I have a list of small businesses who I'd absolutely love to work with. Sometimes, I just stride right in with a hello and how about we do something like this? It doesn't always work though. But for Enchanted Forest Nursery and Enchanted Forest and Friends, it did! Only, it came by way of an endorsement on Twitter late one evening. Sometimes it's about being in the right place at the right time and I'm a great believer of things happen for a reason. You know the saying, 'If it's for you it won't go by you'.

I was about to go to bed one night when, all of a sudden, I found myself chatting to Three Sisters Bake on Twitter and in comes Enchanted Forest Nursery who were watching my tweets with interest. One amazing endorsement later from Three Sisters Bake laid way for a meeting with Enchanted Forest Nursery! Hurrah! And so the journey began . . .

I had such an amazing first meeting with the owners of Enchanted Forest Nursery (heck, I'm going to refer to them as EFN or EFF from here on in) Mariessa and Bernie. And not only that, we met at Three Sisters Bake in Quarriers Village! There we chatted about our businesses, our passions and how we were going to work together. I've loved the EFN brand for a long while now, a collection of nurseries that are quite simply, amazing. But I was soon to learn of Bernie's passion for his creation, Enchanted Forest and Friends (EFF from now on!), a collection of woodland characters who would form the foundation of a brand new children's clothing range.

Zed Fox character backpack, find out more here.

A few weeks later I picked up the first batch of clothing from Bernie. My idea was to take it into some woodland and photograph all of the items. But the weather had other ideas. It would be another three weeks before we had our first dry and sunny day in Inverclyde and I was so pleased to finally get out and explore an amazing location that was perfect. Not only did I have the clothes, but also Zed Fox and Miss Bun Bun, two children's back packs complete with a fleecy blanket and they also double up as a travel pillow/companion.

The next part of the plan was to take some real children wearing the clothes out to the beach, but once again, the weather thwarted any hope of that. So we were forced to hire an indoor space where I captured lots of children wearing the clothes, just in time for the reveal of the brand new EFF website.

With all the clothing photography done and the website launched, it was then over to the nursery side where I was asked to capture a variety of settings depicting the activities that take place on a daily basis. The photography will be used in a brand new prospectus and will be available on their website. It was so much fun to spend time with the staff and the children and have the freedom to watch them learn, explore and get covered in all sorts of things. My favourite being where they squirted shaving foam into each childs hand and all over the play table. I was poised to take some photos when all of a sudden, the staff member told the kids to clap their hands. Cue me getting absolutely covered in the stuff, happy to report my camera came off okay! Phew.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working with Mariessa, Bernie and their amazing team and I hope to do more work with them in the future. Please please please, and especially if you have kids of your own, check out the new clothing range, it's pretty awesome!