Merry Christmas

Gooseberrymoon in November issue of Brides

Really pleased my bloom wedding stationery featured in the latest issue of Brides Magazine.

Introducing Novel

I can't believe it's October and I'm still introducing this years designs, especially when I'm bang in the middle of designing next years wedding collection. If you want to see sneak peeks of my new range follow me on instagram where I'll be sharing as I go along.

Back to this years. I think this design would look perfect as a book cover hence the name 'Novel'. Shown here in one of my favourite colour combinations, grey and mustard. But like all my wedding stationery it can be recoloured to match any wedding theme.

Image credits: Dresses  |   Invitation   |   Love banner    

Wedding dance shoes   |    Wedding dress   |   Cake

Cake toppers   |   Paper wedding flowers

Real weddings - {Wendy and Chris}

This is a custom design I did the beginning of this year for Chris and Wendy's spring wedding in May. Wendy saw my midnight flowers pattern design on my facebook page and asked if I'd be able to use this for her wedding stationery. I love incorporating my patterns into my stationery designs so this was great fun to do.

Welsh greetings cards

Although I've lived my whole life in Wales I'm ashamed to say I speak little Welsh! I do have some favourite Welsh words though and have wanted to design some contemporary Welsh cards for a while. I'm pleased to say I have recently launched a collection of six greetings cards with some lovely Welsh words and general greetings to cover lots of occasions. I'm currently looking for stockists, so if you know any lovely little shops and galleries in Wales where you think my cards would be a good fit please let me know so I can get in touch with them.

I'm made up that North Wales Tourism have already agreed to stock them in some of their Tourist Information Centres/gift shops.

Each card features a gooseberrymoon pattern that continues onto the backs of the card. They measure 148mm square and are professionally printed onto 325gsm uncoated board. Click here for more images and details.

 Cwtch/cuddle

 Cariad/love

Diolch/thank you 

Llongyfarchiadau/congratulations 

Penblwydd Hapus/ happy birthday

Sws/kiss

1 year anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of quitting my day job to run gooseberrymoon full time and it has flown by! I feel so lucky to be able to do something that I love for a living. I'd be lying if I said it's easy but easy would be boring. The hardest part is not having enough hours in the day for one person to achieve all that I want to, so I have to remind myself how far I've come and all those little achievements add up. Probably one of the biggest achievements in this time is completing The Art and Business of Surface pattern design course. Doing this course had resulted in my work being featured in two amazing online publications firstly Moyo Magazine and secondly Print and Pattern design blog. Creating patterns is so much fun and there's nothing better than seeing them on actual products like my phone cases, notebooks and greetings cards.

I've had some great news over the past couple of days. My Welsh greetings cards are going to be stocked by North Wales Tourism and one of my patterns is going to be featured in an actual book! Not sure which pattern but the book is called New Pattern Design published by Zeixs. I'll keep you up to date when I get more information.

The art of typography

One of the best things about working for myself is all the new stuff I've had to learn. From setting files up for print to tackling Adobe illustrator - I love it all. I also enjoy learning for the heck of it, things I don't have to do but will help me become a better designer.

One course that I've recently completed is Faye Brown's Art of typography on Skillshare. I really enjoyed this course from the first mini exercise of matching typefaces to specific words (such fun), right through to the final project of creating our own typographic layout of a quote.

I chose a made up saying 'Me and you, you and me as happy as can be'. I started off doodling some of the words and letters.

I played around with different layouts until I came up with this one below that I created in Photoshop using a selection of different fonts. I liked the fact that it can be read either across or downwards.

I wanted to hand letter the quote so I copied the above free-hand so it had a little wobbliness to it. After a couple of different versions and adding details to the second 'you' and 'happy', I scanned it into Illustrator, live traced it, added a background and illustrated leaves. And ta dah my final piece.

Another course I've done this year was a printing course at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham. I've since become a member of the centre so I can use their printing facilities. I thought this illustrated quote would make a great screen print so I made up a screen a few weeks ago and had a go at printing.

I need lots more practice at screen printing before I could think about selling them as art prints but was happy I was able to give one of them to my cousin and his wife-to-be for their engagement present. So until I've perfected my screen printing skills I have this quote available as a digital print in my notonthehighstreet shop.

If you'd like to learn more about typography I highly recommend Faye's course which you can find here.

Moyo magazine feature

Moyo is a quarterly online magazine dedicated to surface pattern design. It's full of interviews, design briefs, colour challenges, art reviews, student showcases, design tips, inspiration and trends. And I was lucky enough to get two little features in the 4th issue. My grasses were in the yellow colour stories and four of my patterns were on the showcase pages. I really love this magazine and look forward to each issue coming out. In fact I think the next one is due out the end of this month. If you've not yet seen these magazines go take a look here for loads of inspiration.

Print and pattern design blog feature

Trying to catch up logging my features here on my blog. Since I started my surface pattern design journey it has been a dream to see my patterns on the Print and Pattern design blog and I was ecstatic to discover them featured back in June.

Featured in Brides magazine

Slightly old news now but wanted to share the feature my Garland invitations got in the July/August issue of Brides magazine. It's such a good feeling to see my work in a glossy magazine!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Introducing Anemone

Dreamy mint green and black, a fresh and stunning colour combination. I love that dress! See more images on my Pinterest board.

Image credits:  Dress  |  Bouquet   |   Cake   |   Invitation   |   Champagne   |   Candle teacups    |   Straws

A to Z of flowers C,D,E and F

I'm a bit behind at posting my pattern designs for the a to z of flowers challenge. Here's a little round up of c,d,e and f looking lovely as envelope liners.

C is for Clematis

D is for Dandelion

E is for Elderflower

E is for Euphorbia

 F is for Freesia 

Introducing Confetti hearts

Petal pink and soft grey look so pretty together and are a beautiful colour combination for a spring wedding.

Image credits
Top row: Chevron Cake |  Dress source unknown  |  Heart straws 
Middle row: Cocktail  |  invitation 
Bottom row: Table setting  |  Bride and bridesmaids