Creative Art

The Scrapbooker loves …. handmade paper

Posted by Andrea on March 6, 2012
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Anyone who knows me, knows I just LOVE paper – patterned, plain, handmade, printed – even wallpaper and brown paper. I own tons of it too – so much so that there’s a standing joke, if there was ever a fire in our house, it would light up like a christmas tree and burn quicker than a firework!

As I was going through my handmade papers today searching for an appropriate paper for a client’s bespoke scrapbook album, I got to thinking about why it appeals to me so much.

I came across these beauties …

Ultra thick handmade Indian cotton papers saturated with water based dyes to achieve super vivid colours, all embellished with gold, silver and glitter. Totally scrummy.

Then there were these …

More thick handmade Indian papers with rough edges, heavily ridged vintage travel papers, delicate chinese handmade papers and beautiful Orla Kiely printed papers.

And these …

romantic, textured and oh so pretty

vintage, textured and printed

textured, printed Tour de Paris

textured and printed vintage US and British postcards and stamps

and beautiful painted butterflies.

Then I realised - I just love working with it.

I love the texture, the colour in blanket or patterned form, the grain, the sheen and light that bounces off it, the textures that are created by adding ripples, ridges and embossed patterns, the overlaid glitter and gold and the subtle effects created with pattern and paint, and the stories it portrays in its imagery –  I love it all.

It was then I decided – when I die, sod the red velvet fabric lining my coffin – line it with jewelled coloured decorative handmade paper … and I will rest a happy bunny.

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All Boy WordArt

Posted by Andrea on February 1, 2012
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I love how ideas for new products can suddenly come to fruition after months of hibernation. I’d been thinking about a large ‘Boy’ WordArt theme for sometime. I’d already designed and produced a smaller version in my All About A boy range …

but the more I worked on the Quintessentially  range – the bigger stuff, the more I thought about making these MUCH bigger. Not only can you get loads more words on the page, being able to incorporate photos was an added bonus.

With Christmas fast approaching last year I was forced to pull a few designs quickly out of the bag and so set to work – this was one of the first designs to emerge …

This young man’s Dad furnished me with a lot of words so getting them all on was tricky but not impossible – it just took a little extra time and planning. I kept all the photos to black and white (which is what I do for ALL my WordArt and PhotoArt pieces) it allows for so much more freedom when it comes to choosing typography colour schemes.

The end result? I was happy, Dad was happy and from what I can gather, boy was happy – so nice when that happens!

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Pretty Princess Wordart

Posted by Andrea on January 9, 2012
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Following on from yesterday’s post about Christmas gifts this year, here’s another typographical Wordart print I designed for one very special princess!

Pretty tones of pink and green form the basis of this very pretty Princess Wordart design – it fits a standard Ribba Ikea frame, which is a bonus – spend the money on the design work not the frame; it is now available in our Shop in white and with a rose-pink background (but we can do pretty much any colour background you want tho’!)

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Portrait typography

Posted by Andrea on January 8, 2012
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Christmas is always a great time of year for me to experiment with new ideas. Stuff that has been rolling around in my heads for weeks, even months, gets a trial run – some ideas never make it off the sketch book but others just seem to take off.

Take this one, for example …

A rather neat piece of portrait typography. I knew that the recipient was a huge fan of Murdoc (The Gorillaz) so took the opportunity to base his Christmas present on an image of Murdoc and a few words supplied by his Mum.

By all accounts it went down a storm (and I got to experiment for a new product range.)

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Ballerina PhotoArt

Posted by Andrea on October 3, 2011
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Last year, a good friend commissioned me to photograph her very talented daughter in various ballet poses as part of her application to the Royal Ballet School in London. During the shoot, I took full advantage of the time, and of a very beautiful, elegant young lady, and took some rather wonderful portraits of her as well – much to her Mum’s delight.

To add to her delight further, I created this gorgeous PhotoArt piece using the photos – a little visual reminder of her daughter who is now, happily boarding at the Royal Ballet School but who is, sadly, missed very much by her mum.

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Losing my creative mojo

Posted by Andrea on September 13, 2011
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Surprisingly, designing new products can be a particularly arduous task. I spend a considerable amount of my time working on accounts, admin, sales, marketing, website development, blogging and other such activities that have nothing to do with designing or crafting. They are a necessity of self-employment; they are also a demon to my creative mojo … let me explain.

When I eventually find myself with time for ‘play’,  I get very excited. I mark out days in my diary – weeks in advance, put my phone on silent, ban the kids from the studio, shop for new supplies to inspire me, drag all my idea sources and notebooks out of their hiding places, put on a fab new album to listen to and then set about, with much gusto, the task of creating.

It sounds idyllic. I can assure you it isn’t.

Two hours in and the scene is not one of harmonious creativity. A hundred ideas swirling around my head along with product and resource overload just isn’t cutting it. Everything I try just isn’t working; heaps of product and supplies are now strewn all over the studio in various piles – die cuts, glue pots, paintbrushes, stacks of coloured and patterned 12″ x 12″ paper, flowers, rub-ons, metal frames, boxes of buttons and brads – you name it, it’s all out. Half finished projects and my initial ideas are now scraps of crumpled paper on the floor and my note books have huge pen marks through them with the words NO blazoned all over them in red marker.

I have lost my creative mojo.

No artist or creative (or writer for that matter) likes to admit to losing their creative mojo – but it happens. We spend 80% of our time doing uninteresting,  mundane, necessary administration and that seriously messes with our creative thought process. We just can’t dive straight in and produce wonderful, fresh pieces of art straight away. It takes time and thought, then more time and even more thought. This can go on for days, even weeks.

I have, however, been here enough times to recognise the pattern and have, to some extent, accepted this part of the process. My solution? Cake (or wine, dependent on the time of day) and a few hours spent casually glancing through the carnage that now surrounds me whilst listening to the aforesaid album at my leisure.

Then the ideas come.

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Using your home to promote your business

Posted by Andrea on March 29, 2011
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Whenever a client calls at the house, the first thing they always comment on is the large (and I mean LARGE!) creative canvas hung on the wall in the dining room – it is 36″ x 24″ and is of my darling 5-year-old DD…

Its reason for being there is three-fold. Firstly, I love the canvas (in fact I love it so much it forms the basis of nearly all my advertising postcards and leaflets), secondly, it looks fabulous against the rich red walls, and thirdly, when clients visit me and are waiting for me to make them their tea/coffee, they casually walk around the dining room browsing the quirky paintings, drawings, photos, paper crafts and arty bits and pieces that are on display. The canvas always attracts attention. I have sold more creative canvases this way than any other form of advertising or marketing.

A neighbour was in our home for a BBQ last year and fell in love with it too; she booked a photo shoot with her 2 gorgeous kids, ordered an album, several prints, a framed montage, and this week, on the back-end of that initial enquiry, a creative canvas – this one is 30″ x 20″. Simply gorgeous.

Opening your home up to clients can be tricky, you always have to have it looking clean and tidy and smelling sweet for a start! (I was up at 6.30 this morning doing just that as I had a client meeting me at the house straight after the school run). But it also has huge advantages; being able to work around my kids’ timetables and my husband’s job, being able to dash upstairs to grab a client’s file and discuss their requirements whilst stirring a risotto also has its merits. More significantly, it allows me to adorn my home with my unique personalised pieces, whether it be photos, canvases, paper, photo and word art montages, paper crafts, hand-made books and ornaments – even knitted handbags (yes, I have been known to don a pair of knitting needles). It also allows my clients to view items ‘in situ’, not in some cold, white-walled, impersonal studio. Framed photos and prints line my walls, stairways and hall, canvases sit on shelves and are hung from walls, albums, WordArt, PaperArt and PhotoArt pieces are casually placed around the house along with handmade books and arty pieces. All are used and looked at and ‘lived in’ within my home – this, in my opinion, is why I get the response I do from clients.

To prove a point, my client (from the school run this morning), booked a photo shoot, placed an order for a 36″ x 24″ creative canvas and asked whether I would be interested in running a craft afternoon for her daughter’s forthcoming birthday bash – all this, before I had even passed her her coffee.

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PaperArt – Part 2

Posted by Andrea on February 9, 2011
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I have been a huge fan of the likes of Jen Stark and Yulia Brodskaya for as long as I can remember – the things they do with paper makes my heart race, such is the skill involved. I was revisiting Jen Stark’s site last week and this gorgeous piece of paperart caught my eye.

As did this piece …

Now, I can’t even begin to do the maths for these pieces of art but I did have a go at something a little easier at the weekend (with the help of my Cricut Machine of course!) Here are the results… a new PaperArt design!

I’m still a LONG way off the complexity of Jen’s work but it was fun to do and gave me a perfect excuse to use up a lot of old cardstock; it was also surprisingly easy (once I had figured out HOW to do it) and, more importantly has wowed by kids. Sorry, but you just can’t beat that!

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Newborn WordArt

Posted by Andrea on February 8, 2011
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Being creative does have huge advantages when it comes to giving unique personalised gifts to friends and family; it also allows me to ‘play’ for the afternoon in the studio. A friend’s new arrival gave me the perfect opportunity to expand on the WordArt I had played around with before Christmas, and, rather than keeping to a monochromatic colour scheme, I played around with the colours a lot more and added a pretty embroidered pink pram – I’m really chuffed with the result!

Here’s hoping Mum & Dad love it too!

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Romantic PaperArt

Posted by Andrea on January 31, 2011
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There are a ton of mind-numbingly uninteresting jobs I have to do this week, so before I even began to look through the dreaded task list, I thought I’d get some crafting in -  feed the soul so to speak. Inspired by great movie one-liners and some pretty awesome lyrics by Mr Kravitz himself, I created these 2 pieces of romantic PaperArt this morning. I now wait with bated breath to see if the We Are Birmingham shop is interested in stocking them for Valentine’s Day ….

Thinking about it, they’d make great personalised gifts … fingers crossed!

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