Hi, my name is Harry and I am finishing a week’s work experience at Neil’s Studio. My commission was to design, make and blog 100 wedding favours. The wedding theme was liquorice allsorts. These favours are going to be collected by my client this afternoon and then used at her wedding in the summer. I was told to narrow down 10-15 initial ideas to three and then prototype and present them to my client on Tuesday evening. She chose her preferred favour and then was to return to the Studio in three days time to collect them. During that time, I had to make all hundred and blog about them.

I started off by spending three lots of 25 minute shifts researching what a favour was, what they looked like and I created a mood board on ideas and Liquorice themed favours. I then moved on to brainstorming and sketching different ideas out. Neil and I then evaluated them and discussed pros and cons. From there, I chose the three best ideas and furthered their developments by sketching. That was the end of day one.

The next day was the day of my client meeting. I had 6 hours to prepare and make prototypes. When my client arrived, I presented her the three ideas and discussed them with her. However, she instantly chose the last one before I had even spoke! It wasn’t a bad thing though as this was the one I desperately wanted her to choose. For the last hour of that night, I started cutting the bases for the favours.

I picked up where I left off on Wednesday and by 11 I had all hundred cut and ready. I then spent the rest of the day sticking sticky pads on the back of all the labels and colour strips, whilst socialising with Neil’s customers. I spent my whole day on Thursday sat at my chair sticking tape, labels and stickers onto the bases of my favours. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did but fatigue set in and the repetition resulted in me losing motivation. That set me back on track for I was ahead of schedule before. I also spent some time packaging the allsorts we purchased the day before.

Today, I changed my attitude towards the repetitive tasks I had to carry out. Partly because I was getting so close and partly because having a negative attitude towards it slowed me down dramatically. Today was about putting together the favours and blogging my progress. I spent three hours folding, sticking and placing sweets into all one hundred favours whilst adapting my method as I encountered many problems on the way. Neil and I changed the positioning of tape and the sweets many times and eventually found the perfect way to stop the favours falling over. We curved the base of each to add more support and also placed the tape underneath instead of the front on the bag of sweets. When all hundred were complete, I enjoyed a well deserved lunch break and then jumped straight into taking photos of my progress to post on this blog. All I need to do now is wait for my client to arrive.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my week at Neil’s Studio, I have learnt a lot about work life and how much longer work hours are compared to my measly six hours at school! I am very pleased I chose to do my work experience here as I feel very accomplished and proud of my progress.  I am ecstatic that I have completed a real world assignment – thank you Neil for agreeing to host me and setting up such a fab project! (And for all the liquorice allsorts.)

Thanks for reading!

Harry.