Tigerprint Spots and Stripes contest

Well hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed the blog hop! Weren't everyone's designs fantastic? If you haven't checked out the blog hop yet, you can visit it, here!

Just a quick post today to share with you some new designs I made for the latest Tigerprint contest; Spots and Stripes. The brief was to make surface patterns with a fresh takes on spots and stripes using SS14 colours.

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2013

Feature Friday - Emma Frances

Today our featured designer is..

Emma Frances

Emma tells us about herself:

'I've loved to draw and create since I was very young and always knew I wanted to be in a creative job.  I came on surface pattern by chance through university and absolutely love it! I’m not entirely sure how to describe my style, I like to experiment and try different drawing techniques out. I was fairly controlled in my designing throughout uni and it was only in my last project I began to loosen my style and try out something a bit different.'

'I take inspiration from everything around me, I seem to see patterns in everything! If I'm coming up with new motifs then I find it helps a lot to put some good music on (Coldplay!) and just enjoy myself. I was also very lucky to have grown up in the most beautiful North Yorkshire countryside so a massive amount of inspiration comes from memories of my childhood.'

'I’m very passionate about what I do and I love it when a design comes together, I’m hoping to freelance more in the future, and eventually would love to own my own brand and sell my designs.' 

And here are a few links :

Blog - http://emmafrancesdesign.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/emmafrancesdesigns

Twitter - @Emmafrances22

Images copyright Emma Frances 2012

Feature Friday - Chloe Wood

Today I bring you the third 'Feature Friday'

I hope you're getting into a routine now knowing you can visit the blog on Friday's for wonderful showcases of very talented designers work!

Today our featured designer is..

Chloe Wood

Chloe talks us through her passions, inspirations and plans for the future..

"I  love to draw Flora and Fauna. The majority of my designs are inspired by this subject, however I have a whole range of designs I am yet to create all based on my travels around the world (so many ideas never enough time!)."

"I usually start off by just doodling and scan my drawings into Photoshop I then like to play around with scale and formats until I am happy with the design and then recolour them. I have recently started the ABSPD course as I want to develop my skills and design brand further"

"My style is a little naive but I love using my own handwriting it is what makes my designs unique to me."

"I am currently open for commissioned work so if anyone is interested please feel free to contact me via my website."

You can get in touch or view more of Chloe's work via:

Website: www.chloe-wood.co.uk

Blog: www.chloewooddesigns.blogspot.co.uk

Twitter: @ChloeWoodDesign

Facebook: Chloe Wood Designs

All images copyright Chloe Wood 2012

Falling leaves

One of my favourite things when working on new designs that pop into my head is playing around with different colour palettes. I really enjoy working with colour, and as much as I love setting a colour palette and making it work across different designs, there's something beautifully organic about having a design idea pop into your head, making it but then feeling free to play around with different colour combinations to see what works best.

I have been working on this new design, inspired by falling leaves. It was lovely to play around with different colour combos, some of which I am sharing today! I love how a simple can design can have such a different feel using different colours, more energetic or relaxed, and more traditional or contemporary.

 Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

New Boys Designs

I recently worked on a brief to design for boys. This is not something I normally work on and when I started the brief I thought I would really struggle. However once I had decided on a theme and a colour palette the design started to flow and I am SO pleased with how it turned out!

I am going to develop the collection further adding new placement and repeat prints using the same motifs and colour palette. Who knows where Tom will go next!

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

I discovered..

.. fonts for peas.

Every now and then I like to have a bit of a font downloading marathon.. during my latest marathon I discovered fonts for peas.

Fonts for Peas is home to over 500 of the cutest and most unique handwriting fonts on the 'net! I take *your* submitted handwriting samples and turn them into fonts. Then I upload all the fonts here so you can download them- all for free!


So not only can you download awesome cute fonts (for FREE!), but you can submit your own handwriting samples to be made into fonts! There are pages and pages of cute hand drawn fonts..

Lots of the fonts also come with cute little doodle illustrations using special characters!

One of my favourite fonts is Pea Mily Mix. I love it's relaxed style and adorable heart, kisses and butterfly illustrations, can't wait to use it in a design!

Go and check out fonts for peas and download some of their lovely fonts! Or why not submit your own!

Images and fonts copyright Kevin & Amanda

Spoonflower Arrows contest

This weeks Spoonflower contest was Arrows, and for the first time ever I entered a design!

It's so exciting seeing it up there on the site with lots of other lovely designs and knowing lots of people out there will see it when placing their all important votes!

The only restriction of the contest (other than sticking to the theme of arrows) was to make a seamless repeat pattern, so I set about interweaving arrows to make an interesting repeat.

Below is my entry, once I had decided on the layout I played around with different colour ways for the design, but then had so many I couldn't decide which one I liked best. I chose this one as it is the most 'me' but will share some of the other colour ways soon! You can vote here!

There are lots of fantastic designs in this weeks contest, below are the designs I voted for..

1. love_arrows by jlwillustration 2. Aztec Arrows by demigoutte 3. woodland_weathervanes by gillianchamberlin 4. Tribal Arrows (Navy Mix) by pennycandy 5. Shot through the Heart by kfay 6. Fabric_-_Arrows_v1 by orsocrafty 7. Chevron, Arrow, Pointer by ebygomm 8. tammie-bennett-arrows-01 by tammiebennett 9. Patterned Arrowhead Chevron by chunkydesign 10. Arrows - Scattered on Navy by papersparrow

Developing my doodles

I was so pleased with how my doodles turned out I decided to try and replicate the look on the computer. I know this is very backwards but as I explained yesterday the doodles came from a new design I was working on.. so without further ado.. here are my digitally created doodles!

I loved how the doodles looked on brown paper so I mocked up the pattern on a sheet of brown paper. I would LOVE to see this printed as wrapping paper! I just love the texture of brown paper.

I got carried away playing around with different colour ways (as usual) and love the simplicity of the colour on white with the textured lines. Will reveal the whole collection this design is from very soon!

All images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

New designs

Today I am sharing with you some new designs I have been working on. There's lots of new patterns on the go here right now and I am LOVING it!

I am starting to feel that my patterns really have a signature style and show my personality well.

You may recognise the grey design below, the designs were created as part of my 'dreams' collection. You can see the existing designs printed as fabrics here and as a sneak peek here. You can also buy the existing designs as fabrics from Spoonflower here.

The new designs use the same colours and motifs as the existing designs, but have more organic layouts and mixes of motifs from different patterns. I love how all the patterns look together!

I also had very exciting news yesterday, someone purchased some of my Dreamcatcher fabric on Spoonflower! It's so exciting to know that someone likes my design enough to buy yards of it!

Lots of exciting new designs and news coming soon so be sure to check back soon! Just to tease you here is a sneak peek of a new design I am currently working on as part of a new collection I will share soon!

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012

Spoonflower 2013 Tea Towel Calendars

You can currently vote in this weeks Spoonflower contest '2013 Tea Towel Calendars'

I just voted and here are my choices. There are some really fantastic entries this year! 12 whole pages infact!

Designers (left to right, top to bottom) 1. Outside Flowers by Melisza, 2. Succulent 2013 Tea Towel Calendar by EmilyAnn, 3. 2013 Flowery Tea Towel Calendar by doris&fred, 4. A foxy delight by JLW Illustration, 5. 2013 Calendar by Amel24, 6. Tea towel by holly_akkerman, 7. kokeshina 2013 by made_in_shina, 8. 2013 wildflowers tea towel by cjldesigns, 9. 2013 pretty tree calendar by sonny&bee, 10. tea party essentials 2013 calendar by muymajobv, 11. flowers calendar by la_nonna_aida, 12. kind thoughts tea towel calendar by licoricelove, 13. home blue by stacyiesthsu, 14. Seasons 2013 tea towel calendar by addilou, 15. 2013 retro calendar by ottomanbrim.

NEW Etsy store!

Today I have very exciting news! My greeting cards are now for sale in my NEW Etsy store!

Currently for sale are Greetings and Christmas cards, I hope to branch out soon, selling other paper goods and my own designed fabrics. The cards are currently available as singles or packs of 8, custom orders are also accepted.

I love the About page feature on Etsy, which gives you a space to tell your/your shops story, with lovely big images and a cute round bio image for the shop owner.

My lovely little sister took the photos of the cards for me, I am so pleased with how they came out, she's very talented with a camera!

Images copyright Rosie Simons 2012