Creating a Glass with Lolita

My AMAZING friend Valerie Menzel sat down with me to talk about my design process for my glasses, and I thought I’d share it with you all as well!

First, inspiration... My largest inspiration is nature, but the main inspiration for my brand is people. Their celebrations, “big little moments”, personalities and mood. That’s why my brand creates new designs year after year! Because there’s never an end to how people feel, their celebrations and variety of moods. There’s always something new to celebrate! Of course, I do get inspiration from you all too. Some of my best glasses have started with suggestions from you!

The second thing I do is begin with a plain pencil sketch. Every glass starts as a simple sketch, we don’t want to add colour until we’re sure we’re happy with the design.

My Queen Bee Stemless Glass for example, I liked the idea of a bee on a glass – I thought it was kinda’ cute! That’s when I started to see bees all over the place out in nature, so I made little flight patterns and began to design it as if it was a unique piece of jewellery. Once my sketch is done, I can begin to add colour! I like to keep my colours simple – but sometimes it’s just impossible. For my Queen Bee Stemless Glass , I went with frosted white, black and gold. Despite such a simple colour palette, it’s such a pretty glass! I don’t think it’s missing a thing.

Another place I get inspiration for my artwork from is fashion! I used to work in the fashion industry many years ago, and the beautiful looks year after year still inspire me. I LOVE getting my hands on a freshly printed fashion magazine to see what colour palettes are trending. Even textures like tweed can be an inspiration!

Sometimes the designs for glasses can become more than just one glass! When it comes to my Recipient line of glasses, I knew I wanted to honour all the amazing people who mean so much to us in our lives. Mums, Aunts, Sisters, Nurses, Teachers – these are all such meaningful people! I had the idea to do something floral, but it took me a bit to finally get hit with the perfect idea – a flowerpot! So, each recipient glass is decorated with a cute little flowerpot and flowers.

Fun fact: sometimes I use the same pantones as my brand! They blend so nicely which helps to create a unique and colourful glass.

I hope you enjoyed sitting down with me and Valerie to go over my process. Cheers to following our dreams!!!