Debenhams Online

I was in the middle of some idle Sunday surfing when I spotted one of my prints on the Debenhams website!

I think it looks great if I say so myself!
Click here to view this on Debenhams online.

Albino Spring 2012

Today I had every intention of uploading another piece of a scarf design that I finished last week. Sadly though, my computer is taking a million years to load the file and I'm impatient. I guess you'll just have to wait until a time comes when I'm either less impatient (good luck) or when my computer isn't acting like a total pile of crap.

Anyway, instead of scarves I figured I'd give u fashion. I didn't upload my inspiration from last week so here it is.

These are part of a Spring 2012 collection by Albino. If you want to see the rest of it (and u should, it's yummy) please click here and please see below my attempts at recreating these looks!

Thanks for reading!

More Gems & Birds

I've run out of song lyrics to alter for use as titles (I'm sure there are more but I'm too lazy to think of any). Anyway, back to the point, I finished my scarf!! I am SUPER proud of myself for the level of efficiency I've displayed this week *big grin.* Not only have I completed a scarf design in 4 days but I have also managed to get all my freelance work done! Yey me :-D

I'd like to retain some mystery for a little while but I can't bring myself to leave you with nothing to look at so here's a sneak preview!  

Thanks for reading!

Summer Animals

I've been neglecting my blog of late. I'd like to say it's been because I've been super busy with work and deadlines etc. but that would not be entirely true!! Mostly I've been busy entertaining a friend who came to visit me in Barbados. You may remember her from one of my previous posts (she's the one who loves herself ;)) Now I don't want you thinking I'm a complete bum so I have compiled some examples of my work for your viewing pleasure.

 
So, yea, back to animal prints! It's all Missoni's fault really. She went and designed a bunch of brightly coloured animal prints for Spring/Summer 2012. I should probably not complain, I actually quite enjoyed putting these together. :)

This week I'm supposed to be creating a set of winter designs that people would wear on vacation. I did ask if that wasn't in fact the same thing as a design for summer (what with said winter designs being brightly coloured) but I was informed that there is apparently a difference. I was not informed what this difference is but I was left to look for inspiration all day. Soooooo here is what a winter vacation to a sunny destination looks like to me........

I love this palette!! Please take a look at the complete collections on Style.com they are gorgeous! Click here for Burberry Prorsum and here for Alberta Ferretti.

Carlos Miele

Blogger is acting strangely this evening. It published a blank post which it now won't let me delete so instead of leaving a contentless post on my blog I'm going to write something.........even though I hadn't planned on updating today. Um......ok, news.......I'm going back to Barbados tomorrow! yipeeeeeee!!!!

I may have more to report later in the week but until then I'm gonna be a bit cheeky and post something I probably shouldn't.

Details of my Carlos Miele inspired dresses! :)

Mark Making- Recreating Carlos Miele

As you may know I have difficulty publishing some of my freelance work due to a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. Consequently I have to be a touch more creative with how I show my fashion prints. Today I had a cunning plan!

Carlos Mieles's Spring Collection is my inspiration this week. Here are some of my favourites,

Reinterpreting these has proved a little trickier than I had first anticipated. It's really easy when using Photoshop to make designs look overly digital and lose the organic sense that comes with hand painted designs.

After several failed attempts to recreate these shapes I finally found something that works! AND it's great fun!!

A little scanning and some Photoshop later I've got my design for the day! Here's a sample......

Thanks for reading!!

Paisley

There's been a change this week with my freelance work ( and also with my bathroom but that's a story for another time) and I'm loving every second of it!! Allow me to explain........

As you may or may not know, I work freelance for a textile agency which produces prints for womenswear based on the latest catwalk trends. For this company I have designed 180 textures and animal prints with the odd geo thrown in. I have been creating said designs by hand. I am not a fan of doing things by hand. I am not a patient person! The whole process has caused me much frustration for some time now.

This week I celebrated a victory, when after much pleading and bum kissing the company head finally gave in and allowed me to submit some digital designs! That's 1-0 in the battle of hand-made vs digital and 1-0 in the battle of me vs the design studio! get in!!

Anyway, here is my design inspiration for the week,

I am quite fond of Jonathan Saunders and of this collection but would never have been able to even think about tackling something this detailed by hand (at this point I refer you back to my aforementioned impatience). Needless to say I've had an excellent week recreating these designs without so much as a glance at a pot of dye!

Some stupid legal nonsense prohibits me from posting whole designs on the internet but I can post pieces (actually I don't know if I can but I'm going to). So without further babbling.........

Thanks for reading :)

I'm bad at working

Perhaps because of the stress I've endured over the past few days (or perhaps due to my general laziness) I have failed in practically every area of my life.

Actually I think I'm being a little hard on myself. I have succeeded in completing the work I had to do for the hotel but in doing so I have neglected just about everything else.

As I sit here trying to complete my freelance work I find myself completely uninspired and terrified at the prospect of producing yet another half-hearted design. Yet even this fear has not propelled me into a frenzy of hard work. Instead I find myself drawing circles on my page in a lacklustre manner hoping that I may accidentally create something brilliant. Alas, this has not been the case so far.

I have turned to my blog in the hope that someone will suggest something genius that will pull me out of my slump. I have been given the following inspiration to help me BUT I have to create said designs by hand and considering my aforementioned laziness this would be quite difficult. Here in lies my dilemma! Please help!

No More Animal Skins!!!

Some of you may know that I have been designing animal prints for a London based textile company called Bay and Brown for some time now. I should mention that I don't design animal prints exclusively (they are occasionally punctuated with geos and textures) but it does feel like that sometimes!!
Lucky for me it looks like the animal skins are finally on their way out (some may argue they were never really in) which means that i can finally get what i feel is a well deserved break from them!
I was sent an image today of a dress and jacket combo by felder felder which is completely stunning! here it is......

So basically my job now is to interpret that design for the highstreet.
To me it looks pretty architectural so i figured i'd peruse the net for images of buildings. My idea was to find a fairly modern building and crop it down so that it could be mirrored and repeated. I found the Lloyd's building and figured it would be perfect since it has some pretty unusual shapes on it that would make the design interesting.
If you're wondering what the Lloyd's building looks like, check it out below.

So, what i've done here is pretty simple, i just changed the colour mode of the image above left to grayscale and simplified it using the levels with Photoshop.





After cropping and mirroring the image i re-coloured it to create the final design. This was a pretty quick one, it took all of about 10 mins but it served as a good visual for me to work from when i came to transfer the design to silk with dye and discharge.

If you're new to my blog and are wondering what the hell discharging could possibly be aside from a description of poor health please click here to find out more!