Christmas Cards with a personal touch

Following on from my post about my Christmas cards in M&S, I must also mention that my Christmas designs for Ballistic Blue are also now available. These designs are available to personalise and also add an optional photograph so really are a lovely personal Xmas greeting, especially to distant family and friends.

It's really easy to navigate their site and upload a photo and add names and a message.

They would also work well as corporate cards with a staff or product photo.

You may recognise some designs from here. I spent some time reformatting them for personalising front and inside; I think they'll work really well.

And for New Year parties!

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!

Blueberry Park Packaging

I've just completed some new packaging design for fab friend and fellow designer Karen at Blueberry Park.

It's lovely to work on projects together with Karen and this was no exception. I've designed her logo and labels previously, and this next step was to make her products stand out with her brand identity.

It's sometimes strange to hand over a finished project to a client; when the execution is out of my hands it can lead to mixed feelings when I see it. Karen, however, is always meticulous and makes things look fab so after handing over the disk of completed artwork ready for print, to see the boxes fully dressed and stacked made me really happy.

Good luck at the London Gift Fair this weekend Karen!

Back into the swing of things!

I'm back from my summer hols now, although that's not really an excuse for more than a month's absence from blogging! Before I went away I had so much to fit in coupled with the school hols... something had to give and I'm afraid blogging and tweeting went by the way side. I'm back into the swing of things now though!

One of the projects I was working on this summer was some character design for party and event organisers Les Enfants' new children's parties at London Zoo.

Meet Zak and Zara Zoo Keeper!

There were quite strict guidelines to adhere to regarding London Zoo's uniform and colour palette, but I'm glad we could pass the pink wellies through!

I wish Les Enfants all the best with their new collaboration, I'm sure it'll be a great success.

I've also spent much of my summer making paper-plate owls and packing-peanut owls (easier to make than to say!) at Breeze on Tour for The Leeds Owl Trail. It was so lovely to be outside, being creative with hundreds of Leeds' young people... we made almost 2000 owls over ten individual days!

I'll fill you in with more news soon!

My New Shop!

Visit my shop here: Rosalind Wilson

When I design greetings cards and invitations there are a few avenues I currently follow, for example designing for a publisher or company e.g. Marks and Spencer, Ballistic Blue where they produce, sell and deliver my (and others') designs. I also create and produce designs for greetings cards and invitations directly to my own customers.

The latter is where I have been struggling with my (not very good) business head. The time I put into meetings and consultations, production, storage, delivery on top of the design doesn't seem practical. I felt I needed to either invest in production on a bigger scale or concentrate purely on designing for publishers.

The latter made more sense. However, I love the diversity of my individual customers' briefs and the personal contact I have with the 'end user', I think it keeps me on my toes and generates fresh ideas.

I've discovered a way I can have an online shop where I can format my designs to be personalised and purchased by the customer, then produced and delivered by the company that run the site: Zazzle.

My Shop allows me to put my designs on Cards, invitations, thank yous (and even bags, mugs and t-shirts) which can be customised and purchased. Zazzle offer delivery options, money back guarantee and lots of help to the artist and customer.

I can still have that personal relationship with the customer, receive feedback and take invividual requests.

Even though I've only recently set the shop up and am still filling its virtual shelves, I've already made quite a few sales and been lucky enough to win two "today's best" awards!

I hope you like it, and I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas!

Poppy for Poppy

Here's a little design to celebrate a first birthday party: a special pink poppy design for a little girl called Poppy!

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.