Illustration Collaboration

The above photo pretty much sums up this collaboration.  Myself and Bernadette Moke aka the Downtown Doodler, both have online shops/stores.  We are also both quite new to the selling our work to actual lovely customers.  Therefore we have spent quite a bit of time sending back and forth emails full of tips and suggestions for each other.  It's been amazing having someone who you know will tell you whats what and offer you their two cents when they know you want it.

From this came the idea of our collaboration.  We both wanted little thank-you cards to include in orders that we send out to say thank you to our customers.  I love Bernadette's style and she loves mine, it seemed natural that we do something for each other.

The rules to this collaboration were:

• One sided illustration
• A6/Postcard size
• Include an inspirational quote

The idea was that we would design a card for each other that we could send out with a little note on it - a thank you card/compliment slip type thing!

What actually happened was amazing.  We both got really inspired and actually did FOUR designs for each other.  We hadn't specified a number of designs but it seemed an unspoken thing that one design would of been perfectly lovely.

Check out Bernadette's work

* Blog * Shop *

These are the four beautiful designs that Bernadette illustrated for me, amazing no?

If you'd like to see the designs I did for her, then please keep an eye on her blog as she'll be posting them on there soon!

Thank you

X

30 Days of Creativity 2012

30 Days of Creativity is something that Create Stuff do every year in June.  In order to participate you have to pledge to them that you will do something creative everyday throughout June aka 30 Days.  It's a great project and it really tests you!

30 Days of Creativity 2011

Last year was my first year, and I found that I mainly created greeting cards along with doing creative things in the cafe I was working at, Seasons Cafe @ Rowan.  You can see photos of what I did here.

This year, when I pledged that I would create something everyday in June, I pledged also to myself that this would be 30 illustrations of buildings.  Buildings, cities, architecture...this is what I love to illustrate.  It's not always that I get to do this so I thought I'd take the opportunity (& excuse) to get on with illustrating what I love.

In the past, for projects when I've chosen to illustrate buildings, I've generally drawn whichever takes my fancy, be it one that I am near at that moment in time, or if it's one I saw on my travels at some point.  For this pledge, I decided to stick to a building that I had seen on that particular day.  Apart from one.  There was one rather dreary day when my thoughts were elsewhere, maybe you can guess which one I'm talking about?

 

To see the rest of my 30 Days of illustrated buildings please click on over to my 'down your street' blog where I keep all of my illustrations of lovely buildings.

www.downyourstreet.blogspot.com

The Button Project

For a while now I've followed 'Muddleduck' aka Jules Young on twitter and have enjoyed little updates and news on her blog.  She follows a lot of arty / crafty / illustratory people and always has great links.  Jules recently celebrated her 30th birthday! HURRAH! Happy Birthday Jules!  And as a ways of celebrating, she organised the Button Project, which you can read about here.

I nearly missed the deadline.  Which would of sucked as I had specially requested that Jules let me know a favourite building of hers that I could illustrate for her as my contribution to the project.  Buildings are my favourite thing to draw/sketch/illustrate and it seemed only appropriate that I do this with a special building rather than a random one.

I was really pleased with my little illustration, and proud that I kept it as simple as possible.  Jules has also given some lovely feedback on it as well, and I've sent the original illustration to her as an added little extra for her birthday.



Do you have a favourite building?

Gocco Printing

Whilst looking for ideas on workshops to do for my sister's birthday (see my last post here) I put a little shout out on twitter to see if anyone could recommend any or point me in the right direction.  The lovely Vicki of 'Accidental Vix' responded with a Gocco Printing workshop that she had booked onto in a few weeks time.  I was introduced to Vicki through Rob Jelinski and the Sketchbook Project.  And we've kept in touch since, offering feedback and support to each other and others involved in the projects.

This workshop seemed great, so while I offered it up as an option to do with my sister I knew I was going to do it even if she picked a different option!  £40 for a 3 hour workshop, and to come away with a screen that you can use further at home, as well as prints from the workshop and lots of lovely new knowledge about Gocco printing!

Above here you can see Vicki's lovely gocco prints.  She was thoughtful enough to bring along some baby grows to print onto as well as all the paper provided in the class.  I love the introduction of the little hearts sporadically over the surrounding area. 

You can visit Vicki's shop here and follow her on twitter here.  I met Vicki through doing the sketchbook project, and we fast became twitter friends, enjoying our arts and crafts and helping to support and promote each other.

My gocco print wasn't quite as successful.  I'm so used to printing with silkscreen that I didn't quite get it right.  However, I haven't given up yet!  Being able to take the screen home with me and re-use it, I'll be pracitsing to get it perfect.  The design i used was apparently a little tricky, but Xtina who runs the class managed to print it and was glad I'd opted to push the boundaries of gocco printing a bit as she now knows that something like my design is possible, where as before might not of been attempted.

If you'd like to do a Gocco printing workshop you can find the information in Xtina's shop here.

Wedding Invitations

Extra Special Wedding Invitations

Finally I can share these with you!

My first wedding invitation design!

What makes these so special is that they are for a close friend of mine.  She is the first of my friends to be getting married, starting her own family.  And I've got to say, also probably the most grown-up as well.  She didn't have too many demands for me to work with, which was nice.  Just the bits that add some structure into the starting point - she wanted traditional features, aka, doves, flowers, bells and ribbons.  And the colour scheme was 'Cadbury Purple'. Lovely.

For ages I've wanted to get my designs letterpress printed and this gave me the perfect opportunity!  The Bride-to-be fell in love with the lovely swirly text and soft somerset paper that Blush Publishing use on some of their letterpress prints.  We were able to combine this with my illustration and come up with a layout that worked well and was loved by all.

If you'd like something similar designed for you for your wedding/party/celebration or even just personal stationary, I'd be more than happy to help and advise where I can so do please get in touch.


Thank you
x

Homemade London

In June my sister celebrated her 23rd birthday, and rather than buy her anything (she is an experienced shopper so it's hard...) I wanted us to do something together, as we often meet up after work for a drink but it's rare that we'll get a whole evening or day together doing something special.

I actually gave her 3 choices of activity as I couldn't decide myself!

She opted for doing a jewellery workshop at 'Homemade London' with the lovely Nicola.  So I booked us in and we attended our workshop!  It was so lovely!  A great little studio (which actually has a lot of space downstairs for larger parties) we were greeted with a glass of wine and encouraged (it didn't take much) to enjoy some lemon cake and strawberries - delish!

There was a group of about 8 of us and there was a nice relaxed atmosphere which soon turned quiet with concentration!  In the 2 hour workshop, we learnt the basics and the tools we would need and where to get them to start up making jewellery at home ourselves.  Turns out you can start up making your own jewellery at home for £5 start up costs or there abouts, which is great.  Much more affordable than I thought it would be.

First off, we learnt how to open and close the little fastenings that we would be using to attach charms etc onto a chain.  We then learnt how to coil a wire, which can also bee used when attaching charms such as pearls and beads.  After mastering these we were off!  Both of us opted for the rose gold chain and go about selecting charms that we would like on our necklaces.

Lydia had a lovely collection of charms that gave a great impact when all put together and I opted to make a big tassel and added a few pearls and leaf charms up the chain.

We enjoyed ourselves so much that I think we ran about half an hour late!  And we've both been wearing our creations to show them off and have had great feedback, which makes us very happy girls.