Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts

21.3.08

Holiday drawing

Holiday drawing
I spent many hours in my holidays (so long ago now!) drawing every piece of vintage crockery we have here at home. It was one of the nicest things I did all holiday, really.

It's taken so much longer than I expected, but I've finally turned these drawings into a brand new teatowel design! I was about to post my photos of it... when Blogger turned all mean and spat my pics out. Grr.

Watch this space. New teatowel design coming soon, really soon (speak soothingly to nice Blogger)...

9.3.08

Guess how old this design is...


Guess how old this design is...
Well, amazingly enough, the little buck I used in repeat for my Multibuck design is over 2000 years old, and comes from a cave painting in the Cederberg region of the Western Cape.

My cartographer friend, Peter Slingsby, knows all about this region's topography, history and art, and has published books on all of these topics. He's also the person who lovingly traced the image from a photo of the painting on rock and kindly allowed me to use it in my design.

These two Multibuck cushions are now for sale in my Etsy shop, and Pete's books are for sale online at Mapshop, as well as in bookstores all over South Africa.

27.2.08

Heartworks at the Expo

Heartworks at the Expo

I made some designs based on Fynbos flowers that the amazing embroiderers at Heartworks have put onto cushions. Here they are at the Heartworks stand at the Design Indaba Expo, which ended last night.

Just in front of the lower cushion, you can also see some wall decals I've made using some of my paper cutout designs. I'll get them into my Etsy shop soon, promise!

I've been covering the Expo for the Elle Decoration SA blog, and now I'm off to the Design Indaba conference for the next three days. Inspiration overload, here we come!

24.2.08

Plumberry Weeds

Plumberry Weeds
I've admitted before that I have a strong aversion to the colour purple, but for some reason, I felt compelled to print Summer Weeds in a rather purpley new colourway. Maybe I'm starting to soften on the purple issue at last. And just in time too, it seems: I heard Design*Sponge saying on Tuesday that purple is hot hot hot!

Anyway, to distract myself, I'm calling the colour "Plumberry", and I actually think it looks really nice! Hop on over to my shop to see more pics.

PS: I was supposed to have a brand new teatowel design on my Etsy shelves this week, but it seems I still have lots to learn about the silkscreening process. Sniff. Still, watch this space cos I think it'll turn out well in the end...

21.2.08

SA Design


SA Design
In the runup to the Design Indaba Conference and Expo which starts on Saturday, I'm focusing on South African design at the Elle Decoration blog all week long. Come see what I've found.
Springbuck ride-on toy by Joom.

12.2.08

A cut tut


A cut tut
I arrived at my studio on Saturday morning, wanting to make something large and filled with different kinds of leaves and stems. In the back of my mind was this sketch by Arounna, and this ink drawing by Etsy seller, Karen Gathany.

Step 1


After looking at lots of flowers and plants in my books and magazines, I drew a 45 x 45cm composition of botanical specimens onto some thin white paper, and stuck it to black paper with a couple of pieces of sticky tape.
Then I started to cut.

I use steeply-pointed NT cutter blades in a rather wonky craft knife. I really should get a proper NT cutter because it's much more stable.


Step 2 Now it's just about putting on some music and putting in the hours. I slice through both layers of paper, cutting on either side of the lines I've drawn, removing the white paper so I can see where I've cut. I tend to make lots of decisions and changes as I go.


Step 3
Change the CD again, shake out your fingers, and keep on cutting...

Step 4
I like this part - I slough off the white paper guide, which remains largely intact, but very frail.


Step 5
This part takes the longest, and I have to be so careful. Most of my cuts have not been close enough to a neighbouring cut, so now I carefully make release cuts to remove the negative spaces. The more negative space I remove, the more delicate everything becomes.

Step 6

Finally! I finished without tearing anything or slicing anything off mistakenly.

Step 7

Now I hang out the nearly-finished cutout on my line so I can look at it and decide what's next. Mostly, I'm happy with this cutout, but some areas seem a little congested and could do with some pruning, which I'll get onto today.

7.2.08

More cutting


More cutting
I think I'll turn the long ones into screenprints on paper. The other one was made to go on a pillowcase, I think. Lots to do!

8.1.08

More animals

In more detail
Thanks for all the positive comments on my horoscope animals! They've spurred me to finally my Flickr page organised. So now I've got a cut paper/vinyl set where I've uploaded all the photos for you to see, along with a few others.

7.1.08

Paper tigers etc...

Paper tigers, dragons, etc...

Vida e Caffe coffee shops have an free instore magazine called Obrigado, and for their New Year's issue, I was commissioned to do paper cutouts for all the Chinese Horoscope animals. What a cool job!

A super-quick deadline meant I didn't have time to take my own pics of the final work, so I only have the official white on white versions, which are lovely, but quite hard to see. Here's how it turned out in print. I'm very pleased with the result.





By the way, in case you're wondering about the scale, the little people in the pics are not life size! Each animal is only about 10 - 15cm high.

20.12.07

Girard pebbles

Girard pebbles
I found these pebbles by Alexander Girard at Reference Library. I like 'em.


Check out MaXimo to see Girard patterns on all sorts of things.

6.12.07

Scandi Love forever

Scandi Love Forever

More mugs. This time on the wall of a kitchen in Stockholm, found on This is Love Forever. The author, Kayte Terry, appears to share my lurve of Scandinavian design, and has written a great trends post on the subject over at the Storque (she gave my Borrowed Spoons a look-in - cool!).
(Photo originally from Stockholm's Love Apartments by Jeu de Paume)

5.12.07

SA Design on D*

SA design roundup on D*
Wow, check out Gary’s fantastic roundup of South African designers over at Design*Sponge today! The wirework in this photo is by one of our supersonic design stars, Heath Nash.

PS: For anyone who feels surprised that there aren't any Black designers featured in Gary's piece, please read his comment about this in the comments section.

25.11.07

Glimpse

Glimpse
A few weeks ago, I made this large cutout, after my friend Candice asked me to make something for a large wall in her dining room. Candice and I were at school together, and met up again, almost 20 years later, after she bought a cushion from my Etsy shop. Isn't that odd?

14.11.07

CHOW

My teatowels are on CHOW.com! Click here to see their lovely teatowel feature, called "upgrade your rags".

It's kind of breathtaking to have my work featured alongside Marimekko, Lotta Jansdottir, Atelier LZC and other flippin' superstars of the teatowel universe.

What a week for publicity! I'm utterly reeling from it all, and many thanks are in order. First, to Michele of CHOW for including me in her feature, then also to Grace and to Bowie and to Jan for the sales spike due to the Design*Sponge, Print & Pattern and Poppytalk listings. (I hope I didn't leave anyone out. If I did, let me know pls). Thank you.

I think I need a cup of tea to bring me back to earth.

7.11.07

Summer Day - new on Etsy
I've got a new teatowel design in my Etsy shop today!


I've called this one Summer Day. The element making up the repeat is a cutout I made from a diagram of a floral inflorescence, but the overall design makes me think of dandelion seeds drifting across a summer sky.



It's printed in two colourways, which I've called Poppyseed and Dry Grass .


(And thanks for the great plug, Grace!)

5.11.07


A peek...
By Wednesday, I'll have a brand new teatowel design in my Etsy shop. For now, just this little peek.

31.10.07

Concentric calendar

I'm so impressed with this beautiful limited edition calendar made by Etsy seller, Debi van Zyl.





It's printed and bound with a wood strip, and then Debi has cut the concentric circles by hand!




Beautiful! Check out Debi's blog to see more of her work and inspiration.

28.10.07

Bathroom and Vera

Earlier this year, light finally dawned when I read this post of Lena Corwin's. At last, I could decipher this squiggle on our vintage bathtowels.


It's a signature, reading Vera, belonging to the 20th Century designer Vera Neumann . Some of her scarf designs have been reissued at Auto, and I've heard that she designed teatowels too. Would love to see them.

19.10.07

Cutting phrases

I keep returning to gaze at Rob Ryan's epic cutouts since Lena reminded me of his work in her post on Tuesday. I also enjoyed finding his blog and reading about all the great projects he works on. He has an Etsy shop too!


Anyway yesterday, while doing a cutout for a magazine illustration (an article about not wanting to see the writing on the wall) , I saw an opportunity to do a little Rob Ryan-ing of my own. Of course I could have just drawn these letters and scanned them, and my wristwatch was telling me that would be the sensible choice, but to heck with it! I cut 'em!


Before cutting, I had to choose between having the letters as negative or positive shapes, deciding on the positive because I wanted the loops to have centres.

In the magazine illustration, it won't be apparent that these letters were cut because this is a background part of the whole pic. It's a pity because I think their shapes work best close up.



I wonder what kind of paper Rob uses that it doesn't tear? My solution is to cut sticky vinyl, because then I can cut the flimsiest of lines and not worry about having to secure it for display/framing/scanning. Vinyl just can be very difficult to apply correctly. Often I cut two versions of the same illustration at once so that I have a backup in case I stick the first one down badly.
Have a great weekend. I hope to be doing lots of cutting in my studio.

17.10.07

On and on about a jug...

Shoshana Snow is this weeks' Etsy featured seller. I like these things she makes from porcelain.
The jug reminds me of my two beloved black and white Arabia jugs. Regular readers will recall the tragic day when one of these broke, and truely devoted readers will remember that I've snivelled about it again in another commemorative post. Perhaps I should just quit mourning the jug and just get it fixed!

Back to Shoshana Snow, then. Fortunately this lovely little pot doesn't remind me of anything I've loved and lost.