Another new venture?! Part 1

You may think I have enough on my plate...?

Well I clearly didn't think so...and have added another string to my bow. In doing so, I have made the tough decision to fine tune what I do and cut out the event and interior design (it was SO hard to say no to a job of that nature today.)

Last year, my step sister Sally, asked if I could help with her wedding stationery. I couldn't resist but jump in with both feet. Soon a fully designed invitation was in existence and I had been bitten by the bug. The wedding industry is something I have always felt I could contribute to but was never sure of what particular field. 

Sally and Andy's invitation from my instagram 

Meetings with my good friend and super wedding stylist Kirsten Butler helped me start on the long path to becoming a wedding stationery designer, with the opportunity to design some invitations for a shoot at Arnos Vale. I featured those on the blog a little while back and it really got me inspired.

I needed to improve my painting skills so I enrolled on a wonderful 5 week course at the Folk House and got back to basics with the watercolours. It was a botanical drawing class, which is a subject I love, and just happens to be all over high street prints and homewards at the moment. 

These seems to go pretty well, so I started to have a think about what kind of designs I wanted to do for my wedding invitations. After narrowing it down from being everything to everyone, I settled on hand painted, high end, beautiful and delicate patterns inspired by botanical prints. But I had a strong desire to add a contemporary edge. This would come in the use of colour. Poppy Delevingne's second Pucci Wedding dress summed up the feel I wanted to give: incredibly elegant and drawing on traditional fold art and crafts but beautifully bright, daring and contemporary.

This led me to think of the traditional floral patterns found in Mexican Folk Art...Could I justify going to Mexico just to look at embroidered flowers? Hmm, I needed to think a bit closer to home...

So I booked a ticket to Seville.

You'll have to wait for the next post  to find out if Seville gave me what I needed and to get a hint of my drawings and paintings of Seville tiles and architecture

Theatre Design: The Winter's Tale. A look at the costume design

Photo Nick Spratling

A few months back I designed a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. My FAVOURITE Shakespeare play. To celebrate the Bard's 450th I will share some of Nick Spratling's lovely production photos of the show.

Photo Nick Spratling

It is also a great opportunity to share som of my styling ideas for the costumes. Here, Hermione embraces Leontes, but can you see the leaves scattered over her gown. This is the final scene of the play where the themes of growth and the power of nature have finally overcome the tyrannical Leontes. The new spring leaves over her once sterile white gown give a sense of optimism.

Photo Nick Spratling

Here Coco wears a classic Bohemian shepherdess outfit. We had great fun with clashing patterns and prints in a big bold celebration of colour and spring time. Costume supervisor Nicola Holter and I had a great time rummaging in the Bristol Textile Recycling plant to get our hands on such incredible knitwear like this great cardi.

Photo Nick Spratling

 There were plenty more cool finds in my studio as well as the Textile recycling plant to create the Bohemian Sheep Shearing festival. As well as this, Nicola made each cast member a bib apron out of various beautiful floral and toile fabrics for a garage of pastoral glory!

photo Nick Spratling

photo Nick Spratling

photo Nick Spratling

Juno and Joy: Arnos Vale Wedding Shoot writeup

Photo Frances Taylor

A lovely blog post from Juno and Joy Wedding blog was written today about a shoot done by the very talented wedding stylist The Little Wedding Helper aka Kirsten Butler, which featured my wedding stationery designs!

Today I also got the sample prints back for my step sister Sally's invites...I'm really enjoying the stationery design process so far, and building up a store of templates ready to launch a full design service by the end of the year!

The Great Escape

'Shepherds Delight'

The 'lake'

Ant and I managed to squeeze in a few days away between weddings and stag dos (he's embarking on a 10k assault course this weekend in Nottingham...I'm thanking my lucky stars for the chocolate making workshop I did). We went down to the Shepherds Hut Retreat in Dorset and had a grand old time doing very little apart from looking like rather keen idiots with our cameras slung around our necks wherever we went. 

Ant at the lens

I became not a little obsessed with this fluorescent pink tiered flower, found in the subtropical gardens in Abbotsbury. The flower bed looked like an Erdem explosion of this season's berry colours which has me itching to do a summer acid floral project in the coming days. But not before I take Ros for her birthday surprise tomorrow...you'll hear all about it next week!