Sneak peek - New card designs

Today I am introducing you to a greetings card range which I am just in the process of sending to print.

I have always wanted to create greetings cards, I think they're lovely objects to have and to hold so went about creating some of my own!

There are 4 Christmas cards, 2 different designs each in 2 different colour ways. These will be available to purchase in dual design packs; Purple and Blue Merry Christmas and Red and Green Happy Christmas or each design as a single card. I will be opening a new Etsy shop to sell the cards (and lots of exciting other stuff!) next week, so keep your eyes peeled!

I have also produced some every day greetings cards, in my 'Inky Floral' design (seen here) which will also be available to buy SOON! Don't forget to follow or check back next week for news on where to buy the cards! To keep up to date you can also follow me on Twitter or 'like' Rosie Simons Graphic and Surface Design on Facebook.

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Pattern Inspiration - Monsoon Kids

I recently received a email from Monsoon advertising their kids autumn/winter collection and I noticed there were some lovely surface designs, so I headed over to the website to explore further. There are some lovely pieces so I thought I would share a few today.

First up is the Baby Caravan Rose Puffa Coat. I was instantly drawn to the piece by it's lovely colour palette and floral patterns. On further look the floral patterns are also joined by animal prints and paisley prints, a great mix of textures and styles.

Secondly is the Baby Briar Rose Cotton Sateen Dress. I love the fresh colour palette and mix of floral with a simple pink polka dot.

Finally, the Baby Kayla Jersey Dress. This is such a fun print with animals, birds, butterflies and flowers all over, topped off with a cute satin bow!

Images copyright Monsoon

Spoonflower introduce Wallpaper printing

Yesterday the exciting news broke that Spoonflower are now offering custom printed wallpaper and decals as well as the amazing custom printed fabric service they already provide.

I jumped straight on to the website to experience this great new service. It was like it was perfectly planned after my post yesterday where I said I could see my new design as wallpaper! So I uploaded the tile and huzzah there appeared my tile repeated and mocked up on a room setup!

And now because I promised I'd share more.. here is my new design 'Scribble flower' in green! I really love how versatile the design is, it works well at different scales and in different colours. A large scale is great for wallpaper but the design also works well at a smaller scale for example on an iPhone case (coming soon!)

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Don't forget to go and check out the Spoonflower website to learn all about their new services!

Creative Fluidity

Yesterday I was struggling with creative block working on a current brief. I decided to have a rest from the project and doodle a with my Wacom tablet.

I found it very relaxing to draw fluidly and within an hour produced a motif, repeat tile and mocked up the design as wallpaper. It felt great to achieve something in such a short time and it is a really adaptable pattern so can be used at different scales and in different colours for different products.

It also helped me to get back into my creative flow and go back to the project I was struggling with with more ideas and flow.

Below is a little sneak peek of the design, more to come soon!

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Little update

I've been very busy working on lots of new designs and product ideas recently so I thought I'd share a few today. I've added a few new and updated designs to my Society6 shop and mocked up my patterns on some other outcomes I'd love to see.

I really love seeing my designs mocked up onto products or (almost) real life situations!

I am currently available for freelance work or commissions, my designs are also available for licensing, contact me for more details. You can contact me on twitter @rosie_simons or facebook or via my website.

First up, a new design I shared as part of the passion4pattern blog hop, inspired by my recent trip to Canada, Beauty Wood.

Next up is a design I shared a little while back, Blow me one last kiss, but updated with a different colour background and a cute little polka dot. I think this pattern would be perfect for the lining of a little girls coat!

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

National Cupcake Week

You may or may not be aware that this week is National Cupcake Week so I thought I'd share some cupcake related work today.

I have just finished working on a project branding Andrea's Cupcakes and Andrea's Cupcake Parties. The client wanted me to design the logo so it worked for both Andrea's Cupcakes - cupcakes for occasions  and Andrea's Cupcake Parties - cupcake decorating parties and could work on pink or white background..

I then designed business cards and stickers for the cake boxes (which I featured a while ago) from Moo. I took advantage of their printfinity option on business cards and printed different photographs of Andrea's Cupcakes on the backs of the business cards with the logo and contact details on the front. 

The stickers are a combination of bits of the logo and will be used to personalise the cake boxes when taking cakes to clients and on party boxes for partygoers when they take home their decorated cupcakes from cupcake decorating parties!

Next up I designed flyers, unfortunately no photos of these to share yet as they went directly to the client.. on the left is the reverse of the flyer where I used a simple pink polka dot background and the logo. On the right is the front of the flyer, with more subdued polka dots, coloured cupcakes and the 'ice • decorate • create' slogan for the cupcake parties.

 

Last but not least I designed and made their website andreascupcakes.co.uk

I even tackled flash to make the rolling image banner on the homepage!

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Ikat Inspiration

Ikat designs have been around for a while now and although they have been on my radar and I have been aware that they are there I haven't been particularly drawn to them.. until now.

I was browsing American Eagle and discovered some incredible Ikat denim shorts.. then some pretty ikat dresses and finally some gorgeous ikat scarves..

I love the shapes and the textures used in ikat prints, there's something very modern about them but they still have a natural feel.

I've shared some of the lovely examples I found below, enjoy!

Above: AE ikat frayed denim shortie

Above: Aerie Ikat tube dress (available in pink - top & blue hill - bottom)

Above: AEO Ikat loop scarf in Navy

Absolutely adore the colour palette and patterns on this scarf, might have to get myself one! Don't be surprised if a colour inspiration post featuring this scarf crops up soon! I could do a post alone of the gorgeous American Eagle scarves! So many loves patterns and colours! Pretty scarves are making me excited for autumn!

Above: AEO Ikat scarf

All images copyright American Eagle

New designs - Beaded

Today I'm sharing with you some new designs I've been working on. The designs were inspired by a beaded bracelet I made years ago from tiny beads.

The first piece is quite a realistic representation of the beads but I liked the shapes and enjoyed playing with scale and colour to create more abstracted pieces. I'm currently developing the collection further with complimentary pieces and new shapes, so I will share the finished items soon!

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Colour Inspiration

If you've explored my blog or know me, you'll probably know that I have a massive thing for colour. I LOVE colour, I get insanely over excited about colour. One day I rearranged chocolate bars on the shelf in the supermarket because a certain 3 bars together made an amazing colour palette.

I always get complimented on my use of colour in my work, and I pride myself on this, so I am constantly seeking inspiring new colours and colour palettes.

Design Seeds in one of my all time favourite websites, sometimes when I'm stuck for inspiration or just fancy some yummy colour combinations to brighten my day I visit Design Seeds and browse colour palettes..

I thought I'd spread the colour love and share some of my favourite colour palettes right now! Enjoy!

All images copyright Design Seeds

Corrupted

My computer has been doing some very strange things recently, Illustrator can no longer export to PNG without crashing and creating a corrupted file.. It's quite annoying.

It also corrupted some of my holiday photos, which is also very annoying, but while I was browsing through I started to notice that some of the corrupted photos are quite interesting so I thought I would share a few!

Not understanding the technical side of why the images have corrupted or what it does to them, I find it really interesting how sometimes it muddles up sections, adds colours (where does it even get these colours from?!) or bleaches the image..

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012