Buying Local – Bespoke Furniture

I like to support local businesses as much as possible and I am so pleased that we have recently got some lovely, bespoke pieces of furniture made for our new home.  The quality of the wood and the workmanship is superb and it is great that it is totally original.

This beautiful table is made from a mixture of walnut, oak and maple by Oak Hill Joinery. The reason we decided to do it in stripes is because my husband and I couldn’t agree on the type of wood, I wanted oak and he wanted walnut so we compromised and the carpenter added in maple to balance it out and the effect is fantastic. I love stripes so I am very happy with the end result.

There has been a lacquer added to finish this table off, this will add better protection for the table and a lovely shine which really highlights the beautiful wood.

There was only one little mistake that we made and that was that we didn’t really check the measurements that well, they said it was going to be 8ft by 4ft and as I am a metric girl, I didn’t really comprehend just exactly how big that was until it was too late to change. However, when we build our house (a dream for the future!), we will be building it to accommodate this table!  It will be perfect for dinner parties though so what better excuse to have one!

This is another bespoke piece we commissioned Oak Hill Joinery to make for our master bedroom. We had some wasted space in our room and as this house was built with no storage upstairs, it was something that needed to be done, everybody needs good storage. We got this wardrobe built in and another larger one with sliding doors also built in as there was no linen storage. We chose oak for the wardrobes to match the rest of the doors in the house which are beautiful oak doors.

The final piece of bespoke furniture is quite personal to me as the fabric I used for this piece was my own design, ‘Kakapos amongst the Flowers’.  I had this design printed on heavy cotton twill and Jim of myjunk4u made this bench storage seat, another fantastic local business.  He did a wonderful job, it is a very practical piece with storage in the bench and also underneath, perfect for shoes underneath and hats, scarves, gloves etc inside the bench storage. I really love this piece of furniture and it really brightens up the entrance way.

Have you got a favourite piece of work from a local business?  Please do share in the comments, would love to hear about it.

For now I need to stop spending money and start making some!!  Back to designing and making!

Vintage Finds

I have a love for vintage and in particular mid century furniture and design.  The structure and shape of the furniture is what really grabs me.  A few months back, I bought some mid century Benchairs that needed to be completely restored.  The fabric was not nice at all and the wood had been heavily stained.

The idea was that I would have a go at restoring these chairs (I have four of them), however, on close inspection of the chairs, I realised I was out of my depth and it wasn’t just a simple recover of the chair, there was much more work involved.

I contacted a local chap who restores furniture, Jim from myjunk4u, he restored all the chairs back to life.

We chose red leatherette for the fabric for practical reasons with two young children, easy to wipe clean!  I wanted to add some colour to our quite neutral kitchen and really love this bright red!

I am really pleased with how the chairs look, although because of the heavy stain that was on them originally the wood hasn’t come up as sleek as I would have liked but it shows age and character and thats what I like about furniture, a bit of personality.  I have to say, these chairs are so comfortable too!

I have been needing a nest of tables for the lounge for a while but wasn’t keen to pay too much for them and managed to get this Gplan nest of tables for £10! A bargain I thought as they are in pretty good shape, they just need a little polish here and there but they are in remarkably good condition. I really love the shape of the legs when they are all nested together. A very practical but great quality piece of furniture at a bargain price!

Another passion I have is typography and I really like the old wooden letterpress letters and I have started to collect some. It is a bit addictive and I am finding myself wanting more and more letters of different sizes and fonts! I do need some lowercase letters so that may be my next purchase.

I had a lot of fun playing around with these letterpress block letters, experimenting with different combinations and different words etc. I am hoping to progress with this further in the future as I do enjoy making these and would like to have some special sayings placed around my home.

Do you like vintage? What’s your favourite piece/s?

Upcycling – from dresses to skirts

I have had a bunch of things slung over my sewing machine for a few weeks and today was the day when I decided that I need to start working on reducing the amount of works in progress and complete things!

First on the list was a bunch of my daughters dresses which were size 4 years, she is now 7!  She loves these dresses and some were still in fairly good condition, that I thought I need to change them from dresses to skirt as she seems to be getting long rather than increasing around the waist!

The above two dresses, I have decided to salvage the fabric to use for other projects and not make these into skirts for the main reason that the first skirt had a few marks on it and the bottom skirt just didn’t look right as a skirt but the fabric is so nice that I can see it in another project.

Photo taken in fading natural light.

This dress was a favourite and it worked great for converting it into a skirt. I simply chopped the pink top part off and folded the ruffled waist line over, sewed a seam and threaded some elastic through to the required fitting.

Photo taken with a flash

This skirt fits perfectly and looks great on. I think if I was to do this again, I would have made a denim waist band and attached the ruffled waist so it was sitting more on the hips and that way it would have been longer and perhaps laster more than one season!

I forgot to take a before picture of this dress, however, it was quite a simple one to convert as it just had straps over the shoulders which I simply cut off. I did add a bit of elastic into the waist band as it was a little loose but other than that, it was a very simple transformation.

I have to admit, I don’t like wasting things so I am pleased I could transform two dresses into skirts for my daughter and the other two dresses will be used for projects in the furture, perhaps a sunhat?? I think I have got that upcycling gene from my own mother who was very creative with sewing all our clothes by upcycling all her old office work clothes.  We had some beautiful outfits that were original (my mum sometimes made up her own pattern) and they were made out of very high quality fabric.

Speaking of my mother, last year she gave me an old butterick pattern which she used for my sister and I when we were 7 years old, I have been meaning to get and make something with this pattern so I am going to attempt to do so this week.  I think I will use some cheap fabric first as it has been a while since I followed a pattern, I tend to make things up as I go!  If it turns out okay, I shall post a picture!

 

Spring Colours – Being Inspired

Amazingly we have had some lovely weather this past week and it seems Spring has finally sprung!  I just had to get out today after spending most of the week on the computer designing, it was time to get the camera out!

I went to Wrest Park which is an English Heritage property not far from where I live, it has a lovely Stately home and beautiful gardens which were full of colour and life.

The sun shined brightly on the flowers which bought out such colour and depth, something that I have missed through out the dull, cold winter.

I did take a lot of flower shots I have to admit, I love flowers, the colours, the shapes, the movement of them. You would assume I am a keen gardener with a garden full of flowers, however, it is not the case, I love visiting other people’s gardens!  I have had my fair share of pulling up weeds!

I love nature and I love photography, both give me such inspiration, not only do flowers inspire designs, so do simple things like the light on these steps.

I must admit I had to wait a while to get this shot as there were a couple of people who couldn’t decide where they were going and were hanging about on the steps for a bit, but I got it in the end!

This pheasant was great to capture, his feathers are full of colour and pattern, another great inspiration for future surface designs.

Taking a few hours away from the computer really does recharge ones inspiration, I am now brimming with ideas for new designs. What do you find helps kick start your inspiration?

New Fabric Designs

I feel like it has been a while since I have posted new designs, to be honest, I have not had a lot of time behind the computer, however the last two days I have been working non-stop on a geek chic inspired collection.  I am entering the design below from the geek chic collection into the Fabric8 competition however I do not feel very confident that my bold simplistic design will get through to the semi final stage.

I have had a lot of uncertainity over this design but as usual I ran out of time to work on it any further.  I originally was going to enter this design below, which is made up of less than and greater than symbols, but I felt it wasn’t strong enough.

I decided the design above and the two below could become the coordinates for my main geek chic inspired design.

I felt slightly deflated with my efforts for the geek chic collection that I decided to do a completely different design for this weeks Spoonflower competition which is a 5 colour limited palette sailing inspired design. I really love the colours that they had chosen for the limited palette, they were perfectly matched for my son’s bedroom so it was as much an inspiration as it was an incentive to design a sailing inspired fabric with these limited colours.

I really like this design and can’t wait for it to be printed, I am thinking of making some cushions for my son’s bedroom and a lamp shade to match.

This garden tools inspired fabric was designed for another Spoonflowers weekly competitions a few week’s back, I really like it and is another fabric waiting to get printed.

Coordinating floral design to go with the garden tools inspired fabric design.

I am loving bold, simplistic and colourful designs at the moment. What designs are you liking at the moment, what’s trending for you?

More photography fun!

I’ve not been able to write as much as I would like, but hopefully once the kids are back at school I will have more time to work on projects and to write more.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny day, the first real warm day this year and it felt like everybody had been let out of the prison I like to call UK Winter 2012/13!  We decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and go for our first bike ride this year at the nearby Forest Centre at Marston Vale, and what a perfect opportunity to bring the camera along for some essential practice!

There is still a lack of Spring colour out there but I did manage to find one flower which I just had to take a photo of!

More signs of Spring – new life emerging.

My husband and I are both keen amatuer photographers, we are both fairly competitive, and there is always some discussion about who took the best shot that day etc.  Therefore, may be someone out there can answer that question for us?  Here are two similar shots, which one do you think is the better one, swan 1 or swan 2?  Please do let me know in the comments, would love to know!

Looking for tadpoles.

What a great day, sunshine, cycling, photography and ended with a bbq, perfect!

Now I must focus and work on a new collection that I have been doing sketches for and also I hope to have a new website up and running in the next month or so, never enough time!

Who Needs a Hug?

School holidays always means things get quieter for me in terms of not as much time for creating and designing, and these holidays are no exception, plus I have been under the weather with the usual change of season cold so my energy levels haven’t been as high as I would like!

A few weeks back I blogged about inspiration and in particular a drawing my daughter did of her soft toy cheetah called Kyla.  As I was feeling poorly, I created this illustration to cheer me up!

I do want to make a repeating fabric design using this illustration but so far my creativity has failed to produce anything worthwhile.

I find that taking a step back and working on something else usually helps when I get a block.

Therefore I decided I would have a go at lino block printing, something I have very little experience of but something I have wanted to do for quite some time.

I did my first try this afternoon of my new logo which looks like this in graphic form:

and this in lino print form;

I know, it’s not great so won’t be using lino printing for branding purposes!

However, it was so much fun doing it and I have a bunch of sketches which would lend themselves well to this medium so I hope to have some time in these school holidays to have a play with it a bit more.

It is nice to take a break from designing on the computer, it is quite refreshing and may help me with the design block I have with the illustration.  I am totally open to any suggestions, please do leave a comment.  Sometimes brainstorming by oneself is hardwork!

 

Photography practice/fun!

Easter this year has a totally different feel than it normally does, I think it has to do with the unusually cold weather conditions we are experiencing. I was kind of hoping that by this time, I would be out capturing amazing photos of flowers, blossoms, new life etc. However, it is still feeling and looking very winter like, but I didn’t let it stop me getting out and taking some photos in the woods with the kids today.

New life amongst the old branches

There is some evidence that new life is starting to come out even in these harsh conditions.

I really love branches and these ones create nice lines and patterns, simple but inspiring all the same.

Having fun with the shutter speed with this puddle. The kids and I tried very hard to create this type of splash for my husband to take a photo but I have discovered, we are pretty rubbish at throwing!

Post production experimenting with the puddle splashes.

Love the vibrance of the moss colour, it was probably the most colourful part of the woods!

I really love this photo of the kids walking in the woods, they were deep in conversation, so lovely to see how well they get on.

It was lovely to get out for a walk today despite the rather chilly weather and the random snow falling, it is fun to play around with photos and I do hope the weather improves so I can have some fun with more colour!

My Personal Statement

I am currently working on my online portfolio website, something I haven’t done for many years so I have found myself taking a trip down memory lane and reflecting a lot lately, questioning myself on the direction I am taking, and embracing the new challenges that lay ahead. Here is my personal statement.

I have spent the last 20 years trying to work out what it is that I want to be when I grow up! It is a question that some people automatically know from a young age, however, for me, when I was growing up I just wanted to see the world and experience it for what it is. In some respect I did do that, I travelled on and off for 6 years, through Western Europe, Turkey, Greek Islands, America, Mexico, South America, Africa and a few Pacific Islands.

La Pelossa Beach Sardinia

Now, at 38 years old, I am starting to find what it is that I want to be and that is a designer, particularly in surface design. I love art in all different forms and mediums, it inspires me as much as nature and life does. My degree was in Multimedia Arts which I completed in 2003, technology has moved so fast that my programming knowledge is now mostly redundant although the fundamentals is still in place. However, the design skills I learnt from my degree have progressed into designing some beautiful and unique textile designs using mainly Illustrator with vector artwork although I do occasionally use Photoshop and original paintings/photography to create my textile designs.

Sardinia

I have a passion for nature photography and I am a keen amateur photographer who one days hopes to take ‘out of this world photo’s', still working on that one!

My designs are inspired by life, nature, shapes and anything with good form and movement. I can see inspiration in the most mundane objects and I love the process that goes into progressing that design into a stunning surface design.

I believe good design needs to tell a story or has a story in it, you look at it and it makes you think and perhaps it evokes a discussion, even better!

I am still learning and I think that is important in life, I am not a perfectionist and don’t ever claim to be one as I don’t believe there is such a thing as perfection, because one persons idea of perfect may well not be another persons idea of perfect. I strive to create unique designs that tell a story, evoke some feelings and look beautiful.

I would love to hear your comments about what good design means to you, is it form over function or function over form?  Does it tell it story, or evoke thoughts/emotions?

 

 

Easter Spring Time Designs

Well it is now officially Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere and what better time to create a bright, bold collection of designs with lots of spring inspired colours.

I so need to have some bright colours, the UK winter has been grey, very dull and long!  I am feeling optimistic that Spring is on its way, although deep down I know we are expecting snow this weekend! This collection was based around a current competition that Spoonflower is having this week to design a painted egg fabric design for an 8″ swatch size.

This is my entry (above) to the competition, it is inpsired by the 1950′s tea pot lid I featured in my post about inspiration and the colours were inspired by my spring inspiration pinterest board.  There are well over 250 entries in the competition, lots of very talented designers out there so I very much doubt I will be in the top 50 but it is fun designing for competitions like this as it stretches my creativity and I end up making several designs to make a collection.

Really love this mosaic design with these bold colours.

Below was my original painted egg design I was going to enter but I felt it wasn’t strong enough but still liked it for the collection.

I like the simplicity of this design.

You can check out these designs in different fabric lengths, wallpaper or wall decals when you click on the image of the design.  I am yet to proof these so they will not be up for sale until mid April approximately.

What are you favourite spring time colours, what inspires you?