making mustard

We'd like to introduce you to Catharine...

If you haven't discovered @paperandlilies on Instagram, let me describe her feed for you. It's like a warm, rose tinted interior hug. Every image is inviting and has 'family' written all over it. We challenged  Catharine to style her Shorty in Olive in three ways and every room is a complete delight! 

Tell us a little about you…

Here's a few little details that you may not know...

1. They are 100% magnetic! You can use magnets to stick postcards, photos and to-do lists anywhere on the locker!

Today I woke up (and Jess went to bed) to this article going live on The Design Files. If you don't know, it is 'Australia's Top Design Blog' so it's kind of a BIG deal.   The truth is, I also felt a moment of panic, the imposter syndrome kick in, the 'what if I'm found out' moment. It may or may not surprise you to know that I have screwed a lot of things up with Mustard already, there are things I'd already like to go back and redo. It may or may not surprise you that every day I...

Ok, so we aren't exactly Pros by any means (this was our first trade show after all!) but here's some things we learnt from doing Life Instyle:   1. Be human. (Most important!) You can't help it, you are human, don't try to hide it. Sometimes we jumbled our words, forgot things, dropped business cards on the floor. It's ok. You know the best thing? The person you are talking to is a human too.  2. Be prepared. Think about the questions you might be asked and prepare a memory bank of answers, practice and get familiar with them. Even better offer a...

To celebrate International Women's Day Tinitrader asked to interview me along side four inspiring women. Gosh what an honour! Here's my favourite bit from a long term girl-crush of mine, Rachel Castle: "I'm such a motto lover. But if I had to pick one it would be that good old chestnut about working hard and staying humble. I work as hard now as I ever had, the only way to get any traction is to just keep going like Dory does." To read the full article click here, enjoy! Shop Lockers Follow us on Instagram

Sometimes in life you have to put all your eggs in one basket. At least that's how I seem to live. From the very beginning, when the idea of Mustard was taking shape, I knew that I wanted to launch at Life InStyle. I knew that wholesale was where our energy needed to be focused to gain momentum and Life InStyle was the perfect platform for the brand we wanted to create. I did the research and looked into other options, I asked everyone I knew who had done a trade show. But, in the end there was only a Plan...

The day I first came up with the idea of creating beautiful lockers I was walking along the beach with my sister, we were dreaming out loud about what might be next for me after having a baby. The seed grew rapidly from there and it didn’t take me long to get lost in cyberspace trying to learn all I could about how to get lockers made, who makes them and where. You see, having grown a micro handmade business from scratch with not much more than a hammer and some old cutlery, I had learnt a few things that guided...

One night I said to my husband, “I just need to go to China.”  He is fairly well adapted to my spontaneous nature and knows that I am not someone who will ask for permission and wasn’t born with a very large supply of patience. I had been emailing and skyping with my potential supplier in China for a few months and establishing what the parameters of possibility were. Could I have lockers any size or shape? Could I choose the design of the key? How are they packaged and can I customise that? How on earth do you get...