Art Inspiration - Charmaine Olivia

I have been utterly inspired by this artist for a while now, I follow her on Instagram so get a daily taster of her work and life. 

I have major studio envy! It looks amazing and you can how her surroundings influences her work.

She works in various mediums but the two which I love are her ink silhouettes, these are so delicate, and her large scale oil painting. 

I design mostly on the computer and never really feel like I get the time to sketch. I was always crap at sketch books anyway, I'm a real perfectionist so any mistake always made me rip the page out and start again!

Have a look at her work online at www.charmaineolivia.com

Beautiful Prints - Kari Herer

OK so this my intention of writing a design blog every day has fallen by the wayside slightly... well, almost completely! I am going to try my damnedest to change that and I have been totally inspired today to write about the beautiful work of Kari Herer.

I came across her work on one of my favourite design blogs Design*Sponge. Kari is a professional fine art and portrait photographer in the US. 

Here are some of her beautiful prints which are available on Etsy... friends and family take note... Christmas is coming!  

I love the combination of hand drawn animals and flowers.

I am also slightly obsessed with Antlers and the combination of wood, antlers and flowers make these photographs truly beautiful.

Check out her work online at www.kariherer.com or on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/kariherer

Animated Encounters T-Shirt Comp - We Won!!

I'm very excited to announce that my design for the Animate your Life T-shirt competition was chosen as the winner! I'm especially excited as this will be worn by all of the staff at the fabulous Animated Encounters film festival which is taking place in Bristol.
Animated Encounters returns this year as the key showcase for the best home grown and international short animation film talent around. 
And the winning design is...

And Here is the T-Shirt being modeled! 

http://www.encounters-festival.org.uk/festival/animated-encounters.html


Encounters International Film Festival is an amazing event and is the umbrella title for two of the UK's leading film festivals Brief Encounters and Animated Encounters, with a host of cross-over attractions, at venues in and around the Harbourside area of Bristol, UK. If you get a chance I would highly recommend trying to get to some of the events.

Weekend Project - Fabulous Filing!

Well having no house DIY to do anymore I felt the need to decorate something! I rescued an old boring and a bit rusty filing cabinet from my dads garage last weekend.  So my project to revamp a filing cabinet began this weekend. 

I had the most gorgeous Matthew Williamson wallpaper left over from our old house and have been desperate to do something with it. 

I started my adding casters. These came off an old display unit I used at trade shows. Once I've filled this cabinet it's going to weigh a tonne and I know how much I like to rearrange things so for once in my life I've planned ahead!! 

Once the casters were on it was time to spray the sides. I knew it would be a nightmare to line the paper up on all sides so I decided to spray the edges in a matt black to break it all up a bit. 

I love using spray paints (not because of the toxic smell!) but because it's such an instant result and it goes on brilliantly. Although I do have to hold myself back and remember that several light coats is better than just doing 1 think drippy coat!

Then basically it was the fun bit! I started with the top and just worked round the sides then did the fiddly drawers last. 

 I'm so pleased with the result, now I just need to do the numerous coats of varnish to make it a bit more hardwearing. There are so many great wallpapers in the shops now and it's such an easy way to jazz up a piece of furniture. I got this wallpaper from B&Q in the sale rack for £1 per roll! Criminal! 

Hope you like it! xx