Bread & Weather
This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to illustrate and design the candle care cards for one of my favourite local soap and candle brands; Bread & Weather. All the products sold at Bread & Weather are handmade, with great love, in small batches in two converted stables in a little barn in Co. Wicklow. I have been a fan of Ella's soaps and candles for a while now and regularly purchase them. Working with a brand that I care about so much was incredibly special. A lot of thought and care went into the design of these cards and we hope you like them as much as we do.
I was also lucky enough to visit Ella's barn and took a few photos of her calm and beautiful studio space (which, by the way, smells like heaven!). We had tea and spoke about life, her journey into candle making and our love for the nature here in Wicklow. I also learned a lot about the ingredients used to make the Bread & Weather candles during our chats and the design process of this project. All of the candles are made using soy wax (not paraffin wax). As well as being naturally plant based, soy wax also burns slowly and cleanly making beautiful, long lasting candles. The candles are hand poured into beautiful 180ml amber glass containers with gold lids to preserve the scent. All the candles are 100% vegan and plastic free. You can read more about the making of these candles and the soaps here. You can also read more about how Ella sources her ingredients locally and supports bees, biodiversity and Irish wildlife throughout the making process of her candles and soaps here.
“Because I trained and worked as a cook for over ten years, thinking about where my ingredients come from and who grows them is thoroughly baked in to me.”
The making of the Bread & Weather candle care cards
The design considerations:
Develop an illustrated folding card inspired by the calm and beauty of the Bread and Weather barn.
Embrace colours that reflect the product, ingredients and natural environment.
We explored two different visual directions:
Rough Sketch 1
A landscape story-telling scene that showcases the natural ingredients and the barn.
Rough Sketch 2
An illustration and folded card style that brings to life the magic of the Bread & Weather barn in a more symbolic way. The ingredients are used as a pattern shaped around the barn. The inside of the card represents the studio garden.
Colour palette and final format
Usually, I go through a lot of colour tests when illustrating new projects, but for these cards it felt like ‘coming home’ from a colour selection perspective. The soap colours heavily inspired the base hues of the cards (which is also some of my favourite earthy shades to work with). Soft pinks, deep greens, warm yellows and muddy reds were incorporated into the final design to brighten the overall natural tones. The outside of the card showcases the ingredients of the products, while the inside of the card invites you to the barn and garden. In the end, we also decided to use a square shaped card (it allowed for a bit more flexibility in the design of the word placement).
