Fox Tales: Meet Lucy from Different Day Studio
Trading as Different Day Studio, Lucy creates fun, playful and vibrant stationery, prints, cards and gifts all designed to make people smile. We caught up with Lucy to chat to her about festival trading, live tarot readings and, of course, Mr Blobby!
Hey Lucy! How long have you been running Different Day Studio and how did it all begin?
I set up Different Day Studio in 2024, with my friend Rachel, initially to design custom wedding stationery. We had both been working as gift wrap designers for a few years and spent a lot of time talking about how we wanted to have more creative control over the things we were making and how much we would love to have our own little business.
We then designed all the stationery for my wedding and it went so well that we decided to go for it and set up Different Day Studio. We soon realised that whilst we love creating unique wedding stationery for couples, we wanted to allow our creativity to expand further than that, and so we started working on a range of greetings cards and prints to set up a shop section on our website. In early 2025 Rachel moved on to new things and I decided to build on what we had started and create a much broader range of products which led me to start trading at markets and selling wholesale and online.
The name Different Day Studio came from the idea that myself and Rachel spent a long time thinking and dreaming about the little business we could make and feeling like it might never happen - we would often start conversations with ‘how are you?’... ‘same shit, different day.’ and so when we finally decided to stop talking and start doing, we thought it was like dropping the ‘same shit’ and leaning into the ‘different day’.
We’re excited to see you at We Out Here Festival again this August! Do you find trading at a festival very different to the usual markets you do?
We Out Here was actually my first market! I had created a range of products I was really proud of and I thought why not just go for it? I had been to We Out Here the year before and seen the Crafty Fox tent and thought this is exactly where I want to be and what I want to be doing, so it was really exciting and validating to be accepted when I applied. It was the absolute best way for me to launch all the new things I had been working on and it meant I hit the ground running with market trading.
I’ve done lots of great markets since WOH but it is still my firm favourite. I think festival goers really want that celebratory, fun atmosphere to extend to all parts of the festival experience, including shopping, and I absolutely love to chat (especially about music!) so it's really perfect for me. Being a big music fan also makes the festival trading extra special – its such a great bonus to be able to trade all day and see amazing musicians in the evenings.
My highlights from WOH last year were working alongside such a lovely, friendly group of fellow traders and the Crafty Fox team, launching my instant tarot stand and seeing how many people had such a fun time getting their tarot reading, hearing Loyle Carner’s sound check as I was setting up my stand, chatting about printmaking with lovely customers and amazing food at lunch times!
As well as selling off-the-shelf products, you also produce custom wedding stationery - what’s the most unique request you’ve ever got from a couple and what do you love most about producing work for such special events?
Probably the most unique was some clocking-in card invitations for a couple who were getting married in an old textile mill. The mill still had the old clocking in card holders by the entrance and the couple really liked the idea of having all the guests bring their invitations to ‘clock in’ to the wedding. All the wedding details were laid out in the style of an old card and I even left a space for the couple to assign a job to each of the wedding guests.
I love paper ephemera, keepsakes, collecting special things and I am very sentimental as a person so I love the idea that I am getting to create things that people will keep as a memory forever and is a physical item that will take them back to that important event. I also think it is so magical to receive beautiful and personalised things in the post as it's so rare nowadays, so I love being able to create that experience for the invited guests as well as the people hosting the event.
Tell us about one of your best-selling products and perhaps one that you personally love that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.
My best selling product is definitely my instant tarot reading prints, I currently only sell these at markets (they are not available in my online shop). I have created a print for each of the 22 major arcana tarot cards and for markets I lay these out in envelopes – the idea is for the customer to pick a card at random (as they would with a real reading) and then they get to take away the print of the card which on the back has a mini reading, a set of self reflection questions, a mantra and a song suggestion that goes with the theme of the card. I reset the tarot spread after each customer so there is always one each of the 22 cards on the table, ready to be chosen.
A product I love that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves is my Shell Screenprints - these are one of my favourite prints that I have created and I loved experimenting with different colour combinations when I was screen printing them - I think with the nature of screen printing it often means you can create lots of versions of the same image in terms of colour and texture so I think perhaps I made it too hard for people to choose one!
Is there anything you learnt while working as a giftware designer for Lush Cosmetics that you’ve taken into Different Day Studio?
I learnt so much whilst working at Lush - probably more than when studying for my illustration degrees! Working as a commercial designer in a fast paced environment made me so much quicker at making work and a lot more decisive and confident about how to turn an idea into a real thing. I also learnt a lot about taking hand drawn illustration into print production which has been super helpful in creating some of my products and working with suppliers on things that I can’t make myself.
We’d love to hear about your experience at Crafty Fox Markets and as part of the community… Can you share any trading anecdotes?
I couldn’t have asked for a better way to be inducted into market trading than by trading with Crafty Fox, working with such a supportive and informative team and having the pleasure of selling at such well organised and thoughtfully curated markets has helped me understand quickly what works well for me and what the gold standard of market trading should look like. Being part of the Crafty Fox Market community and having access to the resources they provide has helped me to be successful in evolving and growing my small business over the last year.
My range of Mr Blobby inspired products has been consistently popular and I found it particularly hilarious to discover that you don’t need nostalgic 90s memories to love Mr Blobby, as so many small children have been delighted by my Mr Blobby sticker without knowing who he is. One little girl at We Out Here last year picked up a Mr Blobby badge and was really laughing. I asked her if she knew who he was and she said no and asked if he was famous, I said “yes really famous” she replied “WORLD famous?” I said “maybe?”… she said “I’ll take him”.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your business, or something exciting you have coming up?
I have often felt like my work is two different sides of my brain mashed into one thing and I have managed to unite them in the range of products I have created for Different Day Studio. On one side I am inspired by mystical, ancient folk lore, British landscapes and the natural world and on the other by funny, bizarre and nostalgic 90s pop culture. A customer at the Crafty Fox Market in Kings Cross at Christmas pointed out to me that both things could fall under the same ‘British Culture’ umbrella and that in many ways Mr Blobby is a folklore figure… For good or evil is definitely up for debate. But that really helped me see my work more clearly as a celebration of all that is weird and wonderful about British Culture, from stone circles and beautiful beaches to crisp sandwiches and trash TV.
I am currently working on a new range of products to add to my collection and will be launching these at WOH this year, one year after my first market. I will still have my tarot pop up in tow but I will also be bringing a new surprise element to my market set up that will add to the festival fun!
Follow Lucy on Instagram and get 20% off differentdaystudio.com with code CRAFTY20 at differentdaystudio.com until xxxxx
