Recently I got some of my work digitally printed on to poplin cotton. The cats, pictured above, is the pattern which I entered and got shortlisted in the Make Art That Sells Uppercase magazine competition earlier this year. The cacti/succulents print was made from a series of mono-prints which have become repeat patterns on notebooks and prints, available through my etsy shop. I thought that these would be interesting to bring alive on to fabric and open the opportunities of where the illustrations and prints could be found.... and this is what I made:
With the cat material I made these fun hexagonal cushions, using plain material to match the colour palette in the pattern.
I also made one plain one, patterned all over - the other side of the cushions with the plain triangles are plain on the back.
The buttons in the middle have been covered with a cat face - which made me laugh when I made them - they look pretty cheeky! Especially when they are looking at the other cat characters on the pattern!
Close up of one of the characters.
From cats to cacti... the cacti material was transformed to pencil cases - well, pretty big cases that can be used for anything - not just art supplies! Anything you'd like to carry around. They are lined with green spotty or gingham material too to compliment the colour palette.
All are available in my etsy shop right now. So have a peek if you fancy them! It's opened up so many possibilities. I love screen printing on to fabric, but digital print allows for a wider range of colours and different textures, and more complex designs... so here's to making more very soon!
Goodbye 2015! Hope you all gave it a good send off and had a good year. For me, looking back, it's been a fine old year. Maybe I'll even look back and call it a vintage year. I completed my PGDIPE (and got a 1st!). It was hard at times, but rewarding to challenge myself academically with reading and writing. I also got FHEA status which is cool. So happy that now all my spare time can be spent making instead of writing assignments. I also ran my first (last? maybe!) marathon this year! I spent a lot of time training and spending so many Saturday nights hydrating and carbing-up and then off I went for a three - four hour run on Sundays. Phew! I completed it at the end of November in beautiful Florence, Italy and it felt AMAZING.
So, despite all the time I felt had been taken up by pushing myself mentally and physically last year, I was pleasantly surprised that my best nine on instagram was lots of creations!
Lots of plants too. Knitted Cacti, patterns, notebooks. Most of this is available in my etsy shop right now if you fancy having a browse! Foot is on the accelerator this year. One Christmas present I received in 2015 was the Make Art That Sells course by Lilla Rogers which I'm loving! I'll post my creations from that as I make them, but so far it's really inspiring and such a great thing for me to get back into creating and making post-pgdipe and marathon training, which has just taken up all my time. I've been busy still though! Printing new characters to make homewares and new items over the next few months. I will blog about these later on, but here, have a glimpse of a few things to come:
With the cat material I made these fun hexagonal cushions, using plain material to match the colour palette in the pattern.
