We’ve been making something. Not a leather pouch this time, and not a cushion with no zip, although honestly some days I miss the simplicity of a staple gun and an old jacket from the op shop.

Since the blog went quiet Jeremy and I moved from Gore Bay to Christchurch and started our business, Gray and Shinn. We’ve been doing photography and marketing work — I’ve been shooting for magazines and media outlets, doing on-site work for trades businesses, and we set up a studio doing family and maternity shoots. Jeremy handles a lot of the strategy and tech. Between us we got pretty good at the whole “getting a small business noticed” thing, which is funny when I think about how this blog started as me just wanting to share a few DIY projects from the kitchen table.

Through all that work we kept having the same conversation with business owners. Builders, plumbers, salon owners, all doing great work but with no real way of knowing how they compared locally or what they should focus on to get more work coming through the door. The tools out there were either built for big companies or so generic they weren’t much help.

So we built Marketbase. It’s basically everything we learned doing it the hard way, in one place.

It’s been the hardest project we’ve taken on together, and we did try to build a house once so that’s saying something. Different materials though — code and data instead of concrete and pine — but the same approach. Figure out what’s needed, work with what you’ve got, make something useful.

I still love making things with my hands and I suspect some DIY posts will find their way back here eventually. For now I just wanted to share what we’ve been up to.

Alana xx