Designing Winter Pyjamas

A childrens pyjama set I designed today for winter 2010-11. I'm pleased with how this particular plaid turned out.

Revamping My Kitchen

We've been planning and saving to fit a new kitchen for almost a year and when the time came, we had a massive rethink and decided to have a revamp on the cheap instead. Integral to the plan was ripping down an unsightly, cramped wall unit and putting these Ikea shelves up instead. I already had most of the storage items now on display, bit I treated myself to the cornish stripe pasta jar and the red lantern.

With the other simple changes we've made it feels like a new kitchen, and the best bit is the money is stil in the bank :) more pics on flickr

Some more #savebbc6music nonsense...

Causing a stir and here

New Designs in Adams

A couple of my designs now available at Adams kidswear...

Sad Day #savebbc6music

Exciting project for Portmeirion

While I've been recovering form my operation, I've been spending time researching inspiration for surface pattern design for gift and homeware. I'm particularly interested in traditional Welsh craft and design after falling in love with the folk style of design on recent holidays in Wales. During the course of my research I've been interested in Portmeirion's 50th Anniversary collections which are celebrating traditional designs from their archive. My particular favourite archive collection is Susan Williams-Ellis' Totem. I love how it represents the Scandinavian quality of Welsh design simplicity.

Image courtesy of Flickr member The_Moog

By Pure coincidence, I was thrilled this week to be asked to work on a range of surface pattern designs using botanical prints from Portmeirion's archive. These are to be considered for a range of soft homewares for the brand. Its a real challenge trying to apply such classic designs in a contemporary way, but I can't think of a more enjoyable project to kick start me back into work after my convalesecence!

Below is one of the original designs I have been asked to work from.

Convalescence & Flickr

Recovering from my recent op, I'm confined to a chair most of the day but have thankfully unearthed a decrepit old laptop. Its super-slow so not a hope in hell of running any design software but it means I can connect to the internet and I've been spending a lot time on flickr.

I mentioned before I've been doing a photography evening course and learning how to get the best from my digital SLR. I am finding that Flickr is really effective as a platform to display my photos and gain inspiration from others, and its nice to open into dialogue and be connected to a community other than facebook while I'm feeling so separated from the world.

While I chuck all my event, friends & family snaps on Facebook to share with my pals, I'm using flickr more as a gallery for my more considered photography. Alongside photo sets of my travels and college projects, I've just decided to create a set of images I captured in the days before DSLR, or even digital, and above is the first...

Look After Your Insides

I'm having a laparoscopic cholecystectomy today. Or in laymens terms, gallbladder surgery. I'm less concerned about the operation itself, rather the recovery and how long I'm going to be missing work. I'm hoping somone will buy me this Howies tee to help me feel better...

Portraiture Project

Every week on my photography course we are set specific projects. This week it was posing people for portraiture. We were set this assignment last term too and I found it one of the most difficult as its much harder than it looks to capture people in a relaxed, natural pose when they feel anything other than that. Here are my efforts on a weekend mountain bike ride with a very long suffering Mr. Phirefly...

Character Pyjamas at Dunnes

These are the first intake of a range of character nightwear for new client, Dunnes. I design these via an intermediate supplier. Being a new account of theirs, this was tricky as the buyer was cautious about working with a new supplier, but is apparently they're very pleased with the results and will be looking to book again. I like working on these value ranges as there are no pretensions, there's no question the product is anything other than a fun, well priced item.

The supremely important business of selecting kitchen wallpaper

We're updating our kitchen and while I really ought to be pricing up appliances and sourcing suppliers for the worktop, I'm more interested in choosing the wallpaper and have settled on this beauty, 'Tick Tock' from Mini Moderns:

New Graphic T in store at New Look

Here's one of my designs currently on sale at New Look. I'm really pleased with how its turned out as it has managed to stay true to the original design throughout the production process in spite of the delicate nature of the design.

Lost My Dog 5th Anniversary Album Sneak Preview

Here's the artwork draft I have done for the forthcoming release on Lost My Dog Records

Sex and the City Merchandise on sale

Its interesting to see my designs applied to a product other than clothing. This Sex and the City giftware range features graphics I designed earlier this year

Dinosaur Print Tee at Next

Drawing dinosaurs from scratch is never a walk in the (Jurassic) park, particularly when the client is Next, who are scrupilous about copyright law and insist that all images generated are completely original and bear no discernable resemblance to any source material.

I was pleased how this one turned out though considering dinosaur drawing is not exactly comfort zone work and I managed to acheive the painterly effect that the brief required. And, unusually for Next, my first draft, completely un-amended design went straight to production. Although that was probably more of a timescale thing than a design-perfection thing!

See it online here.

I've seen the Pink Light

I was lucky enough to have been recently selected to be represented in the US by design studio, Pink Light. Mary Beth, Pink Light's founder and creative driving force is developing her company's remit by bringing together artists from all around the world to take the US surface pattern market by storm and it's very exciting to be a part of that.

Today is particularly thrilling as not only has my bio gone live on the Pink Light site, I've also had my work featured for the first time on design blog-stroke-bible Print and Pattern, what an unexpected honour!

I've been trying to undertake a more self-directed route this year which has been quite a struggle when I've been really busy with my existing clients. Now it feels like I'm finally managing to find a balance between the heavily brief-led commercial fashion work which I love and the freedom of more personal, unrestricted surface pattern design. Below is a 'holiday' theme design from one of my first Pink Light collections.

New placement graphic T at Warehouse

Its a while since I designed this gothic graphic for Warehouse while I was still working in-house for a clothing manufacturer, but its now available to buy. It appears that since I last saw it the buyers have had their usual input and had some wings added and amended the central crest but theres no mistaking the print. It was always tricky to design for this client as the imagery they were prepared to use in the graphics was extremely limited, they wanted to acheive a gothic, etherial, All-Saints style without using skulls, crucifixes or other similar emotive imagery. I think this design strikes the balance though.

Some more pyjamas in production

I'm particularly pleased with the way the check turned out on this set as the idea was to emulate a cosy, aerie/Jack Wills style plaid and I think we've acheived this. It makes a nice change to incorporate some sketchy florals into nightwear

Two new lines I designed for Camille. Commercial, but still quite fun and very strictly to brief.

Nuts

I have been working on lots of lovely hand-rendered girlswear designs for Adams recently. Its nice to have an opportunity to incorporate some original illustrations. This is one of my sketches I have been working with:

Photography Class

I've enrolled in a photography class at my local AE College. I'm not sure if its for me, as I primarily wanted to learn step-by-step how to use my digital SLR, and this course has more of a creative, compositional leaning to the teaching. I'm trying to extract from it what I think will be useful though, and its good in that it gives me the discipline to take the camera off of its automatic setting and try and take better photos every week.

This is one of my favourite images I've made on manual settings on the course so far...