My Dream Design Room

We are currently house hunting, which I've found is going to be a rather difficult experience.  Some houses look great in the pictures (by great I mean it needs a bit of work doing to it!), then when we go to view the houses they're a lot more work than you first think.  We saw one this weekend where the photographer conveniently missed the rooms with damp covered walls!

Anyway now I'm super excited to finally being able to put pictures and shelves up, paint the walls and put wallpaper up and just make the place ours!  It also got me thinking about my dream studio/design room, so I've been trawling the internet for design rooms and have come up with some great ideas for my future studio.  Although it may be quite a way down the road before all of my ideas come together, good job I have a super handy Matthew!

So what do I need:

• A nice big desk is a must, it's nice to have plenty of space for my computer, scanner and to be able to draw.
• A smaller table for my whopper of a printer, yes it needs a table of it's own it's that big!
• I'm desperate for some shelves!  My desk gets cluttered quite quickly and it would be fantastic to have some shelves above my desk so I can keep my desk tidy (which at the moment seems impossible)
• I'd love a huge pinboard/inspiration wall.  It's important to surround yourself with beautiful patterns and a big pinboard would be perfect for this.  It would also be handy to pin things up that I need to remember!

Whilst looking for pinboards I found these wonderful ideas, the first one is perfect, it's colourful, pretty and practical.  It's a great idea to make some of the squares blackboards, some pinboards and some whiteboards.

This board surrounds the desk, meaning you have pretty inspiration right infront of you.  Or that to do list so you don't forget to tick some off!

This is a slightly smaller pinboard but I love the crisscross ribbon to hold your pictures.  The great thing about this desk is it has the shelves I so desperately need!

I love the idea of a blackboard wall where you can scribble down things you need to remember, although I would no doubt get chalk everywhere!

A smaller section may be a good idea though, where I could write the big objectives of the day.  A whole wall of black may darken the room too so this is a happy medium.

Finally some big shelving units would be fantastic, I have a lot of products and need a nice, organised area to store them so I can easily get to them when orders come through.

These baskets make the studio look so neat and tidy, I'd love to do something like this so the shelves don't look so cluttered!

A mixture of shelves and cupboards would be nice, so no one can see all of the clutter I throw into the cupboards!

It's a long way off but it's nice to have an idea of what I'd like when the day comes.

New Personalised Prints and Product Photography!

I started by ticking off some of the items on my huge to-do list, taking some product photos and getting the personalised prints up and running.  There has been a lot of positive feedback about these so I'm so pleased to say they are now available!

The product photography was a learning curve!  I'll share some of my tips with you soon!

Bye bye little car!

This weekend I had to say goodbye to my faithful little green Clio, it was heartbreaking.  I’ll admit my car has been weighing down on me recently because it did quite a lot of sitting on the drive and the tax, MOT and insurance would all be due in a few short months.  So I decided it was time to send it off to another family, put it up on Auto Trader and was contacted within a couple of hours by a man looking for a car for his daughter.

I’d taken good care of my little car and gave it a good clean out (cleaning a car is harder than it looks!), washed and waxed it so it was sparkling.  Put some new wheel trims on and it looked as good as it did when I bought it 6 years ago!

This car really signified my freedom when I bought it at 17 and I have so many wonderful memories of my adventures!  From having it jam packed to the seams when I needed to move houses at University to my dad teaching me to drive in this car and taking my test in it. 

From getting stuck in the snow (more than once) then having to get my dad to come and dig/tow me out to endless trips in the summer with my friends.

So as you can imagine I was quite sad to see it go.  However it went to another Emma who will be learning to drive in it, so I’d say that’s a good sign it was time to let it go. 

I’m just happy it’s gone to a nice home instead of selling it then seeing it raring up and down my street with one of those huge noisy exhausts and rave music booming from the speakers….

More Pinterest Favourites

I wrote about some of my favourite Pinterest boards a while ago which was quite a popular post, it's nice to be given all of these fantastic sources of inspiration so I thought I would show you some more of my favourites.

I love to design for children, they're full of such active imaginations that your designs can be fun and full of colour!  Children's designs are always full of colour and I love colour!

Children's Design

There are some amazing boards for children's illustrations and patterns on Pinterest so here are some of my favourites:
Phyllida Coroneo has a wonderful children inspired board which has patterns from clothing to wallpaper, a mixture of products and digital pieces makes it a nice mix of inspiration.
Nikki Upsher and Jill Turney both have wonderful boards full of colourful, cheerful patterns and illustrations.
Sally Payne, a freelance children's designer, has one of my favourite children's boards!  It's jam packed with amazing designs.

Flowers and Gardens

I'm a big fan of floral patterns and have more florally dresses than I can count, so I do a lot of drawings of flowers and nature.  Some of the boards I follow are gardening and flower filled and they're fantastic to use as inspiration.
Glamod Fashion's bouquet board is perfect for this, the colour palettes from the bouquet's are also great inspiration.
Anneline Sophia also has a beautiful gardening board (which will be great for when I get my own garden too!)
My own English Countryside Garden has lots of my favourite flowers too!

Trends and Themes

There are loads of boards which revolve around a certain theme or trend, when you're working to specific trends it's an ideal way of collecting loads of images into one place.
Some of my favourites are the woodland and nautical trends, Inspire Art Licensing has fantastic woodland and nautical boards full of beautiful illustrations!
I've put together my own Forest Life and Under the Sea boards aswell as one full of trend ideas

Some of my favourites

Sally Payne has so many amazing boards so I definitely recommend checking her Pinterest account out!
Caren Barry and Creative Bloq also have loads of fantastic boards, I just can't pick which I like best.

Here's a mix of some that really stood out for me:
Phyllida Coroneo's Stationary
Nikki Upsher's Pattern Love Board
Lauren Hay has a few that caught my eye, her Packaging, Crafting and Papercraft boards are great!
Jane Farnham's Illustration, Surface Pattern and Colour boards

Wedding Stationary

Another product I like to look at for inspiration is wedding stationary, they have some really dainty designs and Natalie from Mustard Seed Creative has a lovely board full of them.
My own Wedding Stationary board has some intricate typography as well as some more unusual stationary designs.

Finally a bit of studio and decor love, Anneline Sophia's are my favourite boards for this, she combines her love for pattern with these boards so they are full of pattern filled decor! and the studio ideas just make me want to get redecorating mine!

Let me know which are your favourites and come and check out my Pinterest boards :)

The job hunt has begun!

After quite a bit of decision making I have decided to go on the search for a full time job.  Working for myself has been fantastic and I've loved every minute, but whilst there are tons of advantages to being a freelance designer there are also negatives.  I'm self motivated by nature so have no problem with getting on with my work, everyone gets a little distracted from time to time but on the whole I'm a hard worker and am happy with designing without needing someone stood over me making sure I'm not procrastinating!

One of the hardest parts I find about being a freelance designer is the lack of human contact, I imagine it is a lot quicker to improve your designs when you are in a studio full of other creatives whom you can bounce ideas off.  Working on your own can often be quite hard to see what is missing in a pattern or illustration, so you end up leaving it and coming back to it with fresh eyes the next day.  I have a fantastic online network of wonderful designers but am looking forward to getting into a studio full of them and feeling the pressure of a fast paced environment.

It can be quite difficult, when writing covering letters and CV's, to get your passion for the job across. You have to maintain a certain level of professionalism and can't really start warbling on about how designing is all you would dream of doing, how you sometimes feel like your bursting with ideas and are so keen to learn and progress through a company that you would jump at any opportunity!

So I've written this blogpost full of my passion for the industry and a bit about myself too.

Why do I love pattern and designing for print?  That has to be one of the hardest questions to put into words, I honestly can't imagine doing anything else, I love to draw, I love to come up with lovely colour palettes, I love to see my designs go from initial idea to finished digital piece to the final printed product.  I enjoy everything about designing prints and illustrations, patterns really appeal to the organised side of me and it takes a good eye to make sure the composition works and the colours are well placed so the pattern flows without your eye being drawn to one particular part of it.

I've always been a hard worker in everything I do, I worked part time whilst at University and took part in quite a few societies aswell as the usual student nights out.  I was constantly juggling all of my commitments, but I thrive on the feeling of being under pressure.

I've worked in restaurants for over 8 years and I would much rather the restaurant was crammed to the seams than only having a handful of tables.  I can somehow stay calm and organised when the environment around me is chaotic.  This is the same for being in the design studio where I am more than prepared to push myself and my design abilities, I find I've designed some of my best work when there was a tight deadline looming over me.

My drawback is I can be a little shy at times, and yet I have probably signed up and achieved more than your average 23 year old.  I single handedly sourced and designed all of the costumes for a University theatre production (my assistants backed out at the last minute), I completed my Gold Duke of Edinburgh which included going to Edinburgh on my own to volunteer on a children's summer camp, I've travelled over to America a number of times on my own,  I took up kickboxing (which no one expected!) and probably one of the biggest - I set up my own business.

Everyone has their flaws but I don't let mine hold me back, I'm always tackling my shyness head on and just go for it despite sometimes feeling terrified!  One way I get over this is to be prepared, I like to do a lot of research so I go into a situation feeling confident in my answers, it really helps you to feel ready for anything that might get thrown at you.  That is until the interviewer asks you a rather nasty question you've not thought of, in which case, don't panic!

Matthew's being helping me to prepare for interviews and such as he has been through quite a few and now appears to be an expert.  It's quite funny he's helping me with regards to interviews because even though he landed himself a fantastic engineering job, he has had some rather embarrassing moments on his job hunting journey.  I don't plan to follow in his footsteps! I won't go into detail as I know people who know him may read this, but as long as I make sure to double check the city in which the interview is I should avoid at least one of his mishaps...

I've updated my LinkedIn profile so my CV is available online for you to have a look at and I've launched a new website which has my portfolio for everyone to take a look at too.

Bobbing Along - Minted Submission

I recently came across Minted.com, I'm not sure how I managed to miss this website as it is full of wonderful illustrations!  From wedding to party invitations it includes just about any type of stationary you may need, all beautifully designed by independent designers.  It's a wonderful sight!

They regularly put on design competitions with one of the most recent ones being for a children's birthday invitation, so naturally I entered.  I had some children's designs I was dying to show the world so inbetween my other work I took the time to put my submission together.  Perfect for a little boys birthday party!

Now this competition requires you to collect votes (which I'm sure most designers hate to ask for!) but there are a number of awards up for grabs which are chosen by a group of judges, which is one of the things I loved about Minted's design competitions.  So if you have the time I'd really appreciate a vote or two, if not then just have a look at my entry and let me know what you think :)

Personalised prints are now possible!

I have recently bought a brand new all singing, all dancing printer.  The Canon Pixma Pro-100 is replacing the pitiful Pixma MP190.  My old printer really needed updating, it very rarely printed the right colours, wouldn't work on my computer so I was having to print and scan everything through my laptop.  It was fairly temperamental!

My wonderful new printer arrived two days ago and the guy carrying it from the van looked like he was struggling....it was a huge box!  This printer is a bit of a monster.  I had to carefully push it up the stairs as the box was too heavy to carry and I was far too impatient to wait for help.  I wanted to get this baby up and running!

Having finally got it up and into my studio I opened the box to find the printer in a sort of sling, it was that heavy it needed a huge thick carrier bag complete with handles just to get it out of the box.  It is now happily sat on it's own table next to my desk.

The print quality is perfect, I've ordered some special photography paper so I can get going with personalised prints and cards aswell as bespoke orders.  I love that I can now print my designs off and not worry about the colours looking completely different to how they do on the screen.  Now all I need is a super scanner then the MP190 can officially retire =)