Michael Parsons had a collection of almost 100,000 images he captured of creatures in Flatts Inlet.

He would post his photographs of manta rays, jellyfish, turtles, sergeant majors and the like. On Instagram and Facebook the comments were always the same: you should do something with your art.

“I had all these photos and I liked a lot of them but I didn’t know how I could make them into something; how to create something that I was interested in creating. I didn’t know what to do, aside from occasionally having the photo put on a canvas and giving it to someone who really loved it as a gift,” Mr Parsons said.

His partner suggested he upload his photographs on items and start an online retail business. That idea did not really appeal but it got him thinking.

“I offered myself a little challenge just to try to illustrate the photos and I liked how it looked. I liked the simplicity of the illustrations and how, by digitising them, you can make them into any sort of pattern or shape or size you want. And it's from there I started designing various products to go on sale: bathing suits, luggage, bags, T-shirts, blankets.

“I just started spending hours and hours every day playing about, seeing what would look good.”

He launched The Monkey Haus at the end of September. The brand features a range of items with hand-drawn designs inspired by his “favourite life forms of the Sargasso Sea”.

“I love tropical stuff. I love anything to do with Bermuda and the ocean and it occurred to me: Bermuda has such a vast and unique biodiversity. A lot of people really love it but many don't actually take the time to appreciate it and so I kind of wanted to shout out about it a little bit; make it my focus,” Mr Parsons said.

The Monkey Haus was named after a Spotify playlist he and his partner created.

“When we moved into our place in the UK and we started decorating I realised there was an overall theme of jungle and monkeys in the fabric prints I was using. So we made The Monkey House playlist.

“I was going through every single name I could possibly think of and then I just was like, Oh, The Monkey Haus. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Sargasso Sea and nothing to do with monkeys.”

Although he was “very good at art” while at Saltus Grammar School and at Goldsmiths, University of London, the school he attended in England, his focus changed when cell phones with cameras became common.

“When I moved back to Bermuda in 2016 every night, weather permitting, I was down at Flatts taking photos and then, slowly, I built up a collection of, I think it's nearly 100,000.”

Mr Parsons decided to move forward with The Monkey Haus in June. He launched the company in September, having moved from Bermuda to London two years earlier.

“Getting a couple of samples with price points I liked was the easiest bit. The harder part was transferring my designs to the products because every surface is a little bit different. The detail really needs to be crisp. It's a lot of back and forth and playing around,” he said.

“While I've been sketching I've been conscious that I should not overdo the detail because obviously it’s going to get shrunken down – put on a bathing suit, put on a blanket, put on whatever – and so a lot of the detail is going to look lost and it can end up looking quite muddy once it's scaled down a bit.”

That especially rang true in his sketch of a spiny lobster.

“It’s a beautiful creature that has loads of pattern and design in it but I’m looking at it thinking I need to simplify this and make a basic design because it's going to be shrunk down.

“I have journals, that’s a flat surface so the image is going to look different on that than on my low-top sneakers I've got on the site which have a woven, polyester-like sneaker fabric.”

Each item is made to order. The Monkey Haus offers free shipping worldwide through manufacturers in the UK and in the US.

“While I was doing all this, I had one person's voice in my head the entire time. And that was my godmother, Kim Young. She always believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. So while I was doing the drawings I would be thinking: ‘Is this good enough? Would Kim think this is good enough?’,” the designer said.

“When you do something creative and you put yourself out there you know how the images look to you, but it’s how the actual items look. So as the samples have been coming in, I've sort of been breathing a huge sigh of relief every time I open a package: ‘It looks so good!’”

Mr Parsons has three collections on offer – Sargasso Sea, Sargasso Sunrise and Sargasso Sunset – and is working on the next.

“If this goes well enough, I would like to do a longtail collection in the new year and then one of insects from Bermuda – butterflies, some spiders – all the sketches have been done. So it's just seeing how things go.”

• For more information visitthemonkeyhaus.com