A busy week!

A very busy week both at university and at home!

I organised all my fabrics and went through what i avtually need. I had a mini tutorial on monday with my textiles tutor to sort out my colour palette. i am having serious SERIOUS colour palette issues.. i just dont know whats going on and i dont know how to get these colours into my designs, decide on a final palette and make ti all look lovely!

We had a pizza party in our Dec Arts 3 studio, with a little help from out biggest glass kilns. Well it is afterall just a huge oven! 

I also came home as sadly we lost my Nanna Richardson this week and it was her funeral. It was very sad, but good to see family!

Ive also been commissioned to make a bunch of babywipe holders for the local ceramics cafe. My friend works in there and came up with the idea for the kids partys.. And theyre gonna pay me in vouchers which is perfect as my little brothers love it there! Im also going there this week to paint a teapot - got a voucher for my birthday :) So that should be good!

Some of my current fabrics!

Packing for homecoming... two weeks off uni and ive secured a work experience placement so im taking everything back! Using this lovely Ted Baker tin for sewing essentials :)

Potential fabrics for local ceramics cafe - 'Crafty Coffee'

Won this cuuuuuuute lino brooch from Kayleigh o'mara!!! Love it :)

Colour - I have been told to play alot more with colour and whether thats thread, paint, pencil, pen, fabric, ink etc. so i have decided to play with each individually. I have made one palette from kona solids, one from ink and the other in dulux sample pots specially mixed for me, so that i can play in three different ways!

One of my colour palettes has come to life with Robert Kaufman Kona Solids.

Making a mess, creating one palette in inks in the screenprinting rooms, NTU.

I have made these colour story boards which present colours on velcro so i can move them about, potential prints and fabrics, as well as physical fabric samples. Love being this organised!

And finally.. our studio.. closed for the evening! I run the CREO instagram page :)

Eight Weeks to Go

not joking. eight weeks to go until my degree collection is finished and up on display for my graduate show!!!!! HELP!! okay i think i will be okay but heres a quick update from the last 6 weeks!!

I did a fabric shop in London.. well its got to be done hasnt it!

My business plan is handed in.. that a 150 page report of research and final written plan!

Colours im working with at the moment. some changes to be made

Organisation :(

Well i visited my favourite fabric shop in the world :(

some drawings

In the print room again! - printing onto my digital prints with gold.. YUM!

Getting Somewhere..

Okay this project is officially driving me insane! Surface design, no matter how concise your idea is, so so broad. i change one tiny thing and ive got a whole new idea of how i can make something.. eurgh!

So basically i am trying to get the look of water-colour and the sketchbook look onto fabric with a screenprint, using methods that would be commercially available. id love to sit there and paint each small part individually but realistically, i cant!

I am using a techinique called Halftone. Its usually used to built up shading and shadows on a print, with a screen. You can use a program that changes a colour picture - a poster for example - into four halftone images, so you can print a bit like CMYK. anyway i quite like the look of halftone and it looks graphic, and it picks up detail that a block shape cant..

I didnt know if i wanted to halftone the birds over digitally printed splodges.. or what... infact im still not sure i just need a cup of tea and to look at a whole bunch of designs! But i could make hundreds of different ones!

This is the first image that i have made all day that has kinda made me sit here and be like.. okay we are GETTING SOMEWHERE! yay!!

I know the blue doesnt really go with the magpie but the plan is to make it like a colour palette - a large splodge and bird in blue, large in purple, and a slither or line of orange, that sort of thing, so that it is in keeping with the colour palette but in a different way. it could go completely wrong; i wont know until i burn my screen tomorrow and give it a test run!!

The result of todays work - after lots of hand drawn and photoshop work, i made this using paint and microsoft word (giving up on understanding abobe)

The thing that worries me is this is not like anything i have done before. I dont see any links or patterns in my work.. apart from drawn line. Ive never done anything that looks this digital before!

Who im loving right now!

Okay so i have been a follower of Hannah Stevens since my Nottingham Trent interview. Her work is featured on the promotional goodies that the University hand out on open days and on interviews. Its got such great illustrative and handmade qualities - very quirky! So this is who im loving right now!

And she has just had a little sale, I have just bought this beautiful bag! Im going to use it at uni when all my stuff it in my locker and i have a massive bunch of keys - this little bag is great for my keys and my phone :D

Hannah Stevens - Created By Hannah

As you can probably see - the prints are very 'me'! And the combination of leather, linen and print are very clever :) Cant wait for the postman!!

Click here to visit Hannah's Blog :)

Finished Fabric Collection - Sewing Notions

My first fabric collection is complete!! I called it 'Sewing Notions' and it is made up of three prints.

One, a repeat tiny button which combines both a polka and a stripe. The second, thimbles and frames. And the third, lino cut button print placed randomly upon the fabric.

All fabrics are linens/cottons unbleached and natural.

I made a few large-makeup-case style bags just to show my fabrics on a 3D form. The project for me was not about the 3D design. These bags are something i make all the time for my Folksy, Etsy and Facebook page which i run alongside my degree.

I have also decided to brand my products as Louise Richardson Designs. This is finished nicely with a button printed label and also cotton ties on the labels themselves.

Im not overly happy with this at the moment i already run a business with my name in it and i think i would prefer one that is a bit more professional looking.. considering using a bird species in there somewhere but its a slow process!

Adding the selvedge to the bottom of the fabric.

The thimbles & frames print in black and white.

The makeup cases which i made! These are soon to be in a shop in Nottingham

The Button Prints

One run of the thimbles and frames fabric after printing. I only printed 50cm strips as i had five to do and not a great bank balance!

Fabrics all on display.

some of the branding

The branding on the cases.

Hand printed fabrics.. The samples!

Things are pushing too quickly at uni for my liking at the moment; I feel rushed into making a 'final piece' when really all I want to do is sit down and concentrate on making these digital pattern repeats much more interesting before I waste money burning a screen with a print that's pretty cool, but not my best work! Anyway - these are the samples for my first fabric collection.

For the next project I want to develop my frames print by printing without thimbles and also altering the sizes of the frames themselves! But I'm forgetting about that at the moment to concentrate on getting meters of these printed up and making some little creations :)

Here are my designs so far!

The start of a fabric print

Lino cut - block printing using Lino & ink

Buttons print onto a screen ready for screenprinted onto a fine linen fabric

My first fabric prints are coming together! I have burnt one screen so far; from a drawing from my sketchbook of Buttons, in a continuous line drawing. I like this design because it combines polkadot & stripe.

The repeat pattern took me a whole day in the digital labs to produce so that i was happy with it. then i printed it onto A3 acetate and made my screen from that!

I have been away from university for this whole week but im excited to go back and get screenmaking again! Hoping to have all four fabrics printed by the end of the week, and maybe some products made. I think ill just make a cushion and a lampshade or something c: