The 1st Freek Edition

The story
How they're made
Packaging
The Certificate of Authenticity

The Story

Every human has done it. Made a mark. A doodle.
A few tiny little shapes doing nothing at all.
Back of a notebook. Edge of a receipt. Damp sand with a finger. That moment where the mind drifts, and the hand makes something anyway.

It’s ancient. It’s instinct.

I think we all used to doodle more — before computers and smartphones. But the urge to make a mark never leaves. Some artists ran with it. Jean Dubuffet, drawing with red, blue, and black biros while on the phone, turned those distracted shapes into a whole world. The doodle has even made it onto toilet paper packaging recently, wrapped in the embraces of Mr. Doodle's thick black pen.

The doodle will always be there. Always.

I had been looking for a new idea — or rather, a new idea that was smaller than all my big ideas.
Sometimes, distraction is the key.
Rather than doing what I was meant to be doing, I sat down and got out my notebook, drawing nothing, making marks, passing the time. My notebook is full of such marks, and notes, and lists and things.

All my ideas had been for big pieces recently — necklaces that would wow the world, bracelets, hair pieces.
But what I really needed was something far simpler.
Something I could design and make in a few days, not a few weeks.
And as I drew the blind shapes, I came across an idea.

It was a shape. The shape.

I could already see it would spawn another, and another, and another.
It included a rule — a single line that can turn or twist wherever it wants, can overlap and go back, but the result must be coherent, precise, balanced.
Just like any abstract composition.

I drew a few and they all felt connected.
They came from the same world.

I was happy.

That’s where Doodle Studs came from.

A simple idea, done right.

After drawing some more, I got on the computer and started playing with vector paths in Photoshop.
I already knew what I would do with them: etch the shapes onto sheet silver, cut them out, clean them up, add a post, and fill the etched figure with colour.
But how exactly? And what colour, from where?

For a while, Emily and I had been using vitreous enamel — the coloured glass that you fuse onto metal in a kiln.
But soldered posts would prove tricky, since the solder melts before the glass. (I did find a way, but perhaps that’s for a different post.)

Emily suggested resin, which she had used for years before enamelling.
There's nothing like having someone around with experience to point you in the right direction. 🙏

I took the plunge, and soon realised it was perfect.
Easy enough to use well if you're careful, any colour you could think of, no worries about the soldered posts — so all I had to do was work out how to polish them.
Not a problem.

After making a few pairs (always amazing to see the reality after imagining for so long), the hard choices had to be made.
Which shapes to use (I had about 20), which colours, and how many.
Then the packaging — how to do that?
We ended up making our own. Off-the-shelf stud boxes just didn't seem right.

But it didn’t end there.

The website, the design and functionality — it all had to be worked out just for Doodle Studs.
Every part, including these words, followed the same process I would use for any work of art.
Make sure it’s right — no excuses — and look after the details.
They all add up to so much more than just the sum of their parts.
Every decision counts.

Doodle Studs, like everything we will be doing, is a limited edition. A completed world.
We will make 200 pairs, order by order, whether mixed or matched — then that’s it.
No product should drag on forever. Especially not one born from spontaneity.

There will be new things coming out soon.

But Doodle Studs won’t.

The art will be complete.

Zeek

How they're made

Graphically based designs, such as Doodle Studs, are easier to precisely create on the computer.

You'd be surprised how such a simple idea, such simple shapes, have to be fiddled with, altered, perfected, just so they work.

One line, twisting and turning. Very simple. Very precise.

Once the design is finished, it's printed onto clear acetate to use as a mask over photopolymer film. Photopolymer film is sensitive to UV light. It is applied carefully to silver sheet, the mask laid over the top, and the whole thing exposed for only a few seconds to ultraviolet light.

The silver, with the film now stuck hard to its surface, is developed — dissolving away any film that was covered by the pattern printed on the mask. You are left with a silver sheet with a hard blue film, and the Doodle Stud designs dissolved away so that the silver in those areas is exposed, ready for the etching process.

We use electro-etching in silver nitrate. After about 3 hours, the etching is complete. The photopolymer film is removed, and we are left with a sheet of silver where the Doodle designs are etched deeply into the surface. That is where the resin will go.

The next step is to cut them out, loosely following the etched shapes. Each one finished to a pre-polish stage, and then the posts are soldered to the backs.

The blank studs are then filled with resin. The resin is a two-part epoxy coloured with pigmented inks that I have mixed before hand into the specific colours we had chosen.

A day later the resin is rock hard, overfilled, and its time to finish them off.

The resin is carefully sanded back to the level of the surrounding silver, leaving a relaxed border of silver around the defined Doodle shape.

The resin and silver is all polished.
Made lovely.
Ready to be sent out.

Packaging

Packaging for the studs wasn't straight forward.

There are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions for pairs of studs. But generic solutions for Doodle Studs just didn't seem appropriate.

So we looked around and came up with the idea of using small round pots with a window lid.

They're pretty cool in themselves — often used for cosmetics and the like — but there was work to do to make them fit for their purpose.

I spray painted them white, added some mountboard inside to bring the studs up to the top so they are easily visible through the little window, and also created an insert to provide a background for the studs to be seen against.

All of this gives the impression of a tiny little framed artwork, completed by a sticker I designed to go around the outside.

Describing this process is very quick to do, but in reality it took a lot of time: finding the right pots, trying out different ways to bring them to life in a way that elevated the studs themselves, and of course designing the sticker.

But in the end I think we got it right.

They look pretty cool. 😊

The Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

A Certificate of Authenticity, to my mind, is vital. It gets to the core of our mission — to create unique, handmade pieces made by us, whatever they may be.

For this edition, the first for Freek, I decided to pull out all the stops and make an etching plate to print the certificate. Quite apt for studs made with etching themselves.

I might not do this for other pieces we create, but it seemed the right thing to do in this case.

Nothing too complicated.
Nothing too fancy.
Just straight to the point: a declaration, unique number in the edition, date, the design/designs chosen, and signed.
That's it.

And just to be absolutely clear, we are not planning another edition. It's just that whether this is the first or only edition, it needs a number, and that needs to be stated clearly.

Once the edition is complete and all 200 pairs have been sold and delivered, the COA etching plate itself will be destroyed.

In that way, there is only one version of the COA for Doodle Studs, and it cannot be recreated or reprinted after the fact — cementing our values of authenticity, honesty, and truth.

Once finished, I also intend to make available online a complete list of all pairs sold — what their styles/colours were, their number, and a photo showing the COA with the pot that the studs were packaged in.

Obviously there will not be any names or other identifiable data included — just the details that appear on the COA itself.

If you buy a pair, in the future you'll be able to to see yours as part of the original 1st edition of Doodle studs.

That's the whole story of Doodle Studs.

One idea, done right.

Zeek