Word Up - Tigerprint

I entered Tigerprint's latest competition - Word Up - to come up with some original greetings captions. Here are a couple of my entries:

New Baby and Wedding. The design wasn't the factor, they're judging the words... but I fancied having a play and enjoyed making all the hand drawn type. Fingers crossed they like them, though it's always a good exercise to generate new ideas for myself!

Xmas (in September!?)

Under usual circumstances I would be dismayed to see Christmas products in store mid September... I thought it was the done thing to wait until after Halloween? I guess the summer has well and truly gone!

Anyway, I will make an exception this year because I've just spotted some of my designs in Marks and Spencer (in store and online) and that put a smile on my face!

Contemporary Trees and Traditional Scene multipacks:

Holographic and metallic wrap and matching tags:

You may be able to spot my snowflake design on the silver bags in the "shopfront" picture on M&S's website:

 

A hubby Christmas card, with embellished detail:

And to be REALLY organised, a sparkly Happy New Year card with glitter!

That's it for now, more to come later.

I hope you like my designs - and forgive me for talking about Christmas in September!

Tigerprint Christmas Typography Comp...

This week I had on my to-do-list to enter the Tigerprint competition. I haven't entered as frequently as I used to which is silly coz however busy (or not) I may be I always enjoy tackling their briefs. Also, the designs can always come in handy to re-use when (if) I don't win!

Last minute my eleventh hour entries are in. I do like designing for xmas greetings and the Typography theme was a lovely challenge, a new way to look at a thoroughly designed season!

The brief was to design a card exploring Christmas Typography as the theme, and also as it's an online card it has to have editable, personalised text and/or room to upload a photo... oh and has to work on a range of scales from a small thumbnail to a large size printed card. Keeping to a simple, contemporary colour palette I created my "let it snow" design from random "falling" snowflakes forming the letters by using negative and positive space. I enjoyed creating this one; adding the snowflakes practically one at a time... time consuming but very theraputic at the same time!
For the "Christmas Tree" and "Let's Make Merry Wreath" designs I chose a decorative font and manipulated it to fit together in a christmassy papercut style. Reminiscent of cutting paper snowflakes.

The wreath would frame an uploaded photo really delicately, perhaps inside the card?

Finally, a more fun and informal romantic Xmas greeting with "Note to Santa"!

A couple of my new blogging and twitter buddies, and previous Tigerprint Comp winners, have blogged their entries to the Tigerprint Competition too... have a look at Elizabeth Ryman, Helen Pickup, and other regulars Marlene Leibowitz and Bess Harding's entries.

Cutting and Sticking

I work in a variety of media; I enjoy drawing, vector illustration, digital painting, real life painting etc... but one of my styles that I developed during my degree (at Glasgow School of Art) is a collage style that I think is quite individual.

I colour and cut papers and layer them up before photographing them. My first piece was an illustration of a Ceilidh for the front cover of the Big Issue. I then had a lovely commission for The Scottish Ballet where I observed and sketched the dancers at rehearsals and studied their costumes to create several pieces of work for their calendar and exhibition.

I also have had work published in this style by Paperchase, in Elle magazine, as greetings cards, wall art, book covers and corporate illustration.

Most recently I have revisited this technique for Tigerprint, creating traditional style Christmas cards (under wraps until Xmas 2010!). Fashions come and go and a commercial artist has to evolve to be successful. I don't know whether it's because paper cutting is becoming more in demand (thanks to the likes of Mr Rob Ryan... and have you seen Jayme Mcgowan and Peter Callesen?) or whether this way of working contrasts to current trends, but it's really nice to get the ink rollers and scalpel out again!

More Love Stuff

This is the card that I adapted my Tigerprint competition entry from. I changed it to suit their typography brief better, though I think I may prefer my original design? It's a card suitable for weddings, anniversaries, valentines or other romantic occasions!



Keeping on a romantic theme, my wedding invitation design above has been expanded as a range on ballisticblue.com with rsvp and thank you cards to match. This design is available in duck egg, pink, taupe, lilac and black; and you can order this design as a birthday or anniversary invitation too.

These two designs are also on ballisticblue.com, and can be personalised as anniversary, birthday or wedding invitations too, and with room inside for a photo upload!

Loved Up

I'm entering the Tigerprint competition today, the theme is Love Typography. I try to enter when I can, it depends on whether I am working at home or not as to whether I have the time. On this occasion I used my mother's day pass to work on my ideas yesterday evening while my husband fed and entertained our two children! (I did spend quality time with them during the day!)

I have had some success with the competitions in the past, but even when (more often than not!) I am unsuccessful I still have a few new designs to add to my own collection!

One of the criteria of the brief is to make the design editable to suit Marks and Spencer Personalised online cards (where you will currently find some of my designs).