exciting stuff

After weeks of thinking about what job I was going to take and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life lol I finally decided! I will be a full time designer at Hallmark near the lovely village of Saltaire, in the most beautiful studio I have ever visited by the end of August! 

Other exciting news is that I am now represented by the lovely Just Kids Ltd who I will be freelancing for children's fashion and interiors through in my spare time! This is great as even though I will be working full time I really wanted to keep designing for children's fashion and interiors to show variety in my portfolio, and to be honest they produce some lovely work!     

                 

Designer spotlight - Damien Barlow

My wonderful boyfriend who usually does most of his work using paper and a scalpel has delved into the art of digital pattern and prints. These lovely prints are aimed towards the younger market and have brilliant compositions! He is currently open to any freelance or commissioned work for both surface pattern design and hand cut paper cuts. Check his lovely work out HERE.

catch ya later alligator!

A little boyswear print I've been working on, not sure whether I like it with the scribble on it's body or not?

Graduate spotlight - Becka Moor

Becka Moor is a freelance illustrator born and bred in the city of Manchester. She specialises in children’s illustration, gaining a BA (hons) degree in Illustration for Children’s Pubishing from Glyndwr university in 2012.

I love love love her work, probably one of my favourite, if not my favourite upcoming illustrators at the moment! And to top it off she is lovely! 

Her website states: "Becka is often told she has a ‘dry’ sense of humour, which she likes to inject into her work to make people chuckle or at the very least, smile.

She has always had a passion for drawing, but didn’t realise you could do it as a grown up. Not seriously, anyway. But as soon as she did, that was what she wanted to do. After the vet, pilot, teacher, astronaut phases that a lot of children first consider, obviously.

Her work has been described as cute, quirky, fun, humorous – all things used to describe her own personality (not really.)

What she really wants to do is work with lots of nice people on lots of fun, exciting projects that others can appreciate. That, and live on a farm with lots of animals to squawk at in her old age."

Check out her website HERE.

Graduate spotlight - Kat Oxley

So I thought i'd do a little feature every friday for the next few weeks (hopefully I keep up with it) on my favourite recent graduates, mostly from my course, BA (hons) Printed Textiles & Surface Pattern at Leeds College of Art! I can't help it I'm biased!

First is my lovely friend Kat Oxley. I love her work and have done for ages! I love the hand drawn elements to it and the lovely punchy colours. Her work definitely screams kidswear/kids interiors to me, but I'd quite happily have her stuff in my house too!

My favourite design of hers is definitely the puffins, just so damn cute! What can I say, I'm partial to a bit of cute :)

Visit her website HERE 

All images are Copyright Kat Oxley 2012

roll up, roll up!

I've been working on something a little more illustrative today, not sure if it's finished yet!

I'm back off towards Leeds tomorrow for a visit to the hallmark and tigerprint studios, I'm quite excited to see what it's all like behind the scenes! In preparation for showing them some more of my work I've been doing a little few new bits and bobs for my portfolio.

playing around

I've just been playing around with some random ideas over the past few days and this is one I've just finished...

Possible card idea maybe? 

New Designers 2012

After an amazing week at New Designers, I'm back in Newcastle for the time being.

It was great speaking to industry professionals about my work and I had a few meetings to show my portfolio to Hallmark, Wilkinson, Paper and Cloth, Next and Mothercare - which was a dream come true. It was crazy showing my work to such successful companies, and a great learning experience!

Our college won 2 awards, the Tigerprint and Harlequin award which was fab and well deserved to the 2 winners Kathryn Fowler and Daisy Pedersen. After showing my work to Tigerprint they also offered me a 6 month paid placement in their Yorkshire studio! 

All in all it was a fab week, with 2 job offers and lots of exciting opportunites. All I need to do over the next couple of weeks is make a decision, which is quite scary.

I attended New Designers with the best bunch of people and it was a great end to the best 3 years at university.

Here are a few snapshots of the week...