Coldplay album as inspiration?!

Oh yes my favorite band, their new album has recently come out and I wanted to draw your eye to their album art.  Strangely it sort of fits in with my design project for this term.  I've not told you about it yet but I've based it on the theme of maps.  Now you may be wondering why Coldplay links to my design project, well I suppose it does in 2 ways.  First, when your working (you designers/crafters/arty people, because I've been told by friends who are in other lines of work that they can't do this because it's too much of a distraction) doesn't your imagination and passion for your work seem to magnify when your listening to some inspirational music.  We've all got those bands and songs that make us feel we can take on the world, well Coldplay is the band that does that for me.  Secondly, their cover art, the wildly coloured, detailed patterns in the shapes of the letters.  I'll show you some of my work in the next post, but I'm thinking about playing about with wild colours that are shown above on the album cover. 

Does anyone else have music they listen to to inspire them while their working?

Amazing artist I found last year in SAN DIEGO!

Ok so when I went on a spontaneous trip to go and first meet my boyfriend in San Diego, California, I came across this amazing artist at a market.  I love the detail in his drawings, the bold choice of colours and the iconic images he works from.  He really thinks through what he is going to put into his work and how they link in with the theme.  I bought a print of the art work below and it's my favorite because it's based on the famous art work of Hokusai's great wave.

I've done the images extra large so you can see the detail (I know the side bar goes over it but it is a small sacrafice)

Look really closely and you can see images inside the image!
Here is his website, definitely worth a look because I couldn't put all of his work on here!

Claire Prebble: Wearable Art

After spending a couple of hours surfing the net looking for inspirational and unusual designers/artists I finally found one that took my breath away.  The amount of work that has gone into her costumes is incredible.  She uses a lot of wire work which you can't notice from afar, but once you see the bodices up close its amazing that amount of precision is possible.  Seeing these just make me want to get the pliers and copper wire out and give it a go.  I imagine it will take a few years of practice to get it up to this standard though.

The other point that drew me to this artist is how young she is, at 18 she won the supreme wearable art award with the entry pictured below, this was after having 10 years of experience at making these wearable art pieces! Gradually getting more advanced of course, I would be gobsmacked if an 8 year old could manipulate wire at this standard, then again Mozart composed his first piece at the age of 4.

Her Website

My second thought when seeing these garments (my first was wow...) was that the amount of sterling silver wire used must have cost a bomb...so of course I had to find out how much it was.  For just a metre its £6.70.

Here are a couple of her other pieces that caught my eye:

If you think these are pretty cool then you should check out the world of wearable art website here!
The imagination thats gone into these picese is incredible.

Butterfly inspired clothes

While in Ashville NC at the weekend I stumbled upon the shop Spiritex, they're an organic apparel company, I'm very interested in organic production so it was nice to see organic clothing.  What caught my eye was the designs that were inspired by butterflies.

This corset and skirt is definitely an head turner.

Some pretty interesting techniques to try with a camera

So I was on a 2 hour car journey and we took a lovely scenic route through a woodland up the side of a mountain.  The views were to die for, but being shook about in the back of the car wasn't so much fun.  To take my mind of the constant flying from left to right and back around all the bends I tried to take a photo of the woodland that was whizzing past.  The photos look really interesting though, the first one looks almost like a painting.

So of course I went a bit mad and took as many as I could, they're a good way of coming up with colour palettes for designs.  I just shake my hand around or turn it in a circle to give it these effects.  Give it a go.

Textile Graffiti!?

While searching for some interesting textiles I came across textile graffiti, also known as yarnbombing.  Even though its a form of graffiti I think it's clever how it takes art to the people.  It's not what people expect to see and the contrast between the soft yarns and the outside environment.

 

It'll be winter before you know it and I'm sure the trees will appriciate a nice scarf to see them through.

Bottle caps 2

I posted about bottle caps back in December, and ideas for what I should do with them.  I now have even more bottle caps and still havn't done anything with them.

I came across this jewellry designer, Yoav Kotik (click the link to check out his website) who uses bottle caps to make unusual necklaces, bracelets, rings and other pieces.

They look a little tricky to make but they've given me some ideas of where to go and what other possibilities there are for using up my bottle caps.

 He also makes these unique flowers from bottle caps

I also came across different uses for them, as keyrings, or putting photos or other trinkets in and filling the bottle cap with araldite to hold it in place.  I also came across them being used as beads which I thought was a particularly unusual way of recycling them.

Using them as magnets was another idea, I'll keep you posted on whether any of these ideas work out

Florence Manlik

Well i'm into the summer holidays now, so I've not got a project of my own to show you (well not just yet).  I did find Florence Manlik who's detailed work caught my eye.