How our North East Gifts hit the High Street!

Having just launched our ‘local’ North East Gifts range we thought now might be the time to explain why and a little more about us at Not Just a Print.

So … yes, we are Not Just a Print and we make personalised gifts – we are indeed a Newcastle gift shop, but without a physical shop!

We know some people like to shop in the PJs making online gift shops their best bet but others like to see and hold something and would prefer something a bit more actual High Street than Not On The High Street and that’s how our ‘North East gifts’ were born.

We made the deep dive onto the High Street of Newcastle and Northumberland. 

How to make it not personalised but still personalised

To do this we had to come up with some gifts which actually weren’t personalised and for a North East gift retailer who’s made over 250,000 personalised gift ideas that’s not been the easiest of moves!

So we started with the simplest of ideas – our home up North and our favourite places in the North East and made a selection of illustrations of places (the Tyne Bridge, the Angel of the North, Grey’s Monument, St. Mary’s Lighthouse) custom mugs, coasters and tea towels with their location in a familiar kind of colour shade thing style.

So they’re personalised to us (we designed them in our own unique style) but they’re not so much about a name or a date – we’d like to think they’re still a personalised Newcastle print in a way however as they do say that the owner is proud of their North East roots.

And because we believe it’s not so grim up North they come in a cracking set of colours but our colourful mugs are no accident either, they’re based on a cake … no honestly they really are! 

How we choose the colour palette for our designs

The first Newcastle gift shop we approached to sell our North East gifts was Vanilla & Dreams, a coffee & gift shop in Newcastle Great Park who is also actually an amazing luxury celebration cake maker. Rebecca was really happy to stock our Newcastle gifts but was also really keen for them to match the interior of her Gosforth coffee shop and so that was the challenge …

We took inspiration from this amazing birthday cake and our soft colours were born – pink, lilac, blue and of course … mint!

It was when Phil from Coffuffle in Corbridge approached us to add some colour into his Northumberland Chocolate Shop that we then took a different look at our mugs. With a prime position on Corbridge High Street he asked if we could make something bold and eye catching which would draw the attention of passers by – not a problem Phil!

He uses deep teal in his store and we felt that needed a good colour contrast – bring on the Yellow and Orange! And of course with Phil being a coffee shop in Corbridge we thought some Northumberland landmarks would make great prints hence the Lindisfarne Castle and Sycamore Gap tree print and coming soon are Alnwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle prints.

Stocking our gifts

So that’s where our local North East gifts came from – buy online or if you happen to be in Gosforth head into Vanilla & Dreams (we highly recommend ANY of Rebecca's cakes) ...

 

or if you’re out in Northumberland see Phil … his chocolates are to die for!

If you’re interested in becoming a gift stockist (especially of our Bamburgh Castle and Alnwick Castle print versions) or working with us on custom mugs or other customised gifts for your store why not message us at info@notjustaprint.com

 Cos they're mint!