UK Games Expo: It’s a HullaBailu (debut)

“Buy me dice & tell me that I’m pretty” and other items in HullaBailu’s range of colourful and cosy handmade TTRPG-inspired merch are debuting at UK Games Expo this weekend.

You can find HullaBailu and owner Anna at s 3-B33 (Hall 3) (say happy birthday), and you’ll be able to browse art prints, stickers, crochet dice bags and totes, apparel, and other goodies.

Anna kindly agreed to a little chat before the expo with Geek Native, and we sat on the interview for a few days. So, finally, here it is!

This is such a cool concept! What was the very first TTRPG-inspired design or product that sparked the idea for your whole business, and what’s the story behind it?

Thanks! My first designs were a set of Dungeons & Dragons themed quotes, inspired by my DnD group at the time – in particular, harassing our DM with lines such as “I have dark vision” and “Crying is a free action”. I’d known for a while I wanted to do some sort of series of DnD designs, and had already dallied with TTRPG character painting commissions, so once the quotes started piling up in a notepad it only took me a few evenings of doodling and refining to get a beginning set of 10 designs down! Thanks to a lovely friend I also unearthed the ability to have the most suitable of these designs printed on t-shirts and hoodies, and thus HullaBailu was born!

Seeing all this amazing gear, which current TTRPG trend or specific game are you finding most inspiring for your new designs right now, and why does it excite you?

Currently all of my more specific designs are themed around Dungeons & Dragons – with a couple being more vague, plus a handful of boardgame products.

DnD is the first TTRPG I played and what I play the most of now, though I have a few Pathfinder themed designs in the pipeline and inevitably more ideas will crop up as I venture into trying out different systems. I’m particularly excited to try Daggerheart! I think Dungeons & Dragons is just so accessible and through its popularity so much inspiration can be taken from its widespread community.

That said, my most recent designs are a little less DnD specific and more tailored to fantasy games in general, focussing on fantasy archetypes, as well as the very simple thread that ties all of us TTRPG nerds together – dice.

Attending UKGE as a trader must be quite the adventure! What’s been the most surprising or exciting interaction you’ve had with a customer or fellow creator so far?

It’ll be my first time and it’s certainly exciting – as well as a little nerve-wracking! I think, as an eternal sufferer of imposter syndrome, honestly the most surprising (and exciting by extension!) interactions are those of super enthusiastic customers pledging to seek me out to purchase my newest product reveal. That’s just so encouraging, affirming, and as someone who has specifically set out to create joyful and cosy products, it really reinforces the reasons behind starting this whole journey.

Could you share a little about your creative process? For instance, how do you go from a TTRPG concept or a moment in a game to a finished piece of clothing or an accessory?

I’ve always been a drawer, painter, doodler, as well as a chronic mind-wanderer. Oftentimes the ideas and concepts come about while working my office job, from which they become a waffly voice-note to my partner or best friend during my lunch break. There’ll usually be a little back and forth, or I’ll rush straight to procreate to sketch things out. Other times, it really is as much as someone mentioning something in the middle of a boardgame evening or a DnD session, and my brain goes “Well, wouldn’t that would look great on a sweater”.

Looking beyond this convention, what’s a dream project or a new type of TTRPG-inspired item you’d absolutely love to create for your business in the future?

A few months ago I actually started working on a little Kickstarter project, “Pocketbook Character Journals”. Pocket (A6) sized journals with dry-erase pages for important stats and things your DM regularly makes you rub out and rewrite (HP…), and fully refillable pages for the rest of the book. Designed to be an efficient, economical, and space-saving tool for taking to TTRPG sessions; reusable between players, characters, or just really long campaigns that require 300 pages of notes. I hit a few bumps in the road on the way to trying to get them perfect, and in the end the project was postponed to focus on shorter term projects prior to UKGE.

The aim was and still is to bring the project back with even more time and energy to dedicate to it, and I’m really excited to nail down their design and manufacture and, fingers-crossed, relaunch the Kickstarter by the end of the year.

Thanks Anna! Readers can see some of HullaBailu’s merch in the photograph galleries in this post.

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