Oh my! July!

Hello folks!

Well, the whole month of June whizzed by without a single blog entry from me. *slaps back of wrist* I've been really busy for the past month working on submissions for card companies mainly, plus a few craft projects.

The good news is, sales have been going steady for my Running Like Clockworld art print, which you can find (and order, if you so wish!) on Society 6. In case you've forgotten what that looks like, here it is:


I also won a little competition in the month of June, which was exciting! Run by Paper Bicycle through the Illustration Rally blog - I entered one of my floral patterns (the one below to be precise) and won a lovely print and water bottle. (Very handy for transporting Martini, gin and tonic, WATER in over the summer months.)


I entered a card design with this motif into the Tigerprint Mother's Day card comp too, and was lucky enough to make it into the top 15:


I've also been engaged in the very time consuming process of making some paper birds for a private commission. All you collage-ers and paper cutters out there - I take my summer straw hat off to you!! Here they are so far - just a Mr Peacock to join this group:


They are all double sided, and as I'm sure you can imagine, very tricky to assemble with all the individually cut feathers. I made use of four different types of glue, depending on the size and material of each feather/foot/beak/eyeball etc and what it was being stuck to. I also made use of my eyebrow tweezers for placing some cut components, which are now also helpfully covered in crusty white glue-remnants. I will wash these before any future eyebrow plucking, lest I resemble this:

Which frankly, glasses aside, I am already nearing. Definitely got that hairstyle down to a T.

Roses and Posies

I had a real desire to work on a floral print over the weekend, and so that's what I did today. :-) There's too many colourways of this to put them all up, but here's a few.

Hoots, Health and Heavenly Chocolate

Owl repeating pattern based on these little dudes.


And the cake I made for my Dad's b'day - choco-cherry cream:


But it's okay. I did juice and drink all of these* too:


I love all the funny little deposits the juicer shoots out:


*That's bigger than your standard bowl - it's a mixing bowl!

You Are Invited To My Tea Party

I can't help but think this would make quite nice smooth, matte-finish wallpaper for a feature wall in a jazzy tearoom... Maybe? Or tablecloths. Curtains? More is more!

Ahem. Which colourway do you like? The olive-green has a distinct 1940s wartime feel to it I reckon. I decided to stick with a block-colour background and black and white illustrations, as all the cups and cakes and whatnot have a lot of detail, so didn't want everything to become too messy. But could experiment with line colour? What do you think?


Closer-up in golden yellow:


That (hopefully) subtle olive-green:


Duck-egg adoration:


A sweet and sugary coral. I think this may be my favourite...


You may recognise this teatime ensemble (bar a few cupcakes) from my website homepage. I thought I'd give them another lease of life to show them I care. ;-)

Butterflies and Colourway Dilemmas

A fluttery little print I've been working on today - question is: what colourway do you like best?! I can't decide myself...

Trees Please Louise

I worked on this pattern today. And one with butterflies, but I haven't quite finished that one yet. :-)

Just My Type

A couple more patterned-type greeting card designs.

Tahdah!

Blop blop blop!

A fishy pattern, take one:


What does everyone think?

Like Bikes Pattern - More Colours

Good evening!

Tried out a few different colour combinations for my Like Bikes repeating pattern today. Keeping the overall look spring-y, fresh and full of energy. Any favourites? May try out a couple more at some point too.

Like Bikes

New pattern I've been working on today, with spring/summer and lovely bike rides through nature in mind. Going to try out some more colour combinations soon.

My first repeating pattern!

Okay, so I'm a little excited by this. Upon receiving my lovely Print & Pattern book from Amazon yesterday, it dawned on me that I should really try my hand at some repeat pattern making, since a lot of the illustrations and doodles that I've used throughout my work are quite bold and would transfer well as vector shapes. Actually, it's been something I've thought about doing yonks ago, so yesterday was more of a microwave-reminder moment. *PING*

A little google later, and I found a very good tutorial to guide me through the process. The thought of working in Illustrator always fills me with a little dread, but this time I knew I'd just have to give it a go. I'd got numbered steps - what could really go wrong?! (Lots, usually!) I decided I'd use my Vintage Floral motif to have a go at my first pattern:

Well, first up, I did encounter some problems taking my hand-drawn flower illustration from Photoshop, a raster image that had no background, and plonking it into Illustrator. For some reason, even though no background was there, Illustrator insisted on putting a white square behind my flower. I have a little bit of an idea what the reason was now, and eventually, with some fiddling and handy twitter friends' assistance, I managed to fix it. Hurrah! So I was ready to make my pattern, now my flower was a vector and I had my square and my grid etc etc. This is how my tile looked after I'd done with copying and pasting and rotating selected bits of that one flower (oh, and a colour change too):

It took a while to get my head around making sure what overlapped the seam on one side, had to match up to the corresponding side. (In fact, I still have a bit of shuffling to get it just right...)

A few more steps followed on the tutorial later, and I'd got my repeating pattern!


Colour and scale change for a bit of variety:


And I've discovered the lovely "Recolour Artwork" option on Illustrator now, which means I can try out lotsssss of colour variations!

That's about it really - my first repeating pattern - and I can't wait to get started on some more! :-D