Have your advent calender at the ready!

Seeing as though it is the start of advent tomorrow I thought a showcase of some of the most interesting advent calendars I have found is pretty fitting.  I'm definitely going to try some of these out, it's a shame I found them so late, maybe next year.

A little advent forest

Such a cute idea to use baby socks for each day!

A lovely way to hang up a little present for each day

Or keep them bundled in a basket

Hanging pyramid garlands are a cute way to hold little treats 

Or if you want to do activities or give tokens each day these jazzy envelopes are a great idea!

My favourite so far are these sewn parcels 

Although this all edible calendar is a pretty good idea too!

My designs on products!!!

I've recently put some new designs in my society6 shop, the best thing about this is I love seeing my designs on products!  It really brings them to life, although I would love to have my own shop and sell my own products it is certainly a step up from seeing flat designs to 3D mock ups.  Here are a few of my throw pillow designs for you to have a look at.

I'll be showing some of my designs printed on to fabric, perfect patterns for little boys (Tractors!!!!), these will be on the blog soon! :) Aswell as some features on some very talented fellow designers! Can't wait to show you their work!

Tried my hand at some typography

Tigerprint's most recent competition was hand drawn typography, when I saw what the theme was I was so excited because I had tons of ideas and couldn't wait to get it all down on paper.  However as soon as I sat down to do some designing it didn't come very easily.  I really struggled with this theme and I'm not sure why, I think I need more practice!

Here are my designs anyway, any suggestions for improvement or lovely words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated =)

All images are Copyright Emma Hawman of Emma Frances Designs

A mountain of inspiration to share with you!

I've been collecting bits of paper and patterned designs for a while now and didn't know what to do with it all.  I couldn't bare to throw any of them away, you never know when these things may come in handy (I'm pretty sure Matthew is rolling his eyes right about now....).  So before any of my little findings got (accidentally....ye) thrown in the bin I've complied a new inspiration journal that I can dip into if I'm ever stuck for ideas.  I know Pinterest is a good source of inspiration and I do dive into that if I need a nudge in a specific design direction.  I like to be able to put together boards around a certain theme when I'm working to a brief or competition guidelines.  It's nice to have something solid and in your hands to flick through sometimes.

Take a peek

Geometric legging design

Today I whipped up this little design for the Front Row Society design competition, the theme was geometric vs tribal, so I went with geometric and spent the day developing this design.  We had a colour palette given to us so the colours chosen were the ones I had to work with.

Here is the page with my design on, the design hasn't come out as sharp as it is so you can see the pattern below more clearly and see how it would look on the leggings by following this link

Innes Mcdougall's stunning paintings

Here is an artist I came across this week and I was amazed at how beautiful these paintings are, they have definitely inspired me to get my watercolours out.  I showcased more amazing watercolour pieces in a previous blog post here.

Innes also paints almost photographic quality pieces but it was these paintings of eyes and lips that drew me in, leaving the majority of the page white made them dramatic.  The use of colour also drew me to them, I love bright colours and it definitely makes these paintings more interesting to looks at.  Innes has been able to show a lot of different emotions through just painting the eyes, it is interesting to see how this is done as you can see below.