Vision & Inspiration
Inspiring : Ali Benyon, surface design
"Not all who wander are lost." It's an appropriate quote for Ali Benyon, designer, maker, blogger and author. Originally from the UK, she started her career studying Textile Design at Loughborough University, and emerged 7 years later with a degree in Multi Media...
Inspiring : INAE {Laura Hewitt ceramics}
Laura Hewitt started her career in arts as a sculptor in mixed media. When people asked her about her work, she said she often heard herself answer, "Well, it's not anything, exactly." And thus, It's Not Anything Exactly {INAE} Enterprises was born. ...
Surface design + opportunity : Stuart Hungerford
Imagine you're standing at the intersection of visual arts, mathematics and computer programming. What do you see? The framework of endless possibility? Such is the inspiration for Stuart Hungerford. In his day job Stuart works with computers, but...
Inspiring : Cheerful Madness {Nathalie Jean-Bart}
Nathalie Jean-Bart has carved out a career for herself as an animator. But animation wasn't enough and she started searching for other ways to express herself. So about 10 years ago, she started writing stories and illustrating them. But it still wasn't enough...
Get art into the world! : Pots on Wheels
You know I am absolutely passionate about getting art/craft/design out into the world. So when ceramicist Adero Willard (who I featured here) contacted me recently about this awesome Kickstarter she is involved in, I had to spread the word. It's called Pots on Wheels,...
Icon : Stig Lindberg
Icon: Stig Lindberg Hellooo!!! I can spend hours ogling and sighing over the beauty of things from artists and makers throughout the ages, especially the amazing proliferation of items and artworks since the industrial revolution. So it is with the incredibly talented...
Inspiring : Heleen Van Buul
Looking at Heleen Van Buul's geometric patterns, it may come as no surprise that she originally studied to be an industrial engineer. But she says these patterns are often more inspired by nature than anything else - yes there's symmetry, but there are also...
Design fundamentals: Gestalt (rhymes with Salt)
Well OK OK OK, Gestalt NEARLY rhymes with Salt, but it depends a bit on where you live in the world and who taught you about it. Anyway the question really is, what IS Gestalt and why is it important to design? Gestalt theory came about in the 1920s when a group of...
Inspiring : Sas and Fez {ceramics}
Moving between her tiny spare room that doubles as a studio and store room and the electric wheel set up in a corner of her lounge room {and thankful for a "long-suffering and extremely supportive husband who tends to turn a blind eye to my creative endeavours as they...
Inspiring : Renato Crepaldi (part 2)
When I first discovered Renato Crepaldi's marbled papers, I have to say I swooned a little. The colours and patterns are so deliciously seductive that I couldn't resist featuring them on the blog in December last year. The technique of marbling paper is such that no...
Etsy : Is it on the slippery slope from handmade to manufacture?
{all images are linked to their respective shops} There has been been a debate raging ever since Etsy decided to change its policies on what constituted 'handmade' late last year. Those policies now allow designers and makers to outsource a substantial amount of what...
Surface design : Hey Tangerine {Caitlin Meara}
I love these large scale repeats by Perth-based designer, Caitlin Meara. There's something about the possibilities of engineering a cut so that it adds meaning to the clothing that makes me just a bit giddy. Yes, I'd like to look like something out of Star Wars. Or...
Repeating Patterns in Illustrator Made Easy: The Pattern Making Tool (CS6 & Newer)
Repeating Patterns : tutorial by Sew Heidi Repeating patterns in Illustrator used to be a very manual process and more than a little bit frustrating. With the introduction of the Pattern Making Tool in CS6 (if you’re in CS5 or earlier, you won’t have access to this...
The crafted object : Nora Leschinski ~ wood carver and illustrator
Nora Leschinski grew up in a remote mountain village in the green forested heart of Germany. It was the perfect starting point for a wood carver, and nature provided its designs for inspiration. Studying sculpture at art school opened up a whole new...
Surface design : Nicky Ovitt (part 2)
Nicky Ovitt : I having been contemplating some "re-visits" for a while - I love the idea of following someone's career development in real life - to see how their work is progressing, what new ideas they have, to see how they've grown in their business, and to see...
Inspiring : Doll Disaster Design
Doll Disaster Design : Jewellery Tessa Rickard collects antique, broken doll parts and heads, and is incessantly drawn to all the strange objects that time has forgotten about. It was what prompted her business name; her Masters thesis was called "From The Mind Of A...
Hot or not : cactus
OK OK OK. Well I reckon that if I've got a Pinterest board called "Love a good succulent", than you can safely assume that hey, I don't mind the odd cactus. The shapes and colours are pretty incredible - I love their chunkiness, their strange shapes and their...
The crafted object : Elsa Mora ~ papercuts
I admit it; I have been stalking the eminently admirable Elsa Mora for a few years now. Not only does she make fabulously sculptural papercuts, but her art extends into every facet of her life - she is also a drawer, a painter, a photographer, a maker of books and a...
Surface design : Anna London
Anna London is a serial creative, and for a long time had been filling her life with various classes in print making, graphic design and fashion design. It wasn't until she took a course in hand-printed textiles while studying Art Studio and Design in university that...
The crafted object : A Plus Designnn {crochet jewellery}
I love these organic little textile accessories from Anda Toma (aka APlusDesignnn). They are curious and intriguing and speak to me of sealife - coral, nudibranchs and strange deep-sea creatures. Tactile and colourful, Anda crochets and beads her...
Small biz how-to : meet Uncommon Goods
How did I not know of Uncommon Goods before now? I am so very glad they contacted me, as I love finding new ways to help artists and designers to sell their work! Uncommon Goods is a platform for artists and designers from around the world to sell their work through,...
Surface design : Cathy Helmers
Cathy Helmers always thought of herself as a writer, not an artist. When she was growing up, her older sister was always considered the artist. "She’s quite talented, even was as a child, and I felt I never measured up to her. As a child I was easily intimidated and...
Small biz how to : Starting in surface design Part 3 – designing repeats
Designing repeats for surface patterns: Hi there! And welcome to part 3 in this series on getting started in surface design (find part 1 here - it's all the basics of editing your images ready for uploading, and part 2 here - it's all about how to deal with colour...
The crafted object – Pearson Maron {clay}
Pearson Maron Adam Maron and Quincy Pearson once invented a secret society of monkeys which was so secret that even the monkeys didn't talk about it, but identified each other by the particular hue of yellow in the fezzes that each of them wore. Besotted...
The crafted object : Quality ~ it’s in the details
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said "God is in the details." Quality is being purposeful and attentive to all those little things that many of us rush over, and is the reward for those of us who choose to heed we see. {via RebeccaHannon.com} It's in the...
Photography : Amy Giese
Amy Giese : Glitch and Digital Photography I always love me a bit of well-constructed glitch (which is kind of a contradiction in terms I know, but do you know what I mean?). At its purest, glitch is a machine-driven, random alteration of sound and/or visuals - mostly...
Inspiring : Pendragon Shoes
Pendragon Shoes First up I must apologise for the overload of pictures I'm about to share - these handmade shoes are just too too glorious and I couldn't decide which ones I should show you first. Anyway, here goes. Inspired by myriad things...
Visual biz : Monday Mini Makeovers {part 6}
Monday Mini Makeovers {part 6} Welcome to Part SIX of Monday Mini Makeovers! That means we've covered quite a few shops, and helped them with a lot of business presentation issues, ESPECIALLY the visual. So if you don't find the information you're after in this...
Surface design : Celia Forrester
Celia Forrester loves a good palette. In fact, for her it's the biggest and very funnest part of any design - and it shows. Her colours are rich, warm and inviting; bright and evocative without being obtrusive. Celia started out years ago as a graphic...
The crafted object : Frank Ideas {jewellery}
Frank Ideas Rowan Shaw started designing jewellery because both of her kids were keen swimmers. "With training every morning at 5am it meant I was stuck in a car or by a pool a lot and jewellery was portable. At that stage it was mainly textile necklaces using...