A designers dream bundle by Going home to Roost

I have recently signed up to join the Roost Tribe, for those of you who haven't yet come across this it is a wonderful little bundle of goodies that are sent to you via e-mail a few times a month.  I love designing and although I can design my own patterns and motifs, the ideas that Bonnie Christie sends through the Roost Tribe spark off a lot of ideas in me and I can feel myself getting inspired as soon as I see the email in my inbox.

My favourite part of the September package (You can see below everything that was sent to the Roost Tribe members in September) was that she shared her story with us, it was so inspiring and it has given me hope that as a small individual designer fresh out of university, I too can succeed.  Hearing of her struggles and the journey she has been on as a creative was just what I needed to hear.  It has helped me realise that this journey won't be easy, but if I put the time, effort and passion that I have for designing into it then it will be worth it.

The best part is that all of this only costs $5 a month (£3.18)
Sign up here
Here is a sneak peek at what we got in September:

Here you can see roughly what type of goodies you will get each month:

Along with all of the above you also get access to all of the below!

Sign up here

Quirky hand drawn style

While I was doing my final university project I came across a lovely artist, Betty Charlie, who has a quirky hand drawn style.  Her colour palettes are quite muted and they work well with her drawings, they keep the focus on the beautifully intricate drawings.  I love that they are not perfect and are a little messy, but still have smaller details giving her drawings amore depth and taking them to the next level.  She also incorporates stitch and tactile elements into her work, which just makes it that much more fascinating.  Here are a few of her designs that really stand out for me:

Working on my logo

So I've decided to try and make myself a logo that I can start using or at least make a header for my blog which is a little more me.  I definitely think they still need a lot of work and keep in mind these aren't the final designs.

Any thoughts on making them better? Or which one works the best.

Pantone's Pinterest Colour Competition

Today's post is all about colour.  Pantone is currently running a lovely little Pinterest competition, they posted the image below and the idea is to choose one out of the ten spring 2013 colours. 

A board on Pinterest full of one particular colour is extremely effective.  Using Pinterest is a brilliant way to build up boards of different colour palettes, you can see how colours work together and they are much easier to see how they would be incorporated into one of your designs.  It’s also a fantastic way of collecting inspirational ideas.  I personally love to sew and make so have collected tons of ideas…which I will eventually get around to doing.

Below you can see my board for the Pantone competition, and below that a few other examples of a couple of the other colours, don’t you agree they look pretty effective? =)

 Meg Berry's Linen Board

 MixedMedia Jewel's Violet Board

A designer feature about me?!

I've been featured on a lovely blog by Dreaming on a star who I wrote about yesterday which you can view here

I just want to say a huge thank you for the feature to Tina Devins of Dreaming on a star, I have had my work featured on a blog once before, but her kind and encouraging words really do make you feel more confident in yourself and your work.  So thank you!

You can see this blog post here =)

Harper & the Owl

Todays post is another of my lovely coursemates, Harper & the Owl, her style is lovely and simplistic, it truly shows how a simple design in only a couple of colours can be extremely effective.  I just want to snap these gorgeous crockery pieces up as fast as I can!

Emiko Hulme, the designer behind these wonderful pieces, has her pottery made by a small family pottery business in Cheshire and then hand decorates them herself.  Her use of blank canvas (as in white space on the pottery pieces) is brilliant, she doesn't feel the need to fill the whole area and instead gives us little snippets of motifs, making the overall designs crisp and uncluttered.

My favourite is the first bowl and mug set below, I love the abstract shapes she has designed and the differing thickness of line makes it quite eye catching.

Also the little birds are so cute pottering across the bowl! =)

Dreaming on a star

I'm currently enrolled on the amazing surface pattern design course by Rachael Taylor and Beth Nicholls and I wanted to share some of my classmates work.  Its hard being a little designer and I think we need all the help we can get, so I hope this will help them all become a little more well known.

First up is Tina Devins and her Dreaming on a Star surface pattern design website, she graduated with a BA in architectural design but found that her real passion lay in pattern designing.  Which I can’t say I blame her, because pattern designing is wonderful =)

Having found her passion she went on to do Art, Illustration, Printmaking and Surface Pattern, which brings us up to date, so lets take a look at some of her designs.

 Happy Hearts

 Happy Hearts Falling Hearts

 Alice In Wonderland Outline

 Little Red Riding Hood

 Plum Design

 Egg Rhythm Outline

 Geometric Plain

Her style is lovely and quirky with cute characters and she has taken quite a bit of inspiration from fairytales.  Her drawings are very neat and once put into Illustrator they produce a nice crisp graphic style.  Also I love her colour combinations, especially in Plum Design!