Sun's out!!!!!

Have a great weekend : )

We are trying really hard to be more eco in our house

Not easy when you have kids that seem to be constantly buying drinks in plastic bottles but we really are trying....

It seems i am liking green again at the mo!

My design process

With client work it's important to think through how you imagine a finished design will look and be able to convey this to the client. They need to be able to see from a sketch that your proposed vision is what their vision is and that it will suit their products.

With personal work you don't always need a vision. Sometime something pops into my head and I create it and it works out well but sometimes it doesn't work out at (very frustrating). Other times something appears and grows by playing around and going with the flow. This illo was like that. I've had this little tile repeat for ages. I loved it and kept adding it to various designs but it didn't quite work so I kept putting it back in the misc file (which is basically bits and pieces of digital art that I like but doesn't have a home yet). Last night at singing I looked out at the rain and sketched a girl in her swimming costume, I got home scanned her in and added her to the tiled piece which became the swimming pool. Voila!!! Go with the flow folks, go with the flow.... and I hope it's sunny where you are. We have had 6 days of rain, IN JUNE!!!! Good old UK

PS: Notice in my original sketch the girl has a bottle of beer and looks more dishevelled, which is more me TBH

New Pattern

Painting and sticky bits from stuff done last week

Rainbowy stuff

Long weekend and playing in my sketchbook

Ocean Drive makes

Years ago I used to teach workshops as part of my actual job. I worked for a craft company and every year we'd go to The Knitting and Stitching show in London, Dublin and Harrogate and run classes to promote the brand, share skills and to be honest, have a jolly. It was great, I loved it. I loved sharing my joy of making stuff and best of all I loved meeting people. The last few months I've been teaching some basic sewing machine workshops. I was asked so often if taught sewing that I decided to run some classes. I've been using fabulous Dashwood fabrics and this week we used fabrics I'd designed for them, a range called Ocean Drive. So awesome to be ACTUALLY teaching with fabrics I designed!

Seeing someone light up when they make a cushion or complete a buttonhole is so lovely. We have a laugh, eat choccie biccies and spend two hours in fabric and sewing machine heaven.
Here is tonight's makes. A laminated, zipped toilet bag, with pom-pom trim of course...
For more info on my workshops take a look here

Flaming Mingo Book

A book made and covered in the Flamingo fabric from the Ocean Drive range for Dashwood Studios