British Home Chic

I am very excited to announce that I now have a designer profile on the British Home Chic website! The website shows off the talents and portfolios of many designers as well as selling lovely homewares and gifts- everything from ceramics and wall art to jewellery and textiles. The lovely people approached me and offered to show my designs, which I jumped at the chance to do. For more info go the the site or follow them on Twitter @britshomechic Here's a little sneak preview of my page!

Trentham Gardens

I recently visited the beautiful Trentham Gardens in Stoke on Trent, a place I have visited several times living in the area. this was the first time I had managed to visit at the height of summer, and I was blown away by the gorgeously designed gardens, spectacular views and most of all the range of flowers and plants. Florals are something I only really discovered my love for a few years ago and now I can't get enough! Here are a few snap shots from my visit, I'm hoping to use them to inspire some doodling soon!

New Designers

I'm very excited to announce that I will be exhibiting at New Designers this year at the Business Design Centre in London! Alongside some of my other course mates from Staffordshire University I will be exhibiting my latest fabric designs as well as an exciting portfolio of work from Wednesday 26th- Saturday 29th June on stand T57.

to find out more about the exhibition you can visit the website, and to view my Artsthread Portfolio which shows all my projects and more about me please go to http://www.artsthread.com/p/lauraelder/

Digital Repeats

Alongside the fabrics I created for the final pieces for my project Ornate Obscurity, I also created a collection of digital repeats to work alongside the main designs as simpler all over patterns, using some of the drawings used in the fabric design and a similar colour palette to tie it all together. Here are a few snaps of the digital prints in my portfolio.

I'm very excited to take all my recent designs along with the rest of my portfolio down to New Designers next week, more on that soon!

Laser etch

To compliment my main collection of fabrics as well as the digital collection, I wanted to use the leather I bought and really showcase what can be done with it on the laser etch. I used a section of my repeat design I created digitally and etched it into a large piece of flat leather to create this piece.

I'm really pleased how well the etch shows of my drawings, and would make a lovely framed piece of artwork. It also got me thinking about how this could be applied to products... bags, shoes, notebooks, leather cases for phones, laptops and tablets... the possibilities are endless!

Degree Show

I can't believe it's all finished, but I'm so happy to announce that the degree show is now open! I'm exhibiting as part of Show & Tell 2013, Staffordshire University's degree show exhibition on the College Road campus in Stoke-On-Trent. The show is running every day until Saturday 15th June, with the opportunity to see final year work from disciplines including Surface Pattern & Textile Surfaces, Illustration and Graphic Design, Crafts, Ceramics and Jewellery, Animation, Photography, Film Production and Fine Art. There's so much to see and some real talent to witness, so come down and have a look, and if you enjoy the show don't forget to tweet about it with the hashtag #StaffsShow!

A preview of my space in the surface pattern studio just before my assessment!

Printing- sneak peek!

So I've been very busy in the print room printing my repeated lengths- 3 in total of 4m each! After all the hard work of designing and kodatracing, it's great to see my vision come to life. Heres a few photos taken during printing...

Strike off- testing out my colours and checking the design

This length was printed on fabric I dyed myself- it took a while to get just the right shade of yellowy green! Really pleased with how it looks in repeat.

This length used the same yellow/green shade on a black cotton this time, with the second screen printed in glue, ready to be foiled.

and here's a close up of how it looks finished, it took a long time to cut out the pieces of foil and press by hand in a small heat press. I love this beautiful multicolour iridescent foil, I'm hoping it will catch the light well when it's hung.

There's also a rather lovely purple/pink silk length with a black flock print, but I'll save that to show you later!

Placement

Over the Easter break from university I had the fantastic opportunity to work at Paper Rose/ The Art Group in Nottingham. This was off the back of a live brief which the company set us at University to design Typography themed cards aimed at a male market- I was so pleased to have my designs selected as a winning entry, and part of the prize was two weeks placement in their design studio.

During my week there I had the chance to develop the designs I created for them during the live brief with a few more ideas for the range. I also developed my floral wallpaper design into some gorgeous giftwrap and gift bag designs, including mocking up samples with foil finishes on- I do love a bit of sparkle and shine! It was also great opportunity to see how a design studio works on a day to day basis, get to know more about ranges, the design and selection process and all the exciting techniques and finishes that are used on cards and giftware products.

I had a fantastic week working with all the wonderful team there, and am very excited to return for my second week of placement at the beginning of July, when I will be doing some more work in their design studio and hopefully pushing on with my card range for them, so stay tuned for my post then on how it goes.

In the mean time, why not check out some of the great ranges they produce at www.paperrose.co.uk and www.artgroupcards.co.uk, or like their Facebook pages and follow @paperrosecards and @The_Art_Group on Twitter for regular updates!

Lasercut Loveliness

Something I'm hoping to incorporate into my designs is the use of leather that is lasercut and/or etched. My lovely friend offered me some time on the laser cutter, so I jumped at the chance to test out my drawings so far on the leather I had (I bought a whole purple leather hide for £49- bargain!) Here are some of the samples I produced.

Testing the speed and power to achieve the right depth for etching the leather...

Then I used my drawings so far to do etching experiment on some pieces from a book of leather samples I have been given...

I then moved on to pieces of the leather I will be actually using, using a slightly larger scale...

I experimented with cutting as well as etching...

This piece was etched first, then cut out

These pieces were just cuts, it took the laser a couple of goes to cut right through!

From these experiments I feel the etch may be better as a separate piece, perhaps I may take a section of my final repeat design and it it into a large piece that could work as a cushion or wall piece. I really like the cut outline style pieces, perhaps these could work as add on 3D elements of a repeat print. I can't wait to do some more drawing and work on combining it with this exciting technique!

More Drawing!

I have been continuing to draw the weird and wonderful forms I have been studying for 'Ornate Obscurity' thoroughly enjoying the drawing process. I thought it would be nice to show you all how my drawings progress, along with some more finished ones...

For these venus flytraps I began with laying out the basic outline...

before filling in with mark making to create depth and texture.

For this spotted Orchid I began with a pencil outline (I often start this way to get the shape right) then blocking in the solid areas...

before using dots to fill in the detail and add shading.

the completed spotted orchid.

Orchid with textured petals (does remind me a little of an alien or fly face!)

Another weird but interesting plant, I love the potential this has for creating a pattern with (though I have no idea what it actually is!)

I'm really excited to develop these drawings further and eventually use them in a repeat design, and possibly as cuts and etches on the laser cutter- come back soon to find out more about developments in leather!

Welcome to my world...

Hello to everyone reading this, my first ever blog post! I have set up this blog to help document my design process from conception to fruition, and to share my designs with the big wide web. Over the coming weeks I will give you some snippets of what I am up to in the studio as I embark upon my final ever university project, but to kick off I thought I would show some of the designs I worked on last term which are featured as the backdrop to this blog.

Hot Fresh Florals

This was an 8 week long project brief I planned at the start of my third year, under the general heading of "wallpaper" in the loosest sense, we were free to do whatever we wished. Having spent the summer in Cyprus working I was very inspired by the colours of sunsets and used these to inspire my colour palette, whilst also using some of the images I had of florals out there as a starting point for my drawing...

Through much experimentation with line drawing, dyeing papers, bleach painting papercutting and layering, I created and digitally printed these final designs...

The idea is that they are customisable 'tile' designs which can be attached to a wall in different layouts to suit the users needs, depending on what kind of pattern they want and how intensely patterned they want their walls to be.