Uppymama Novafae

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”– Eden Phillpotts

The Uppymama design team has been busy working on the details of our recent custom design wrap auction. We have really been looking forward to sharing our custom designing process with you. Let’s start with a little preface from the customer who has commissioned this wrap.

“All my life I have been enchanted by the stories of faeries and magical woodland folk.

I have always read every book about faeries I could get my hands on. I spent my childhood drawing pictures of faerie folk and imagining their magical world all around us. As my own children grow I love the idea of maintaining their imaginations, enchantment and sense of wonder for as long as possible.

When I became pregnant with my first baby I named my little growing passenger Novafae or ‘New Faerie’. Each of my pregnancies I have always had this special secret name for my growing babies. I have dreamed of designing my custom Uppymama wrap since I was pregnant with my first baby and I know I would name it Novafae after my magical faerie babies.

Working with the Uppymama design team to create a wrap that represents the magical colours of the faerie world has been such a dream. It was so much fun to see all the steps of the design process. It was also thrilling to be able to make suggestions and to be able to see my ideas appear in the renderings. I am so excited to see my wrap come to life. Knowing that I will be wrapping my newest baby in this magical wrap makes my current pregnancy feel even more exciting.

When Uppymama asked me how many meters of this wrap I would like woven, I loved the idea of other families carrying their enchanted babies in Novafae. I asked Uppymama if they could make some semi-custom spots available for my babywearing friends and family as well as others who love this design.”

We love this design. We love the idea of creating a magical, enchanted childhood for as long as our children will believe in faeries.

It has been truly delightful working on this custom design wrap.

We had a vision and direction for this wrap as soon as we first connected with our custom design winner to start talking about her ideas for this wrap.

She described her vision of a pinstriped wrap that would represent a midnight faerie garden with bright moonlight and lights from glowing faeries. She envisioned pops of colour where the faerie lights would shimmer on flowers, leaves and pools of water. Her narrative was so rich and captivating that we were eager to dive right into the design process.

It was important to us all that this wrap could capture the details of this inspiration while also being a sophisticated and balanced textile. We are very excited to be able to share our design process with you so you can see step by step how our Uppymama wraps move from an idea through to finished wraps.

This was the first draft, just to be sure we were on the right track before we got down to details:

We began to add contrasting pins from the colours left on our palate, starting with the greens:

Then working in some orange pins:

More orange!

Here we are pinning the pinks into the blues:

Flipping back and forth between colour and black and white as we go is important. It helps us determine the light balance and make sure that the tones are popping where we want:

We needed to achieve a better balance between light and dark, so we pulled the raspberry farther into the wrap, and the lilac and periwinkle into the raspberry:

…here is just a bit more lightening up with some more of the pinks pulled all the way into the raspberry:

…now balancing the pinks with the greens:

We debated adding another splash of colour, but decided it caused the wrap to look imbalanced.

So our solution to wanting a bit more colour was to incorporate all of the colours in the wrap into one ‘splash’ at the right side of the light pink section to highlight it:

 

Just a little more pink throughout and this wrap is a stunning romp through the faerie forests!

We are really thrilled to be able to offer semi-custom slots for Uppymama Novafae. We love working with parents to design the wraps they will carry their babies in.

Customers who purchase a semi-custom spot will be able to choose options such as weft colour and fiber, wrap length and embellishments such as blessing threads and pinstripes for their own wrap. Head over to the Uppymama Novafae draw post to see renderings of our suggested weft colours for this lovely wrap.

“In the forests with sprites, you may find the hollowed-out acorns they use as cups, dandelion-tuft mattress, and hats made from folded leaves.” ~Tony Diterlizzi and Holly Black