Tag Archives: artwork

Textile Collection Animalistic Innocence

This year’s big chill has had us dreaming of warmer climates, and in anticipation for sun drenched adventures and hot summer nights, our design team has been working hard on a new range of exotic prints for our fabric shop. We are very excited to introduce our new Animalistic Innocence Collection.

To create this playful range we we’re taking creative cues straight out of the Jungle Book, and wanted to create a visual narrative around the serene beauty of temperate forests, the thrill of being wild and the romance of being far away from home.

The gorgeous jungle inspired artwork for this range was painted using both inky watercolours and rugged dry brush techniques to create a variety of textures, line and form. It was important to maintain a naivety to the style of the design elements to give a sense of child-like wonder and curiosity.

Colour was central when designing this collection and a palette of luxurious greens, blues, golds and blush pinks were chosen. All of the motifs were then digitally manipulated and layered to create lush repeat patterns, full of interest and drama.

The Animalistic Innocence Collection has been designed to help you shake off those winter blues by taking you off the beaten path, so go wild for your next DIY textiles project and let our playful range of prints stir up some creative instincts. We’d love to know what you think these designs would be perfect for so get in touch! Prints are available in our Design Library now.

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 2, Snippet 4

Snippets’. Chats with Creatives. We are back with series two! Here at Digital Fabrics we love everything print, pattern and colour and we love to know what makes designers tick. This second series is all about asking some fun and different questions and learning about the inspirations and ideas behind the artist and their work. We hope to inspire others by sharing snippets of these creative stories. We gave the artists and designers featured a varied and different set from series one list of questions to choose from so we will learn something new from everyone involved, should be fun!

Today on snippets we are talking to Bianca from Bianca Smith Designs who creates artworks that are about empowering women and combine her love for theatre, ballet and beauty in a majestic and magical way. Her style is very unique and she creates a variety of artworks that translate across mediums.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your brand/label name what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

My name is Bianca, known affectionately by friends as ‘Bi’, which I also use to sign all of my work.

I’m a Graphic Designer and Visual Artist by trade and I am based in Adelaide. I’ve been a Graphic Designer for close to 20 years where I am able to use my flair for design, but my true passion is art, so over the past 10 years I have invested every moment I can into refining and developing my visual art skills. I love to draw, paint and create. My utopia is producing art all day every day!

My art work always addresses the empowerment of women – almost a goddess status. Bringing together my love of theatre/ballet and beauty, I try to capture the strength and beauty of my characters in an almost theatrical way. I take inspiration from the novels that I read featuring female heroines as well as the inspiring women that I meet. My use of dramatic light and beautiful models assists in portraying the strength and resilience of women.

Drawing from my other love, fashion, I did a series of illustrative for Australian Fashion Labels. My works focused on capturing the strength and confidence of the girls that wear their clothing, whilst portraying the playful essence of the brand. By mixing monotone drawings with a splash of colour, I aimed to change the tone and strength, creating images of women who are powerful yet delicate. This is universally at the core of what I produce.

Where do you call home?

Adelaide

What 3 words best describe your creative style.

Illustrative, Modern, Contemporary.

Which part of the creative process is your favourite and why?

I love the conception of a piece of artwork. The tumbling of images in my mind, which eventually form and crystallise from an idea, a concept, into a clear vision. That vision then becomes an obsession, a desperate struggle to be formed with exact replication. I obsess over sharing my image with precision and that drive continues throughout the process, that desire to replicate perfectly is a bitter, sweet scuffle.

How would you describe your work, and what influences your style?

Although my artistic style can, and does vary, depending on my life and surroundings, I’m also heavily influenced by fashion illustration and my own passion for clothing. The textures, the colours, the cut, and the design all inspire me. I predominantly work in pastel and watercolour and although I create every piece of artwork by hand, I then use the finished original image, together with various digital techniques to create a series of pieces, combining my art with my design skills.

Fashion and women heavily influence my style. I love, love, love fashion, perhaps another personal obsession!

What does a typical creative day look like for you? How do you stay on plan and organised?

After getting up at the crack of dawn to exercise and then get my kids ready and off to school, I usually start my working day with a much-needed coffee and the checking of emails. Unfortunately, the reality of life means some days I don’t leave my computer, but whenever time permits, I surrender to my obsessive desire to escape to my studio and create.

Depending on which stage in the process a piece of artwork is, you will either find me upstairs in my studio drawing life into an image or enhancing that original piece of art in Photoshop as I design something for my unique collection of diary covers, pillows, cards, and homewares.

I’m a deadline kind of a girl, it’s the only way I can stay on task. That’s why I love projects where there is an objective and a deadline. I thrive under pressure and produce my best work with adrenaline, conflicting priorities and a little chaos.

What would your dream creative project look like? Who or what is your dream project, client or job? Tell us about why you would love to collaborate with them and what you find inspiring about their work.

My absolute dream creative project would be working collaboratively with a ‘fashion house’ to illustrate their models and garments for window display and the associated promotional campaign. Having unrestricted access to their design method, the inner workings of a label and seeing their creative process unfold would be nothing less than inspirational. To then have the honour of representing that in art form, bringing that vision to life is my ultimate goal.

If you could spend a day in another artist’s studio shoes who would that artist be?

Kelly Smith of ‘Birdyandme’ fame, works with all the top fashion labels around the world and I’m a massive fan of her work. If I could be in her shoes for a day I would honestly be living my dream. Or Gabriel Moreno – who is an AMAZING artist overseas. He has a remarkable ability to capture the delicacy, strength, and sensuality of women in his drawings. They are just astonishing! I would love to even have a day in his studio to watch him work.

What would you say is the biggest challenge when working for yourself ?

Staying positive about your work!

Social media can be a double edge sword as it both inspires and intimidates. It is full of people posting about their successes and digital platforms have a knack of focusing on the positives whilst minimising or eliminating the negatives, the sacrifices, struggles and setbacks. It is easy to assume “their” life is perfect, easy, and unattainable when there a no posts about failure.

The truth is, for every success there has usually been many challenges, rejections, and disappointments. It’s important to learn from them all and allow it to fuel your growth, stretch you, and inspire you. I often question my skills and direction, but sometimes you just need to believe in yourself and your vision. And then of course practice, practice and practice some more until your craft is refined to its full potential.

If you could go back and tell yourself one hot tip or piece of advice when you started out what would it be?

Believe in yourself and follow your heart

What has been your proudest creative business achievement to date?

Doing an artist residency with Australian Fashion Labels. I worked from their creative hub in Adelaide City for 3 months, putting together a dedicate exhibition, which was then displayed in their store windows throughout SALA (South Australian Living Artist).

What projects or collaborations from last year stuck out, good or bad and what is coming up this year that you would like to plug!

The project that stood out for me last year was doing all the illustrations for the wine labels of an established winery in Mclaren Vale. They will be launching very soon, I cant wait to share them.

You can follow what Bianca is up to: Website, Instagram, Facebook.

New Print Designs – Garden Party

Flowers and lemons and popsicles oh my!

During winter it’s just so easy to find yourself drawn to a neutral colour palette and minimal prints. To help unshackle you from the unlikely effects of the cold we’ve launched a new range of playful textile prints which are anything but drab. Introducing our Garden Party collection!

For this range we wanted to use sweeter than pie motifs, a mixture of neutral and bold colours and a consistently light-hearted theme.The quirky designs all began on paper, using pens, pencils and watercolours to create a variety of textures and lines. The artwork was then manipulated, edited and layered digitally to resolve and polish the designs.

Figurative designs can sometimes feel a bit too kitsch. To avoid this we combined bold colours with softer hues and mixed both textural and minimal elements within the same design. Negative space was also played around with, and as a result is varied across the designs, as they range from heavily detailed to simplistic.

The collection delivers a series of grown up novelty prints for the young at heart with whimsical designs and a statement colour palette! Designs are available in our Fabric Shop now! We’ll be keeping a keen eye on what you create with these prints, so get in touch if you have a project in mind!

New Fabric Designs – Wearable Art

We’re very pleased to announce that we can finally share the new prints that we’ve been working on. Introducing our latest designs: Hand Dyed and Green Lily! For these new prints we’ve drawn inspiration from the ‘wearable art’ trend! Whilst the term can be used broadly, when it comes to print design think heavily textured dry brush strokes, pools of inky watercolours, emotive gestures of line and colour and scratchy pencil illustrations.

Image source

To create our first print we experimented with tie-dying techniques to create a watercolour effect. To steer away from the ultra-colourful, psychedelic designs that tie-dye is often associated with, we wanted to create a print that felt more abstract.

The final design chosen was one with sporadic ink blots, plenty of negative space and a softer colour palette of denim blues and muted corals. The design’s organic feel and chosen colours gives the print a contemporary feel that we think would work beautifully for both fashion and interiors.

With the success of using tie-dyed fabric as a way of creating a repeat pattern we then tried painting directly onto silk using batik techniques. For this print we wanted to create floral motifs that felt looser in their form than those used in our other floral designs.

Image source

The dyes allowed not only for the creation of flowing motifs, but also an inky, spontaneous feeling background. The final design has a free-flowing, tropical quality, and is desperate to be made into gorgeous wardrobe staples such as dresses, trousers and head scarves.

Both designs were resolved as repeat patterns by scanning the original dyed fabric, and then manipulating the artwork digitally. These photographs show the repeats designs digitally printed onto our silk-like fabric Dilly, which beautifully maintains the hand-painted quality of the original artworks.

Whether you like prints that are crisp and minimal, or big, bold and colourful, the wearable art trend is certainly one to try! These prints are now available for purchase in our Design Library.

Brisbane Textile Design for Beginners Workshop

The weekend is almost here, and we can’t believe it’s almost been a week since we had our very first DF School workshop in Brisbane! We’ve had overwhelming demand to start running our workshops away from our studio based in Sydney, so it was wonderful to have such an amazing response to this first class.

The day was full of curiosity, creativity and warmth! We had such a blast and would really like to thank all of the students who were lucky enough to book a spot for their support and enthusiasm on the day. A big thank you to Stacey Bigg as well for teaching the class.

Our Textile for Beginners workshop runs all day and is perfect for creatives who are just starting out with textile design, or those more experienced who feel like they need to refresh some basic textile design skills. The workshop covers the basics of digital fabric printing and seamless repeats, before teaching you how to create a full-drop seamless repeat and preparing your file for digital printing.

Subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest updates on when and where we’ll be running our future workshops. Head to the bottom of any of our website pages to sign up!

Thanks for having us Brisbane! – Until next time 🙂

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 2, Snippet 2

Today on Snippets we are talking to Kate Blairstone, a US based artist, illustrator and designer who’s work can be seen across textiles, wallpaper and art prints with a unique and nostalgic botanical theme running throughout.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your brand/label name what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

I design custom wallpaper and draw lots of stuff (mostly plants) under my own name. My formal education is in Printmaking – I build up images in layers, sometimes using ink on tissue, sometimes digitally. My business launched officially in the Fall of 2016.

I worked behind the scenes in restaurants for years before going full freelance. In that time I accumulated every possible creative hobby (leatherworking, beadwork, gardening) before figuring out that I could combine all those things into surface design and illustration. The restaurant where I worked always needed design help, so I resurrected my art degree to maintain their menu and website. Eventually when we opened a new location, the owner gave me the opportunity to help design the space, including a huge focal wallpaper.

Where do you call home?

I live in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland, Oregon with my husband and 15 month old son.

What 3 words best describe your creative style?

Lush, Loud, Adventurous.

Which part of the creative process is your favourite and why?

I enjoy combing the visual world for inspiration, building color palettes, finding unexpected ways to communicate with color. Taking time to draw from life, getting into a meditative headspace and using my pencil to observe how a thing is structured. Mark making, especially with brushes and black india ink, where color isn’t a consideration at all, and I can just focus on the shape my brush makes. Twist my arm, and I might say my absolute favorite part is coloring my images, when I’ve been through all these other steps and the pieces finally come together.

How would you describe your work, and what influences your style?

I think of what I do like looking at the world through tinted glasses, or at a photograph that’s yellowed as it’s aged. The color of light has a wonderful way of evoking memory and a sense of time and place; it’s a distorted reality. My palettes are designed to enhance this feeling. I spend lots of time looking at plants and working in my garden, and when I travel I pay particular attention to how the plants I grow are contextualized differently in other places, through both landscape and surface design traditions. It helps me to see things anew. I’m delighted by the cycles of my garden, of food and of fashion – I especially love when an iconic style can be seen through the lens of another era or culture and across media, like 70s Victorian Revival, or Art Deco Architecture via Latin America, or 60s MOD as seen through Italian Horror. My husband is a comic book artist: we are always playing with mashups to describe our work and find new inspiration.

If you could go back and tell yourself one hot tip or piece of advice when you started out what would it be?

Though I’ve always been creative and went to art school, it took me a long time – too long, maybe – to really own it. And it took me a long time to find a medium that really took hold of me the way that illustration has. Looking back, I can say confidently that everything I dabbled in has its place in my creative heart, and made my work what it is now. But I wish that I hadn’t been so scared to call myself Artist, to give myself to making things with my whole being. For years I thought I needed some kind of credential; the only thing that mattered ultimately was the permission I gave myself. An Artist is a person who makes art, and that’s what I do. If this resonates for you, go read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic.” Living a creative life is what it’s all about, y’all. Also a reminder to myself, always: doing your life’s work is a long game, give yourself the time and make the commitment to get there.

What has been your proudest creative business achievement to date?

It gives me great pride to have built my portfolio to a point where my clients recognize my style, see what I can do for them and – for the most part – give me the freedom to do it. As a commercial artist there is sometimes enormous pressure to conform in order to get enough paid work to make it. It is such a privilege to have this kind of trust, and an absolute joy to deliver on it. Also I hired an accountant this year, which felt like such a big girl move, I literally teared up in the parking lot after our first meeting.

Which other artists/ designers/ makers, artists or creative people are you enjoying at the moment?

Right now I’m inspired by Petra Borner, Andy Dixon, Tyler Keeton Robbins, Michelle Morin, Sonia Pulido, Marisol Ortega, Anisa Makhoul, and Gucci Gucci Gucci. All great follows.

What would your dream creative project look like? Who or what is your dream project, client or job? Tell us about why you would love to collaborate with them and what you find inspiring about their work.

For me, great projects involve trust, the opportunity to solve good problems, research and analysis, collaboration, strategy and beauty. I’ve been lucky enough be a part of a few such projects in my career; those experiences have shaped the way I find meaning in what I do, and defined the kind of work I’m looking for going forward. I love to participate in translating feelings visually – I get really excited about differentiating brands. There are so many small-scale production methods available to us now, why use the same stuff when we can be fantastically different?

My dream clients are great collaborators, passionate about what they do, confident in communicating their vision, and hire the right people for the right job. The beauty of seeing my work this way is that there are lots of dream clients to be had out there, but if Gucci wanted to hire me I might literally throw myself at Alessandro Michele’s feet.

You can follow what Kate is upto: Website, Instagram

New Fabric Designs for Mother’s Day

We’re launching a new range of prints at Digital Fabrics! It’s been a little while since we brought you our last set of designs and this time we took a different approach to bringing you new prints. Rather than focus on one cohesive collection, we’ve had three artists create three different prints for you just in time for Mother’s Day!

The collection of prints range from flirty to psychedelic to sophisticated, and feature both hand-painted illustration and digital manipulation. With three very different styles represented, we’re sure there’s something for everyone.

If you’re needing fresh ideas on what to spoil mum with this Mother’s Day, we’ve got you covered and have put together a few DIY ideas that we just know you’ll both love. A custom made gift speaks volumes, and is guaranteed to be a winner with mum this year!

Got accessories in mind for a mum who always looks fabulous? How about making a gorgeous and versatile scarf? For something bold or bright you might want to use either our Roxy or Dilly fabrics. If you were thinking of something a little more sheer we would recommend our super soft Chiffon.

If you think home-wares might be better suited, how about a tablecloth? Our Cotton Linen is an absolute dream for a decadent feeling table setting and our Waratah and Panama fabrics are excellent polyester options for durability. You could also make napkins to match! And we can’t forget the ever perfect gift of a stunning, custom-made cushion! It could be the perfect opportunity to try out our new Organic Cotton Canvas that we’re very excited to introduce! Of course our Cotton Linen, Waratah and Panama fabrics are also perfect for cushion covers too.

So whatever your, or your mum’s style, there’ something here to get you started on any handmade Mother’s Day gifts you might have been thinking about. Let us know how we can help you realise your next DIY textile project!

These prints are now available for purchase in our Design Library!

Simple Repeat Pattern Tutorial For Beginners

It would be safe to say that most of us are creative, we might love to doodle, paint, and create collages. Whilst these are all wonderful and inventive practices, what if you wanted to start developing these crafts into textile designs but didn’t have the digital design software skills to get your file prepared for fabric printing. What we would say is “learn it’! Learn digital textile design in small bites. Start slowly, from converting your art into a digital format and getting to know basic Photoshop tools. Everything new can be overwhelming, but if you take one step at a time and slowly build your confidence, you will get the hang of it in no time. Below are some simple steps that will help you prepare your art for digital seamless repeat printing.

DIGITIZING – CONVERTING YOUR ART INTO A DIGITAL FORMAT

Start with an artwork painted onto a flat, one colour background that surrounds the artwork. For this tutorial we used a simple white plain background for the purpose of being easy, but any colour is fine.

To convert your artwork into a digital format you need to scan or photograph the artwork. Scanning at a resolution of 300 dpi is preferred. However, if you don’t have a scanner, photograph your artwork laid out flat, indoors with plenty of light (natural day light if best), holding the camera directly above the artwork, making sure there are no shadows of any kind interfering with the artwork.

CLEANING – DELETING UNWANTED ELEMENTS FROM AN ARTWORK

Open your artwork in Photoshop by selecting MAIN MENU > FILE > OPEN > CHOOSE YOUR ARTWORK FILE.

Using MARQUEE TOOL select the object or image that you want to repeat.

Now let’s bring the artwork or image that you want to repeat into a new document so you can start playing with it. While MARQUEE TOOL selection is active, (this will appear as ants running around the selected area) go to MAIN MENU > EDIT > COPY to copy selected area and FILE > NEW to open new document. NOTE: Photoshop is a very smart software. The area that you have selected will now determine the file size of the new document being opened. Click OK.

Whilst in the newly opened document select MAIN MENU > EDIT> PASTE to bring your selected artwork into the new document. It should paste by default in the middle of the new document fitting artwork well within the new document space. Nothing should be cropped out or hidden from view.

Now to clean your artwork. If your white background is slightly messy or the texture of the paper is visible, you will need to clean this up, since whatever you see on the screen will be printed onto fabric. To quickly ‘deep-etch’ or in other words ‘clean-up’, select the layer that you just brought in. Then select the MAGIC WAND TOOL. Change the tolerance to low (we selected a tolerance measure of ‘4’ but you might need to adjust this number as it is based on your artwork). Tolerance is the rate at which the same or similar colours are selected when using the MAGIC WAND TOOL. The higher the tolerance the more of that colour will be found and therefore selected within the artwork.

Make sure the CONTIGUOUS box is ticked, this will ensure that only space around your artwork is being selected, and not that which is inside or a part of the drawn objects. Now once everything is prepared for selection click on the white background to select it. You can see on the image below that only the white background area is selected. While it is selected hit the DELETE button on your keyboard. This will remove the white selected background.

As you can see there is a little bit of another flower peaking through on the left side. Lets clean this up by using the simple ERASER TOOL. You can adjust the size of the eraser as needed at the top left of the screen. You can make the background layer invisible (this will then appear as little white and grey squares as seen below) to check that you have cleaned up all of the image. Simply zoom in to check the edges of your artwork and any potential unwanted marks left behind.

ADJUSTING COLOURS

The image is now clean, but colour wise the artwork is not strong enough. To brighten and intensify the colours of the image select MAIN MENU > IMAGE > AUTO CONTRAST.

You are almost done! To flatten your image select MAIN MENU > LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE. All layers have now merged into one. Save the image as a JPG high quality file MAIN MENU > FILE > SAVE AS > SAVE.

Now you are done and ready to upload your file to print on to a fabric of your choice!

REPEATING A PATTERN USING OUR FABRIC UPLOADER

Open the Fabric Uploader page.

Drag & Drop your image or click on the SELECT button to upload your ready to print artwork. Once your file is uploaded, you’ll be able to see it in the fabric preview window. You can scale your artwork up or down, simply by typing in and adjusting the artwork to the size you want. Keep an eye on the DPI! This is the resolution and quality of your file. If your artwork is low resolution and is scaled up, the print result can be blurry.

Next step is to choose your Repeat type. This is the fun part! Play around with the different options and see how the variations impact your artwork in the preview window. Compare how the different options distribute your artwork across the width and the length of the fabric. Pick the one that suits your design idea best!

FULL DROP REPEAT

MIRROR REPEAT

Choose how many meters you wish to print simply by typing it into the quantity box and then select the fabric you want to print on. Remember that each fabric stock has a different width so be sure to check that the fabric you choose meets your needs.

P.S. This tutorial is designed to be very basic. If you are still struggling to prepare your artwork files, we recommend you attend one of the workshops on offer at our Digital Textile Design School to help you nail those Photoshop basics!

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 1, Snippet 7

Snippets’. Chats with Creatives. Here at Digital Fabrics we love everything print, pattern and colour and we love to know what makes designers tick. This series is all about asking some fun and different questions and learning about the inspirations and ideas behind the artist and their work. We hope to inspire others by sharing snippets of these creative stories. We gave the artists and designers featured a varied list of questions to choose from so we will learn something new from everyone involved, should be fun!

Today on Snippet’s we are talking to Dawn Tan. Melbourne based artist, soap maker and teacher who’s colourful work is inspired by travel and grocery shopping among other things..

Tell us a bit about yourself and what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

Hello! My name is Dawn Tan and I’m an artist, soap maker and teacher! As a young child, I’ve always loved art and knew I wanted to pursue and art career. I guess being terrible at everything else apart from art, helped me discover that being creative was my thing. Hah! I discovered teaching many moons ago, while doing research for a children’s book I was creating and I ended up falling in love with it! To me, being able to teach and share my love for art – that’s simply the best so I just keep doing what I do! Our world needs more art so the more people share, the merrier!

Which five words best describe you? Funny, dreamy, kiddy, happy and hmmm.. CLUMSY! (The kids often have to catch my flying paintbrushes!)

If you could spend a day in another artist’s studio shoes who would that artist be?

No doubt, Quentin Blake. He’s my number one art hero and I absolutely LOVE the way he paints and creates. If I could watch him on you tube all day, I could definitely use a visit to his studio!

In another life what natural talent would you wish for?

To fly! Although I must say, I’m pretty scared of heights. Actually no. Scrap that. I’d love to be able to blink my eyes and teleport. I looooove traveling but hate the flying part. I get all anxious like a headless chook. So to be able to teleport (for free!) – that’d be super awesome. This way, I can go visit whatever place on earth I’d wish to go and I can get so much more inspiration.

Love your Locals:

City/Town/Village where you currently reside:

Sunny Yarraville in Melbourne.

Favourite spot for a bite:

Corner store, Goje for the best, healthy yoghurts!

Secret Inspirational spot:

Pompello – My local green grocer. Haha! It’s a tiny little spot but it’s such a happy place for me. I find so much of my inspiration through grocery shopping.

You can follow what Dawn is upto: Website, Instagram, Facebook

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 1, Snippet 5

Today on Snippet’s we are talking to Lauren Bower from Lauren Skye Studio, a Textiles and homewares brand making unique cushions featuring original artwork ideal to brighten up your home and garden.

The Snippety Snips:

Tell us a bit about yourself and what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

Lauren Skye Studio is a handmade textile homewares brand creating both indoor and outdoor cushions as well as personalised name cushions.

From around the age of 7 I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer. It was all I was ever interested in and would spend hours cutting pictures from magazines (I bought my first issue of Vogue when I was 12) to make endless collages. I studied Fashion Design at TAFE and then started working as a Design Assistant and ultimately a Fashion Designer for various brands for about 10 years. After leaving fashion to start and raise a family, I desperately missed working with fabrics and colours so I started buying fabrics and making cushions (a task perfectly timed to a babies nap!). It didn’t feel authentic enough to be using a fabric that someone else had designed so drawing on my skills acquired during my years in fashion, I started creating my own fabric designs and quickly found that it is my favourite thing ever! I feel so fortunate to live in a time where digital fabric printing has made textile design so accessible for small businesses. Even during my fashion years it was outrageously expensive to have an artwork made, get a screen cut and get a strike-off printed.

Which part of the creative process is your favourite and why?

I live for design, particularly the search for inspiration. I love starting from nothing and just allowing my eye to be led and tell me where I should be. If inspiration is not coming then it is not the right time. I never force it.

Which five words best describe you?

Determined, thoughtful, conscientious, friendly, chaotic.

How would you describe your work, and what influences your style?

I would describe it as unique and colourful. I think my biggest influence is my years in fashion. To counteract the things I didn’t like about fashion design, particularly the copycat aspect, I am purposefully different to other designers. I don’t follow trends and will go out of my way to ensure my work is unique. Also colour, I am always inspired by colour.

What does a typical day look like for you? I have one child in school and one at pre-school three days a week, so the juggle is a little crazy right now. My three days with no kids have to be efficiently managed. From the minute I get home from drop-off to the very last minute I have to leave to pick them up I am like a woman possessed. Sometimes I’m enjoying my work so much I forget to eat! Then when the kids are home I spend time with them doing homework and just hanging out. After they are both in bed I start working again until late. Weekends are spent either selling at the local markets, or trying to juggle work and family time. It sounds terrible but I love it really!

If you could only use one colour in your work what would it be?

I’m drawn to pink always, and I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with having two sons!

Love your Locals:

City/Town/Village where you currently reside:

Roseville NSW

Favourite spot for a bite:

Salt Pepper Nutmeg or Sous le Soleil, both at Roseville

Secret Inspirational spot:

Swain Gardens, Killara. It is almost literally a secret garden.

You can follow what Lauren is upto here: Website, Instagram, Facebook

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Tag Archives: artwork

Textile Collection Animalistic Innocence

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 2, Snippet 4

What does a typical creative day look like for you? How do you stay on plan and organised?

Staying positive about your work!

If you could go back and tell yourself one hot tip or piece of advice when you started out what would it be?

Believe in yourself and follow your heart

What projects or collaborations from last year stuck out, good or bad and what is coming up this year that you would like to plug!

New Print Designs – Garden Party

New Fabric Designs – Wearable Art

Brisbane Textile Design for Beginners Workshop

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 2, Snippet 2

New Fabric Designs for Mother’s Day

Simple Repeat Pattern Tutorial For Beginners

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 1, Snippet 7

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 1, Snippet 5

What does a typical creative day look like for you? How do you stay on plan and organised?

Staying positive about your work!

If you could go back and tell yourself one hot tip or piece of advice when you started out what would it be?

Believe in yourself and follow your heart

What projects or collaborations from last year stuck out, good or bad and what is coming up this year that you would like to plug!

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