Jakub's Fantasy Map World

Yes guys, I am back again with a reflective post... it is about time that I briefly shared with you my experience of attending two craft fairs and trying to sell some fantasy maps!  So, the business selling adventure started with a trip to the Felixstowe Craft Fair on the 25th of August, and I must say that the craft fair contained some unexpected surprises that had started quite some time before the sales could even begin, with the leisure centre Wi-Fi being unreliable to connect to, affecting the vast majority of sellers at the fair, meaning that they have had to rely on mobile data to take card payments, or otherwise, were only able to take cash. My first sale from my business came just before 12 noon, when one family decided to snoop around my stall and was interested in my work. Now, I was engaging them in the usual talk about the maps that I had made, until the mum decided that they wanted a map of the Kingdom of Ventura and Lorentia and offered to pay me with a £20 note. Pro...

It's official! I am coming on here to announce the news that I have reached a very big milestone in my life - I have now officially become a business owner! It's been a long and difficult journey at times to get to this stage, but working the last 18 months on this business idea has also allowed me to discover something that would give me a huge sense of worth and purpose in my life, something that I originally had never thought about when I graduated from university in October 2022. At this present time, I am currently focusing on getting my reach out at craft fairs - the fantasy map idea has gained a lot of popularity at the University of Suffolk Christmas Fair eight months back (famous novelists included), and so I felt that this would be the best way to attract new customers to my business before deciding whether to open up an online shop - I am most certainly looking forward to opening that side of the business when the time comes!  And speaking of craft fairs, I will be p...

It's back, and it's more wilder than ever... yes, that's right - it's time to present to you the Make a Difference Bootcamp Grand Finale post from June 2024! As you may or may not know, the Make a Difference Start-up Bootcamp is a series of sessions revolving around social enterprise start-ups that are run by a talented Enterprise Team at the University of Suffolk, and consisted of eight sessions focusing on ideation, marketing and financial planning, starting on the 18th of June, and culminating with this session on the 18th of July, where eight Bootcampers competed for the chance to win a share of £2,000 of the prize money. Without further ado... let's get to the event itself! Grand Finale event The morning of the Grand Finale was mostly uneventful - I went back to the Hold to finish off the rest of Young's book, before deciding to go and have some packed lunch, with which my choices were much less interesting than the lunch that I had before going to last yea...

Hello all and welcome back to another post-bootcamp series blogpost! It has been a long time since I last did one of those blogposts, but man... I have been through so much in the last three months with my maps that I felt that it is time to update you all on how I have been getting on - especially since it has been over one year now since I finished the Make a Difference Bootcamp at the University of Suffolk!  Without further ado, let's get going with this post!  3D Expo - 6th of March So, this post-bootcamp report starts off with the trip to the 3D Expo at the beginning of March, to explore the different funding that I could obtain if I wanted to make 3D maps and models to sell in the future. The story started just before 1:00pm, where I was sat outside the Atrium, waiting to go inside. But it wasn't just the usual sitting around and nothing happening around me - I also witnessed a delegation of students from Malaysia being sent off, who had just finished visiting the Univer...

Hello, and welcome back to another Random Fantasy Map post! It's been a long time since I have last made a post on this blog, and particularly with regards to this series - as you have guessed by now, 2024 has flown by quickly already. 'Nuff said, this post is going to take you through the process of making the fantasy map of the Land of Ternia, which is made in the style of Ptolemy.  What is the Land of Ternia? The land of Ternia is located in the south-east of the continent of Marsillius. To the north of Ternia is the Mare Florentia ("the Florentian sea"), which contains the main sea port of Florentium that contributes to the vast majority of the territory's trade with other lands further north along the Florentian Sea. Down in the south is the Mare Sanctuarium ("the Peaceful Sea"), where there are 15 islands in the immediate vicinity of the mainland that also form part of the land of Ternia. The territory is primarily inhabited by the Romans, who took...