Personalised stationary

Front and reverse shown with brown envelope.

One of my lovely clients recently asked me for some personalised stationary.  She was moving house and wanted something she could use as a 'new address' card but also for general note cards.  As I'd recently printed my lavender print fabric, and my brief was 'olive tree', I tried my hand at another screen printed pattern of olive branches.  I then digitally printed on her name and address across the top of the reverse of the cards.  (You can see in the example where I have used my own contact details).

Rather than design a single greeting card/postcard I put together a pattern for bigger sheets and then cut the cards down to the required size.  Because of this not each card is the same, there are variations thanks to where the pattern falls within the cut of each card - each card is quite individual, and over the 50 she ordered, there were quite a few different crops on the pattern.

All boxed up and ready to send.  

These boxes are great for postage and for the client to keep the cards in.

Happy Birthday

This illustration follows on from my 'Home Sweet Home' design and shows a birthday house!  YAY!  Filled with cake, bunting, balloons and banners, it shows a home alive with birthday celebrations.  The perfect card to use as a party invite and to send or take to a birthday.

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

Happy Mothering Sunday

Happy Mothering Sunday!

I always design my Mother's Day card range with my own Mum in mind.  This backfires when she's seen all the designs pre-Mother's Day and I need a special design just for her!  This year I had 3 hand painted designs I worked with.  They were available to buy at the cafe local to us in Old Amersham, Seasons Cafe Deli.

These last two are the special ones I painted for my Granny and my Mum.  My Gran's one is a larger version of one of the above designs and my Mum's is a heart of (my interpretation of them anyway) English Daisies, with a personalised message.

I had a few orders from friends as well as selling them in the shop, which was lovely!  If you've seen something you like and don't know how to get hold of one, then please leave a message on this blog post and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Do you hand make your Mum cards or do you opt for a pretty/quirky card from a shop?

Sweet Shop Illustration Range

I have recently taken it upon myself to do a range of illustrations for my local sweet shop, Old Amersham Sweet Shop (also because they ask very kindly when I go in and they display my illustrations above the counter).  If you are around the area I would definitely recommend stopping by to pick up 100g of your favourite sweets in a pink striped bag!

These prints will be for sale as greetings cards and also as (5x7in) prints, in the shop as well as in my Etsy shop soon!

Love Heart

The Original 'Great British' Lolly

Life is like a box of chocolates

Lucky Dip

Love Heart Lolly

Which is your favourite sweet?  Personally, I love a mix of tangy apples and milk bottles :-)

Thank you

Thank you friends and family for a lovely Christmas!

Last year I went for the classic round swirly lollypop and this year we have the Christmas tree edition!  It always inspires me at Christmas dinner to see these lollies staring at me, waiting for me to finish my dinner.  Yes thats right, they are sat in the middle of the table looking lovely, the whole time!  So, of course, come thank you card writing, they are all I can think about!  I thought I'd share my process of the watercolour with you all.  It's different to normal you see.  I have not used any black fine liner, or fine liner of any colour for that matter.  And for once, I have taken the time to do layers of colour!  It was slowly built up over a day, very patiently I might add, to give it a deeper, vibrant colour.

Enjoy!

X

The Red Gallery aka Material

My lovely little '(Delft) Blue' Amsterdam book has made it into a shop - HURRAH!  Lucy, from The Red Gallery spotted it at The Whitechapel Gallery, London Art Book Fair and got in touch to sell it at both their London shop and their Ludlow shop too.  I am so excited about this!  I got to the shop quite late so the photos are a bit dark, but you can see what a nice space they have and all the other great books and artwork they have for sale by various artists.

You can find The Red Gallery @ 1-3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3DT

And the Ludlow shop @ 131 Corve Street, Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 2PG

Alternatively you can have a browse on their website: www.materialmaterial.com

The Amsterdam book has had the pleasure of being in this shop a month or so now, it looks like it's made itself at home nicely.  This week I dropped off a few of my 'Down Your Street - Old Amersham' books as well as a selection of my Christmas cards for some lucky Londoners!

All of these are also available in my Etsy shop if you can't make it to The Red Gallery or are not local, which you can find at www.etsy.com/charlottevallance


Thank you for reading,

X

Garden Illustration

Over the course of the summer I've taken on a few commissions to do Illustrations of gardens.  Maybe you know someone who is very proud of their garden, fond of it, enjoys spending a lot of time there?  Or maybe you threw a great party and want to thank everyone for making it a special day!  These lovely gardens are a few that I have had the pleasure of illustrating.  They have made it onto gift sets of greeting cards as well as being gifted as framed illustrations.

I can work from photographs and visit the garden in question personally (I've been known to travel quite a distance for a good illustration opportunity).  However, if it's a secret, i will work from snap shots that you can provide on the garden's behalf.  These gardens obviously show off their summer colours, this doesn't limit your garden at all, what ever may be your preferred season - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter - I will illustrate it at it's best.

It's quite nice to have an original illustration + a set of greeting cards of the garden, go hand in hand together.  But if you're just interested in just one or the other, then thats fine too!

Please contact me on charlotte_vallance@hotmail.com 

I'll happily answer any questions you may have.  And if you know the general size of illustration you would like, and maybe have an image of the garden (so I can see how much there is going on that I'll have to work with), I can give you a quote.

Thank you x

Illustrated Postcards take 2

I've just got back from a little/massive road trip with my boyfriend across Europe.  We camped, we went through 6 countries in total (Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia & Italy), we took a pedalo out on a gorgeous lake, we found that there were a lot of old people everywhere we went (?!), we swam in the sea, we cooked over a little campfire thing, we slept on a blow-up mattress that only just fit in our tent and we had a really great time.

Here are the lucky three postcards that got made while I sat with a cold drink of ice tea by the beach in Croatia while the boyfriend sat with a cold beer and got stuck into his book!

2 part spread of the view of houses and buildings in Croatia.  I actually have done a similar illustration about 4 years ago when I was in Dubrovnik with a friend travelling, I'm pleased to say that I have definitely progressed with my style since then!

On the campsite in Croatia we were literally the only ones in a tent.  Not only that, but our tent was tiny!  Literally only for two people to sleep in, and everyone else had these massive campers/caravans that then had tents coming off them as well....wowsers!  Made us feel quite small in the camping jungle.

Mothers Day

It was a little while ago now, but these flew off the shelves so quickly I nearly didn't get a photo!  There was also a daffodil card, but alas it was sold out at the time of the photo.  Thank you to everyone who bought one.

Sweet Shop Card Range

All hand made, painted and packaged.

Card Illustration Design

I've been commissioned to design a card in the style of my thank-you card, but with their garden. I took some photos and played around with the layout and this is the outcome. I spoke with them about which features of the garden they wanted included and then I used my own judgment about what to bring forward and the positioning of everything. The garden is actually a lot wider than it appears here, so it was a case of drawing everything together in a way that complimented the different areas.