked with Shutterstock for almost 10 years, but things got.... unworkable.

We have removed our all our designs and we are working on a new library of non-exclusive artwork. You can now only license our designs by contacting us directly. If you would like to receive a link to view our online portfolio just send us an email and we are happy to send you a link to our work. We are still in the process of adding all designs to this library, not our entire collection has been uploaded yet but we are working on it! It will take a little while before all 5000+ designs are all up, processed and tagged. Please have some patience!

Legal Matters // License information Little Smilemakers Studio fabric & designs

We are honored that so many companies would like to have Little Smilemakers designs in there shop. We have licensed our designs all over the world. However, there are lots of companies not having the proper license to sell our work and it is starting to be a full time task to investigate and monitoring these matters.

Licensing art for your business
We have been licensing our designs both exclusive and non-exclusively. If you are selling fabric and would like to add our designs to the shop contact us directly. We opt out the enhanced license through Shutterstock since there is too much mis-use. If you would like to start selling our prints just contact our studio directly and we will be happy to guide you through the licensing process.

Legal steps
For all of you selling without a license you can still reach out to us and purchase a license up till May 1th. As of next month we will be taking legal steps toward companies who are selling our designs illegally. If you stumble upon our designs and if you are unsure the fabric is legit just contact us and we can help you further.

License & Spoonflower
And if you are selling our designs with Spoonflower fabric: no worries! Royalties are included in the price so you don't need an extra license to sell your products with our prints on them. Spoonflower has a great royalty structure, you might pay a little more but artist benefit from each and every purchase directly. We love to see all those finished products and would like to thank our Spoonflower customers for their support. You make our work pretty damn awesome!

If you want to make sure to buy original designs check if your reseller is registered on our client list on the Little Smilemakers Studio website. If you purchase through one of our customers you are allowed to use the fabrics for small businesses and other commercial use.

Announcement for our Shutterstock customers // Enhanced Commercial license only available directly

Almost 10 years ago I joined Shutterstock as a contributor. Starting out with a few abstract and urban photographs and textures but soon changed into uploading vectors: illustrations and pattern designs only. A lot has changed in print. Things have gotten more digital and the demand for designs for commercial purpose grew.

Our Shutterstock portfolio has been a great way to showcase our designs and we still upload some artwork every now and then. It has been a great way to built up a steady business, generate a base income and exposure.

The past year a lot of things have changed in the enhanced license agreement. Our designs are usually made from vector. So it is easy for customers to edit and change colors and adjust the prints to use them for their products. Which we love. But it also means it is easy to download the files without the right license and have a high quality file without paying the proper fee. Unfortunately that happened a lot.

Misuse of designs
As our business and also online vector portfolio has grown bigger we noticed an increase in misuse of our designs and since we have to protect our creations we decided that from April 1st we stop selling enhanced licenses over Shutterstock, at least for now. It does not mean our designs are no longer available, we just would like to do direct business when it comes to licensing our designs for commercial use, so we know every print we find out there is licensed in a legit way.

After some consideration we decided to opt out our enhanced license downloads via Shutterstock. But our entire portfolio is still available for commercial usage too. Just contact our studio directly and we will help you further.

Newbee in licensing?
If you are new in licensing designs we are also happy to give you more info about our standard and commercial licenses. We also have in-house expertise to guide your business through the process of production, can adjust colors, scales and detailing and of course with our 10 year experience we are on top of the trends. So don't hesitate and send us a message.

Christmas is on it's way // new seasonal prints & fabric

Christmas. It is on it's way. Decorations are already up in New York and when it's up in New York Christmas is on it's way. During the summer we have been working on new winter and christmas themes for surface pattern design, postcard designs and of course a great chunk of the new seasonal prints is also available on fabric now.

For me personally Christmas always has been a bit of a dreadful experience. With family clashes, angry grannies and weird presents I was always happy to return to school after two weeks of family awkwardness. Now that I am older I tend to flee the country around the holidays. But I love the seasonal vibe and decorations. I am always happy to work on new Christmas themes and the romance of the tale. Designing new prints with fun winter themes and Christmas icons. No, I adore making new seasonal work. Hope you enjoy the new christmas designs too.



Of course you can also do some Little Smilemakers Christmas shopping for your friends and family. Have you seen the new prints available via Daily Objects? I have been working with this company for a year now and there are over more than 200 cases available. They company sells iphone cases for also cases for Samsung, HTC, Nexus, just name it. Take a look and see for yourself.

> New Fabric available via Spoonflower | New fabric for boys and girls

We have been working on some new exclusive designs but we also have been adding new designs to our Little Smilemakers fabric shop at Spoonflower. More than 60 designs for both boy and girls are added to the rapidly growing fabric shop. Some new boy themes: vikings, fish and contruction workers. But also some dreamy designs for girls with fairy tale themes and one awesome little Jasmine print.

If you are looking for some kids fabric please visit our one and only webshop. Not the theme you were looking for? Just let us know! We will be happy to add new themes, maybe yours will be the next new design.

> A little note about licensing & using pattern designs from stock | Buying from stock or directly via Little Smilemakers Studio

A little note for all of you that are thinking about using Little Smilemakers designs from Shutterstock. PLEASE READ the license agreement on the Shutterstock website and make sure you know what the restrictions for using our work on commercial projects. Make sure you have the right license! Even if you download an enhanced licensed design, still there are some restrictions on how to use the artwork.

If you have any questions about how to use Little Smilemakers designs for your product feel free to contact me before downloading.

> New fabric for Robert Kaufman | New Russian Doll print for Jo-Ann Fabrics

One of the best selling themes on fabric is the Russian Doll. Robert Kaufman has produced this little piece for Jo-Ann Fabrics. This design is one out of three designs that are included in their Novelty prints collection. The apple and pear designs are already up for sale. For this one, have patience. Just a little wait. Half way May this Svetlana's Forest design will be available too.

If you are looking for other colorful designs on fabric, please visit the Little Smilemakers Studio official fabric shop at Spoonflower. 60 designs are added to the shop this past month and even more designs are waiting to be uploaded. You can find new kids themes, boys fabric and cute dreamy fabric for girls. But also some hipster themes and quirky vintage style patterns. Have fun!

> Little Smilemakers Studio | New exclusive licensing available for fabric

Little Smilemakers Studio has been working for many fabric companies all over the world. Mostly non-exclusive images are purchased to be produced on textile. Several fabric companies have contacted the Studio for exclusive designs. It was about time to expand our portfolio with some exclusive work. We are now working on a variety of exclusive artwork for our fabric clients. Hopefully we will be able to show some awesome new stuff just before Surtex, which is held in new York next month. If you are looking for a commercial license or license for fabric, please contact us. You can take a look at our current designs that are available with exclusive license on our Little Smilemakers Studio website.

> Gezond is vet | happy food themes for fabric

After attending a conference about the health of our kids in The Hague I was inspired to make some new food themes. New happy fruit, veggies and cupcakes. License available for fabric.

Online Little Smilemakers patterns and illustrations | Check out the entire portfolio on Shutterstock | Standard & Enhanced License

Via social media and e-mail people keep asking me; "where can I purchase your patterns and illustrations?" Well, after replying to several people this week i thought maybe let's just do another blogpost.

For several years i am working on my online portfolio at Shutterstock. One of the world's largest stock agencies. Next to my exclusive designing i upload stock images, these are for sale with standard or enhanced license. If you would like to purchase a design and use it for commercial purpose you will need to purchase the enhanced license. Check out all info about commercial use before downloading. If you have any questions about what license would be suitable for your product check the Q&A or contact customer support.

Check all Little Smilemakers Studio patterns & illustrations here: http://shutterstock.com/g/designalicious