I've been playing around with garment placement and am dying to get some lightweight fabrics printed with my illustrative patterns, it's tough finding a digital printer here though! Might have to try abroad! 

How stunning are these backstage images from Mary Katrantzou's ss14 show!

So I may have mentioned somewhere earlier down the page (this could be a lie...) that I've entered into the Kapiti Coast Arts Trail in November. -It's not a huge thing but I'll have a stall to showcase work for visiting art collectors and hopefully I'll sell some of my original works. 

I've just gone on to check the main page and (I'm a little excited...) they've used my store front images as the heading picture! yay!

 I've discovered my new happy place! 

The City Gallery here in Wellington -specifically Gregory Crewdson's exhibition. We're pretty lucky to have some of his work here!

The images have an almost painterly effect to them, I could stare at them for hours.

Images via ArtBlat

Beautiful surface designs from Sarah Devey -UK based designer.

Would love to have the lemur print in a couple of large (2m) paneled frames for the walls! 

I have never heard of Lilly Pulitzer. 

Given that I don't live in the States I could be forgiven for not being aware she existed right? However being a textile grad and lover of print & pattern you'd be surprised that I haven't! 

But that's okay because I know of her now, and am planning a trip to one day visit one of the amazing Lilly Pulitzer stores....when I win the lottery...

I am in awe of the use of pattern and bold bright colours! 

This woman's brand is genius. After googling her a bit and perusing the online lilly store I noted they cater for Sororities -what a genius money-making move! For me this brand now stands right up there next to Cath Kidston and Orla Kiely in that it only takes a few prints with different colour ways put upon many different products to make a cult like brand following. 

Well played Lilly, well played.  

Check out these stunning jewels from artist Kate Rohde! 

Am crazy about the pink ones! 

Thanks to Fancy design blog I've discovered Leanne Culy! A brilliant NZ based Textile designer and artist. I love the idea of painted oars! 

Fun little blog about pattern and surface design! 

Cheese Before Bedtime, CBB. 

Crazy name but wonderful little pieces of stitched magic.

Wish I had a spare 110 euros to purchase a copy of Texitura print design magazine! It looks amazing! 

Quick side note: LOOK! The Mary Kantrantzou team use Promarker pens to illustrate with too! 

For anyone interested in digital pattern design for fabric have a look at this blog  for Angel Textiles -shows a great range of their designs and contemporary designers use of digital pattern. Great inspiration!

Whilst in Auckland a friend took me to this darling little retro inspired cafe out in the suburbs called Sweetie. Beautifully decorated interior and delicious looking edible goodies! 

Coffee was pretty yum also! (They even had a pink espresso machine!)

Repeats created in Photoshop of my original illustrations which were printed onto Cotton Twill fabric at Auckland University

Peter -one of the tutors overseeing the printing on the flatbed. 

ooooo look it's mine!

final result, just needs to be set. Printed on a cotton Twill 

As mentioned in an earlier post I'd taken a leap and booked myself in on a short two day crash course in Photoshop for Textile Design at Auckland University and am really glad I did!

Throughout the two days I learnt there are so many ways to make pattern repeats which have proved far easier then any of the time consuming, confusing processes I'd self taught via youtube/google and even the original course I completed at Uni years ago! So if you are NZ local I'd recommend taking one of AUT's short courses -even as just a refresher as Photoshop CS6 has so many new aspects. 

My only concerns with the course is that two days was not enough time to fully immerse yourself into it, we were pretty rushed on the second day to learn new pattern repeat processes, try them out then get ready for the digital printer in the afternoon so it was a bit of a 'ooo that pattern kind of works lets wack that on some fabric'.... so I did. With three of them. Because I'm indecisive like that... I had high hopes of making some small purses or something out of them but didn't really consider the repeat size and its a wee bit large on all of them for that end product.

But I can now say I have some new technical knowledge that has inspired me to start churning out pattern after pattern -starting with my illustrations -further posts to follow I assure you!

Shop series! 

All individual shops, hand drawn & coloured with Pro-markers (maybe a couple of Tria markers thrown in for good measure...)

Am in the process of making them all hanging out on the same street, and the Candle store is on its way...

'I illustrate to communicate an idea to an audience, but I draw for me. ' 
-Robert Meganck 

Hmm I'm finding it difficult to create an artists statement about my work. I've not done this before and am not sure how to word it so that it gets my point across...(do I even have a point? At the moment my point is 'draw pretty pictures and colour them in' -not so inspiring to the masses huh).

So I've been googling words and phases to use but am going round in circles. 

However I did come across this guy's statement and his point about the differences between illustration and plain ol' drawing, -it's pretty spot on. 

No lies. I haven't been busy. Just lazy.

But here! This brightened my day, take a look at these wonderful little doors popping up over a small town! 

thanks MessyNessy!