Woodland Wonders.

One of the things that I have written about before is my love of jewellery. I adore it. One of my favourite things on holiday is seek out new and unusual pieces. I love quirkiness, colour and individuality and try and buy handmade one-off items. This love has also led me to try and develop some jewellery ideas of my own. I've tried lots of different materials when I experiment and have had some success with both polymer clay and resin. My new passion though is shrink plastic and I have been working on creating a new collection based upon my "Prickles and Pinecones" surface patterns. I really do love hedgehogs, hares, rabbits and other woodland creatures so I decided to take my original illustrations and make them into brooches and rings. I am going to develop these into necklaces as well but it all takes time! Here are some of the results so far.

I then thought that I would display them on some old fashioned brown tags and add some letterpress titles. My favourite two are the hare in the green scarf and the dozy dormouse! but I have a soft spot for them all.

I have added these to my Etsy store and am planning to develop some more!

Competition Crazy!

There seems to be so many design competitions around at the moment! At this stage in my new career direction I am quite philosophical about it. It's good practice, working to a brief and sometimes a restricted colour palette, and you can get some good exposure. The rewards are not always so great and terms are not often on a par with professional designers but you have to start somewhere! There is ferocious competition from other contestants as there are lots of immensely talented people out there all trying to do the same thing. This could deter you but I am really trying to tell myself that my ideas and designs are good, they deserve to be there and someone has to win. The thing that keeps me going is that thinking that one day (possibly, maybe) it could be me...

Here is some of what I've been working on: Cushions for the Ohh Deer design competition. These are available during the competition.

I also had a go at the Homebase design a wallpaper competition (On Facebook) and entered a range of ideas based upon their Anthology theme, here is one idea below.

Finally for now I have had a go at Front Row Society's "Illustrated Dreams" jumper competition. This is another Facebook vote. Lately I have been drawing lots of foxes, hares and rabbits and used this idea to create "Artic Fox Dreaming"

And what am I going to do today? Have a go at another Tigerprint Competition! Here I go again...

New Opportunities?

I can't believe it's been over a week since I lasted posted on here! I have been really busy designing and chasing all the opportunities that I can find. I have rapidly found out that there are lots of things out there (competitions, blogs, sites) that could help you realise your dream of becoming a recognised designer. The trouble is trying to juggle everything that comes my way. I was absolutely thrilled to have my work included on the brilliant Artistically Afflicted blog all about the Autumnal inspiration of mushrooms. My design "Fantastic Funghi" was featured and I have received lots of really nice compliments about it.

This lead me to thinking about other ways that I could "get my designs out there". Here are a couple of the ones I am trying at the moment. The first is Society6, an online store where you can upload your designs and sell them on lots of different merchandise. I decided to try my funghi design and I like the look of this bag tote bag. I think this still fits in well with my current obsession with all things Autumnal. Time will tell whether these new opportunities will pay off. Fingers crossed!

Prickles and Pinecones

In my last post I talked about how Autumn is inspiring me and talked about the drawings I have been doing based on my collection of Autumnal forms. I am still obsessed with picking up conkers! I have amassed quite a collection now. They are supposed to be good at warding off spiders so I will keep them around (I'm not sure how that works but I have heard it a few times). I thought I would now show you a couple of designs that I created from my drawings. I used quite a subtle, Autumn palette to create a homely feel.

You can see more of the collection here Moyo Directory.