pattern

 I've been doing a lot of printing using hand carved eraser stamps.

gift bags

zip pouch

market bag

notebooks

hand carved stamps

New Designs on Vida

I've finally gotten around to posting a few new designs on Vida. There are lots of new products including scarves, totes and shopping totes that fold into a zip case. You can see all my products here.

Scarf design made using cut paper

Scarf design made using cut paper and a white background

Scarf design  "Pattern Play" based on my Spoonflower design

Scarf design  "Pebbles" based on my Spoonflower design

Pysanky

The Spoonflower design challenge this week is Pysanky - Ukrainian decorated Easter eggs. Using wax-resist to create the folk art based patterns, each egg is an intricate work of art

Decorated eggs can be found all over Europe.  I visited Budapest, Hungary and purchased some eggs as gifts. A Polish friend made me this one many years ago.

Hand made decorated egg from a Polish friend

For my Spoonflower pattern, I intended to paint a variety of eggs but completely ran out of time. So I decided I didn't have to be so literal and painted folk art inspired designs that might be found on the eggs. I used one of my books, Folk Art of Europe (by Helmuth Bossert) for inspiration. So while my designs may not be traditional Ukrainian designs, I tried to give them a folklore feel.

Art painted in gouache

I painted in gouache on Bristol board, then scanned to my computer to put together the repeat pattern. I added eggs in the background, as though the birds and flowers had popped off them. 

My final design

The voting ends tomorrow, February 19. You can see all the submissions (and vote) here.

Spoonflower Color Challenge

The Pantone "Color of the Year" for 2019 is Living Coral. Spoonflower, the website for custom fabric, presented this week's design challenge with Coral at the core. We were given 4 specific colors (Goldenrod, Midnight Blue, Coral and Gray) and had to include all 4 with no black, white or variations of the color. I drew the circles in pen and ink, scanned them and created my design in Adobe Illustrator. My first design looked great but I had a white background and after double-checking the rules, had to do a re-design. Here's what I ended up with.

Spoonflower Color Challenge entry

The voting is now open and there are over 700 entries! I was amazed at how many awesome designs there are and how many similar design themes. You can place your vote on the Spoonflower website here.

Exciting New Project!

I've been working on a new project that I'm very excited about.  I've been wanting to print some scarves for awhile but have been having trouble finding an affordable way to do it. Out of the blue, I was invited to submit some designs to a newish (launched November 2015) website called shopvida.com which makes a variety of scarves and tops from artists' designs. The site features all kinds of designers - photographers, painters, printers, etc - and manufactures their designs as custom, print-on-demand products. The company is based in San Francisco and manufactures mainly in Southeast Asia. A portion of the proceeds go towards a literacy program for the makers.

You can check out the site here (http://shopvida.com), or my page here (http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/victoria-cole). I've just ordered some product which I will show as soon as I receive it. Below are a few of my first designs offered for sale.

Mid Century Mosaic Scarf

Mod Dots Scarf

In the City Scarf

In the City Top

Winter Leaves Top

Flea Market Find

Last Sunday I went to the flea market and found this fabulous mid century box. I had to have it. I didn't even care about the contents - a little brush and scoop for dusting up table crumbs. The pattern reminds me of something done by Swedish designer Stig Lindberg but since neither the box or the contents are marked in any way I'll just have to wish. The cat was an ebay purchase and is done by Swedish designer Lisa Larson while the white pitcher in back was long ago flea market find.