Jenny Craig-Coleman and Anthony Coleman The Dribbly Yak's offerings The Dribbly Yak's offerings The Dribbly Yak's offerings Local craft from The Dribbly Yak The Dribbly Yak Jenny Craig-Coleman and Anthony Coleman first set up their business The Dribbly Yak on a whim. “It started off about eight years ago, I started out doing freehand burning, called pyrography and Anthony, he’s a graphic designer, so the two of us were doing our own thing for a couple of years and then we decided to combine our experience, and we invested in the business, and we started doing laser engraving together,” explains Jenny. What might catch customers’ eyes is the niche name of the business The Dribbly Yak.
Jenny explains the light-hearted story of the name’s origins. Local craft from The Dribbly Yak “It’s so stupid. It was born out of having really serious jobs, we were joking about with daft combinations with adjectives and nouns and that was the one that sort of jokingly stuck.
“Now the two words of The Dribbly Yak have lost all meaning to us for what they actually mean. It’s memorable it gives some people a bit of a laugh, but I don’t like to talk to the tax man about it, you just spell it out instead of saying the words!” The Dribbly Yak’s catalogue has something for everyone with themes such as film and TV, pets, Halloween and Christmas. But their Ireland-Inspired collection is something that they’re currently focused on.
The Dribbly Yak's offerings “At the minute we have really changed a lot of what we do and we’re making a big purposeful move towards celebrating Ireland, the folklore, and the heritage, celebrating all the culture and specifically celebrating the North Coast,” she says. The couple are inspired by heritage that brings everyone on the island together. “I think what we based a lot of our Irish work in is old and ancient designs, ancient patterns, you know heritage art that inspires us, things that have been here for hundreds of years before, Things that can unite all of us in this country.
“We don’t want to celebrate one side and sacrifice another we want to bring a wee bit of I would say shared pride and we do that by going way back and celebrating what brings us together.” In the same way, a handful of their pieces include Gaeilge. The language, new to Jenny, was something they felt was important to have a space in local crafts.
“I didn’t grow up learning Irish, I didn’t grow up let’s say on that side of things. We’re very mindful of the potential divisiveness of certain things like that. But I didn’t grow up learning it and I can say that my life has become better for learning about our shared heritage and our shared languages.
” The Dribbly Yak's offerings She adds: “I think it can only be good to be learning new things and languages I think it’s a lovely language apart from anything else. It’s certainly not at the expense of alienating other people, we would never do that because I come from the other side of the community, and I’ve only found it to be a good thing. I’ve loved learning about the language, the history, and the folklore.
” The Irish collection has been picked overseas in North America. Their Shamrock pins have been one of their most popular items but not what they originally expected. “We get a lot of orders for the shamrock pins.
People use a lot of them for weddings, but we get a lot of funerals with them, we do about 100 funerals a year. People wear them in places like Canada and America. Maybe the person has come from here and they want a wee bit of something to unite them all with that.
It wasn’t planned that we were going to do that with our shamrock pins, but they’ve somehow turned into a funeral memento.” Some of their products have seen even more unique parts of the world. “We did a wedding that was based up in the North Pole last year so that was an unusual one and it took so long for the stuff to get there, I don’t even know how you have a wedding at the North Pole, but it looked amazing the stuff that they got.
” Sticking to a Winter theme, The Dribbly Yak’s Christmas baubles are another popular item, made months in advance. The Dribbly Yak “Come the start of October we don’t do anything else for three months other than personalised Christmas baubles, So Christmas starts early for us. I mean we do them all year round but come October we stop everything else and just do Christmas baubles.
” During the tough times of Covid-19 the couple put The Dribbly Yak on pause to help their local community. “We did this big campaign it was an amazing experience where our customers helped us raise money and we started making and donating face shields to front-line workers, it was something different from what we had done.” Since their humble beginnings in a tiny garage in South Belfast, their space has grown as they were given a space on the grounds of Glenarm Castle.
“The council had put out a call to have chats with different local small businesses and we met with them with the view thinking maybe we’ll put a couple of products in one of their shops or the Welcome Centre. “Then the next thing, we had been given this amazing workshop space and this beautiful retail space. It’s been incredible.
The people in Glenarm have been something that you wouldn’t even believe, they’re so supportive it feels like the way you’re meant to be living to be honest.” As they work with wood, being eco-conscious is something the pair pride themselves on. The Dribbly Yak's offerings “We celebrate the wood, the wood is a major part of our designs.
It was once a living thing. You don’t want to feel like you’re taking advantage of it. “We’re very careful with our wood where we get it, how we look after it, and sometimes it’s difficult doing the more eco-conscious choice but it’s important to us so you always feel better if you do take the eco-conscious choice.
” Their plans for the future are similar to their spontaneous beginnings. “It’s not a particularly good business plan but we don’t really have concrete plans we never have concrete plans; we always just saw this as an adventure and go where the adventure is taking us. “Who knows what it’s going to look like in five years’ time, it doesn’t look like what it looked like five years ago.
” You can visit Jenny and Anthony’s shop at www.TheDribblyYak.com or one of their social media platforms: Instagram: @the_dribbly_yak; Facebook: The Dribbly Yak; Twitter: @DribblyYak.
