One of my favourite calendar photos of the Doves in Princess Sabeeka park
How do you stay in touch with all your friends around the world when you keep living in different places? One of the solutions I came up with in Bahrain was my calendars. I came up with the concept for each then gave my designer , Chester the brief . He then created the artwork and I supplied the words and we sent the finished product for printing. I started off using ASK print in the UK and my good friend Mark Johns distributed the calendars for me. Then I found a local printer in Bahrain through Gaye Bentham , who I used for one year, and then when they went bankrupt it was back to the UK!
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One of my Bahrain sunset photos |
The first calendar featured a collection of my favourite photographs taken in 2010, my first year in Bahrain. The second one was a recipe calendar. The third was called Chasing Rainbows and the last , created in 2020, featured the highlights of my 11 years in Bahrain.
Chasing rainbows was written after a very unhappy year for me in 2018 when I had a massive work overload, considered suicide and resigning. I was eventually sent to see a Psychiatrist who put me on Prozac for a year. In the 2019 "Chasing Rainbows" calendar I paid tribute to all my friends ( Coco, Joshua, Corleen ) who helped me through that difficult time.
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From the 2019 "Chasing Rainbow's "Calendar inspired by Jane Harders |
The same Filipino crew worked on all the Calendars with James taking the superb photos, Chester stitching it all together, and myself coming up with the copy and ideas. A special shout out to the Venues who let us take the photos, Penny and the Team at Awali Library and next door in Esquires coffee shop, Hani and the team in the beautiful Princess Sabeeka Park and also the Sofitel at Zallaq. As usual we had a lot of fun putting it all together.
Our 2019 Chasing Rainbows calendar
The recipe calendar took months to make as we had to find 12 recipes from 12 different countries, and then Corleen designed a Chef's outfit for each country. Then we had to make the recipes and take the photos. It was a great team effort with Mark coming up with the 12 countries idea, Phil gave us some quotes and captions and James took the photos. Corleen designed, made and fitted the costumes and Vin helped style the food and wash up. We did 3 countries a day over 4 Fridays, the only day we were all off. Chester did all the design work, and I had 50 copies printed which ran out very quickly. Chester then turned the calendar into an e recipe book which you can access here
When 2020 approached I knew I had to do something special so I came up with the concept of "Celebrating 10 Glorious years in Bahrain". I selected one photo for each year from 2010 to 2020 and explained why that was so special to me. Some where my photos and others were photos of me, like the amazing shot of me looking young and slim back in 2012 taken by Jane Frost on one of her two trips to Bahrain.
There was also a Charity Calendar as well but the less said about that the better. It wasted a lot of my money and time and I have never spoken to the charity since!
So that's a quick look back at the wonderful Calendars we created in Bahrain . As usual special thanks go to my Business partner, Mr Chester Delos- Santos Porter for all his graphic design work, Mr Johns our UK Logistics expert, James for the amazing photos, Corleen, Joshua. Coco, Vin, the cats and dogs and our most reliable printer ( https://www.askcalendars.co.uk/?affiliateid=29 )
Sadly with Chester now charging 12 bd to produce one Christmas card there will be no 2022 calendar or Birthday cards!
Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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