Christening Quilt.

I'm off to a double christening today, for twins :) I'll try and explain the relationship I have to these babies - they're the children of my cousin Rose's girlfriend, although I believe Rose has formally adopted them as well. So I think that sort of makes them my second cousins? Anyway, they're very cute - Henry and Grace.

For their present Rose has asked us to each make a square image for them to collate into a quilt which they're going to hang on the babies' bedroom wall. They'd like to make them personal to us. Me, my mum and my sister all got a square of fabric and this is what I did with mine:

Me and my sister with Henry and Grace :)

Some other good family news of late, my brother and his girlfriend have recently gotten engaged! So happy for them.

Anyway, this is the card I made for them:

Thank You.

Happy New Year!

So I handmade my christmas thank you cards this year. I usually just do them on the computer and print them out, because I can never really be bothered to spend time on them. This year though, because I had so few to write (most of my extended family don't give presents after you turn 18. Although I'm now 22 so I probably had the same number to write for the last 4 years, but I had other things to do then I guess!) I though I'd make the effort to make them. Plus I made them tiny to fit in the only envelopes I had (money ones) so I didn't have to write very much ;) (I'm honestly not ungrateful! Haha)

They're meant to be presents, but I had no christmas fabric to make them festive, and some of the bows went a bit wrong. Ahh well!

Charity Christmas Cards.

The christmas cards I designed for the NET Patient Foundation are available to buy here :)

My mum ordered a load and they arrived today! They're a lot bigger than we were expecting, but still normal delivery size so that's good. And something clearly went wrong before they got to print because the quality's not great, and it definitely wasn't my design that was LQ, but never mind, they still look good :)

It may be in tiny letters on the back of the card, but my name is on there! That's what I was hoping for :)

Now let the commissions roll in.......haha!

~

The other design that was available along with mine that was by Baudine (see it in this post) has now sold out. I guess people favour the more traditional when it comes to Christmas, which is completely understandable, but I'd like mine to sell out too! Haha but seriously, it's really good fundraising for the charity if more can be sold. I think some of my friends will be buying some, all my family will be getting them from us and I know my brother's girlfriend has ordered a pack, so it's all really good awareness for the great work the charity does :)

CardCub.

Some more designs submitted to CardCub :)

Mostly Christmas ideas:

And a non christmassy one that doesn't really have any message:

CardCub.

I've just discovered CardCub, where designers, artists and illustrators can upload their designs for greetings cards to sell and get paid royalties when people buy them.

Sounds like a brilliant platform for all sorts of creative people :)

I've just submitted a couple of ideas for christmas cards. It takes a week or so for designs to go up, and there's some brilliant work on there already, so I'm going to see what else I can come up with! 

After all, I have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands seeing as no one seems to want to employ me :(

What's really great is that you get to design all aspects of the card - front, back and inside, and you can do them landscape or portrait.

Also, I used Illustrator to design the cards (it was either that or Photoshop and I already had the illustrations in eps format from when I designed the NET Patient Foundation Christmas Card and the calendar I designed on my internship ) so it's all good practice!

Crafty Day.

Me, my sister Sophie and my friend Fi had a bit of a crafty afternoon today :)

Paper daisy tutorial here.

Fi managed to make a couple of these to take home with her. She's not arty or crafty at all so she was very pleased with herself!

My sister made these heart garlands.

A joint effort between me and Sophie to make this new home card for our grandparents :)

I fell in love with this. DIY Tassle Garland tutorial here.

This picture made me really want to make these paper poms.

I followed a couple of tutorials (here and here) to make these, and they're a lot harder than they look so I'm still trying to get the hang of them! The pink one is the only one that really worked properly :S I'm going to get some more tissue paper tomorrow though and keep practicing!

We also made paper cranes to hang with the white pom :)

It took us a while to get the hang of making the cranes but by using both this tutorial and this tutorial, we finally managed it :)

Now Available!

The christmas cards I designed for the NET Patient Foundation have gone into print!

I feel so privileged that all three of the designs I sent it have been chosen to be printed, and offer a modern alternative to the more traditional scene available by another artist.

This charity means so much to my family. This rare form of cancer needs more recognition. It is the form of cancer that Steve Jobs just lost his battle with so hopefully it'll be getting the support it deserves very soon.

Anyone in the UK can order the cards from the NET Patient Foundation website.

(I'll be buying them, but will probably end up keeping them for my portfolio rather than sending them out! Haha)

Algarve Chimneys.

My Aunt, who lives in Portugal, has been staying for the last few days.

She's retired, but she makes and sells greetings cards. She's asked me to do some original drawings/paintings of Portuguese chimneys for her to use on the cards :)

Some ideas so far:

Christmas Cards.

The christmas cards I designed for the NET Patient Foundation are now up on their website (here) along with Baudine's designs, my competition!

Our cards are very different though - hers are very traditional whereas mine are modern, playing on the charity's logo.

I'm sure by the end of the month a few more people will have submitted some designs, but I'm still hoping mine will get printed! That would be awesome and no doubt everyone we know will be getting them, raising some really good money for the charity!

Merry Christmas!

Some designs for the NET Patient Foundation Christmas Card, I can't decide which I like best, and which look christmassy enough :S

My mum likes this version best, and I think I agree:

Although I do really like this one as well! :

Thinking about Christmas.

Already!

The NET Patient Foundation (which my family is closely affiliated with) want a Christmas Card designed, so I'm going to design a few things :)

It has to have a moth in it (from their logo, even though it looks like a butterfly!) and it helps that it's red, christmassy colour and all.

One design I'm thinking of is having the moth with full wing span, and some sort of snowflake pattern or christmas scene in the wings.

My mum like this idea, a stylised christmas tree shape with the moth on top instead of a star, with snowflakes around it.

My dad's also asked me to design a poster for his work, so looks like I've got a busy weekend ahead of me! Going to be difficult with camera shopping tomorrow, going to see the Inbetweeners on sunday (yay) then first thing monday morning I'm off up to Scotland for the rest of the week :)

I'll find time...