Cute as a button earrings

I’m excited to introduce to you a new product and tell you a little bit about them! These super cute earrings come in two sizes; a bold 28mm and more delicate 19mm. There are lots of colours to choose from and they are made from upcycled fabric swatches.

Making the fabric covered buttons

I hand make each button by upcycling silk-cotton fabric swatches. The fabric begins life as fabric swatches used to exhibit my surface pattern designs at international trade shows like Printsource in New York or Premier Vision in Paris. The silk-cotton is printed in the U.K. by a company called The Centre for Advanced Textiles. They always produce such lovely rich and vibrant prints. So you can be proud to wear a British made design as well as helping reduce waste through upcycling!

Choosing the right frame

I take care with how each little circular frame works to capture an interesting part of the design. Every pair of earrings is different due to the handmade process. After the fabric has been cut, I use upcycled cotton (from digital print lead-ins) to line the earring and then make it up using a lovely light aluminium button back.

Button earrings

I have been taking these funky, statement stud earrings to craft fairs like Crafty Fox recently and getting great feedback. Customers have said how light and easy to wear they are. The posts and fixings are made from hypoallergenic stainless steel and have classic butterfly scroll backs. My own ears can be pretty sensitive to different metals, so it was important to me to make something that works for people with sensitive ears.

Hand made packaging

Both sizes of stud earrings come packaged in 100% recycled card, with card inserts, to help keep them eco friendly! I’m in the process of moving all my postal packaging to environmentally sound options, but am running down older stocks first. Each design on the label is hand drawn, so not only to you get a one of a kind earring, but the packaging is unique too.

Best seller!

Each design has a little story behind it explaining what inspired the drawings; you can check them all out in the shop. This one is called ‘Waves’ and is inspired by watching ocean waves. It is currently my best seller. Which design is your favourite? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

Liberty book feature

Liberty would probably rank pretty highly in most surface pattern designers’ top 10 of influential brands. They have been showcasing amazing patterns on their iconic fabrics for over 100 years. I’ve followed their work for a long time and went to see the inspirational retrospective of their work at the Fashion and Textiles Museum in London, back in 2016.

Liberty prints at the Fashion and Textiles Museum in 2015/16

In September 2018 Liberty ran a competition called Open Call, seeking out new talent to produce fresh print designs for them. Participants were asked to post a single image of their work on Instagram and use the hash tag #LibertyOpenCall.

I was keen to take part (!), but had a dilemma with choosing what to submit…

Four possible designs for submission.

I narrowed my ideas down to four possible abstract floral designs. Then I took the question to my lovely followers for their help, posting the four designs on Instagram and Facebook. It was super useful to get feedback from everyone. I love this aspect of the social media community!

Protea was the most popular design.

The votes were in and my loose floral design called ‘Protea’ was the most popular. Liberty had over 5000 entries and there was so much outstanding work! I was thrilled in January to get a message from Liberty saying; ‘we loved your #LibertyOpenCall submission…’ and asking if I’d like to be featured in a new publication?! Errr… YES!

The Liberty Book - Spring 2019

The Liberty Book is the first issue of their new publication and includes an article showcasing some of their favourite entries to the competition alongside the four winners. I’m thrilled to have my quirky pattern design showcased alongside such talent.

If you would like to buy my Protea design it is available in my store as a blank greetings card!

Albaquirky at Crafty Fox

Crafty Fox market has been supporting emerging designer makers and artists since 2010 by showcasing them at their fairs. They mainly run events in and around London, but can occasionally be found further afield. Timeout describe the market as, "One of London's best markets" and I agree!

I remember going to early Craft Fox markets when I lived in Brixton and always being super excited to see the diverse talent exhibiting their work there. So I was pretty stoked to be selected to join the lovely Craft Fox crew last Saturday and have a little Albaquirky stall in South London at the Mercato Metropolitano.

You can see I brought my favourite feline model (he’s called Herman) and he is doing his best to upstage me by wearing as many upcycled fabric bead necklaces as he can. He’s such a show off! I also brought quite a few new products to debut at the fair and all the old favourites like my large wool scarves, statement necklaces, totes, notebooks and monochromatic tea towels.

I have been working on a new upcycled jewellery and accessories range called ‘cute as a button’. I hand make pretty, little silk cotton covered buttons using my drawings and designs. These are then transformed into pin badges, hair clips and earrings. I also have new A3 Art prints and greeting cards. I got such a great response to these new products at the market.

My ‘cute as a button’ earrings were my biggest seller, with some people going for the smaller 19mm size and others going for more of a statement with the larger 28mm size.

One proud owner of some new earrings, doing a little impromptu modelling for us at the market! These are the larger 28mm size. Thank you to my stall buddy Hairy Jayne for the product swap, modelling services and being such great company.

Thank you to everyone who came along and said hello on the day, it was so nice to hear all your lovely feedback on the products. We are back again in the Mercato Metropolitano for the next Crafty Fox on Sat 4th May, we hope to see some of you there again!

Upcycled fabric necklaces

How do I make these lovely necklaces?

I’ve often been asked about the story behind my upcycled fabric covered bead necklaces, so I will share a little with you about them. The fabric begins life as fabric swatches used to exhibit my surface pattern designs at international trade shows like Printsource in New York or Premier Vision in Paris.

I have my designs digitally printed on a silk-cotton blend of fabric by a company called The Centre for Advanced Textiles. They are part of Glasgow School of Art (my old art school) and have great specialist knowledge on textiles printing. They always produce such lovely rich and vibrant prints.

Once the textile swatches have finished fluttering around the world (like pretty, silky butterflies) they return to my studio and begin their transformation.

I cut them into strips, which I then join together to make the fabric into a long tube for the beads go into.

The fabric is sewn together on my trusty Janome sewing machine.

I use embroidery thread to hand sew 14 wooden beads into each necklace. I’m working under the eagle eye of the quality control cat here!

I use different colours of thread to stitch in the beads depending on what works well with the print design.

The ends of each necklace is finished with Bondaweb, for a nice clean edge (earlier necklaces were sewn). Then all that’s needed is to add a little Albaquirky label.

Then those pretty butterflies of fabric swatches have finished their transformation and have become funky caterpillars! Yes, I know that is the wrong way around, but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd ;-)

Each necklace takes about an hour and a half to make from start to finish. After that, all that’s required is to tie a pretty bow around their new owner’s neck and they can start a whole new journey with them!

September news

September news...

Hi,

I'm loving the change in the seasons as Autumn mists and wonderful colours bring plenty of visual inspiration. There has been lots of action over at the Albaquirky studio these last couple of months, so I'm blogging a news bulletin to tell you what I've been up to...

This week I have been exhibiting at  Premier Vision Paris where I am pleased to be showing lots of fresh A/W 18/19 collections with the Nerida Hansen Fashion Collective. This time last year I was exhibiting at the same Premier Vision show and some of the designs I sold at that show are just starting to hit the shops.  I've been having fun spotting them out in the wild and currently can't walk past a Paperchase without having to stop and see what can be found on their shelves...

I was thrilled to see that my 'Machair' wallpaper was featured in the October edition of 'House Beautiful' magazine. They showcased it in an article on living room style and the black and white colour way called 'Inkdrops' had caught their eye. It is available to purchase from the award winning wallpaper brand Feathr. 

I'm noticing a change in the buying trends of the Albaquirky product line as Autumn arrives. More of the darker colour schemes and wool fabrics are proving popular now, so popular in fact I've just sold out of these two designs! 

In other news; I'm excited to announce that I will be exhibiting at my first Heimtextil show in Frankfurt in January 2018 with Nerida Hansen. I'm really pleased to be showing with Nerida again and lots of super talented designers at one of the worlds biggest pattern shows for interiors and home decor. Keep an eye on my instagram feed @albaquirkydesigns for sneak peeks of some of the home and interior focused designs I'm working on for the show!
 

Woodland wedding

This time last year it was four months before my wedding.  I had been working on some very special fabric designs for the big day and had just sent them off to my digital printers up in Scotland. I was cutting it very fine indeed, with getting the designs off to print, to have them back in time for my lovely dress maker Emma of OhSewVintage to get going with making up the dresses. So it was a busy time of crossing fingers and hoping everything came back looking good!

I got married in the Chiltern Hills at the very beautiful National Trust location of Whipsnade Tree Cathedral.  Once we'd found our venue and I had the idea that I'd like to make some designs inspired by the woodland location. My fiancee and I spent lots of time there, we walked the spaces and took many photographs, trying to really soak up the special atmosphere of the location, to get the inspiration going.

I then spent the winter months in the studio sketching and developing a pattern and placement print collection. I was particularly interested in a one of the chapels which was surrounded by a group of silver birches.  These birches, their bark, leaves and the dappled shadows they created, became my main focus.

I made a collection of 18 designs and a linked colour palette that was inspired by the tree cathedral, which I then shared with my bridesmaids, so they could pick their favourite designs and colours to go onto their dresses.  My Maid of Honour and I met with my dress maker Emma and we talked over suitable fabrics and layouts for the patterns and I worked the girl's choices up into repeat and sent them off to CAT Digital in Glasgow to be printed. It was very exciting to open the fabric package a few weeks later! There was a whole lot of fabric... I had to lay it out on my dining room table to check the print and organise it to go to the dress makers.

This first design is on a stretchy cotton satin, for my Maid of Honour's vintage style wiggle dress. 

I had two little bridesmaids and their designs were printed on pretty cotton poplin.

My cat wanted to 'help out' and inspect the designs too! This design was inspired by the blurry dappled shadows underneath the trees in the sunlight.

My talented little sister who works as a wonderful bespoke wedding florist (check her out at Briar Rose) had a placement print dress on silk cotton. Not a bad thing to have a florist in the family if you are getting married...

My other sister had this birch bark inspired design on silk cotton.  She was expecting my nephew at the time and wanted something a bit more subtle and sophisticated for her and the bump.

I had some light wool voile printed to make scarves as gifts for some of the special guests like the mothers and my new sister-in-law.

This birch bark inspired design was printed on silk cotton too, both for my dress and for the usher's pocket squares. 

After I check the fabric delivery it got rushed over to St. Albans where the wonderful Emma at OhSewVintage got busy bringing the designs to life.

I really like this image as it show's my sister's (aka Briar Rose) gorgeous floral work alongside my surface pattern designs. 

The flower girls dresses. I think the wee scribbly clouds dress is my favourite of them all! 

My clever graphic designer husband used the pattern designs in all our wedding stationary and we even did our bunting with fabric from the collection!

It has been a real pleasure to share my designs and the process behind them. It is a bit of a one off occasion for a pattern designer to have the opportunity to work on a wedding in quite this way! Thank you to all the lovely people who helped make it a special day!

Printsource preparation

Hello!

I'm very busy at the moment preparing for Printsource New York which is in just a few weeks time. I'm proud to be showcasing lots of new work alongside four other members of the Finch & Foxglove collective;  Adriana Bergstrom, Lisa Kirkbride, Courtney Beth Keller (aka One Little Printshop) and Adrienne Kerr on January 10th and 11th, 2017 Booth no. A19 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, New York. We'd love it if you came and said hi!

Part of preparing for the show is about getting your booth design right and there has been a lot of thinking going on behind the scenes for that.  We agreed to have a mixture of big impact banners with full height designs and banners broken down into smaller panels of different examples of our trend aware work for a range of markets.  I was lucky enough to have one of my designs included on a full height banner and wanted to talk you through the design process for that image in this blog. 

The final design sits in a much bigger collection of work inspired by my travels in Iceland mentioned in my last blog. I fell in love with the landscapes and textures while on a trip there. I came back with a lot of photos of rocks!

I have been enjoying mixing up media recently and like to get out all my materials when I start drawing. I am particularly keen on mixing wet media, like water colour pens and clean, more graphic, media like Posca pens.

I draw with the digital process in mind, so build up many sheets of paper, that I anticipate will be layers in Photoshop. Sometimes I put down a layer as a wash, scanning it in and then working more on top with pen.  I feel more freedom to be loose and experimental if I capture the stages that I like through scanning. By doing it this way I can always go back to an earlier stage.  Interestingly I very rarely do, but there is obviously something psychological about having that option!

After scanning in I clean up the images and mask the elements. It is sometimes hard to decide how many accidental dots and marks to keep or to remove, I want to keep the energy of the handmade painterly process, so some dots stay and some marks go!

After developing this series of paintings and drawings digitally, they became two designs. A softer green, mossy design and a brighter, bolder design more inspired by the lichen. The bolder design was a logical choice for catching people's eyes as they walked by the booth at Printsource, so I settled on that.

We sent all our banners off to the printers a few days ago, and wait excitedly to see them come back.  I hope you can join us at Printsource to see the final designs.

Thank you for reading about my design process!

The land of fire and ice

It is that time of year when we are all back from our Summer adventures and starting to think about the cooler months. I spent much of August on an inspirational road trip in the 'Land of Fire and Ice'. Being from the North I have a passion for atmospheric, wild and remote landscapes and my goodness did Iceland deliver!  I think I might be a little bit in love...

I returned from that trip very inspired and have been in the studio for the last month working on a collection reflecting the textures and colours of the landscape. For those of you who follow my Instagram feed @albaquirkydesigns you'll be getting a few more insights as I continue to develop the work.

Studio development of abstract textures using salt and ink

Experimenting with capturing volcanic pumice texture

I'm sharing a few highlights from that collection so far below. The full collection will be previewed at Printsource New York Jan 10th and 11th, where I am exhibiting with the stellar Finch & Foxglove collective. 

Inspired by a rainy window at night when staying in Reykjavik

Metamorphic rocks

Inspired by mineral deposits around geothermal pools and volcanic rock textures

Inspired by lichen, marks on rocks and boiling water bubbling up through the earth

Florals forever

I am enjoying the last of the Summer at Albaquirky Designs and I hope you are getting a little September sun too! There is a big burst of Summer colour on it's way to Premier Vision in Paris next week; I have lots of lovely florals on display at Collect Scotland's stand in Hall 5 at stand 5W36.

I've been busy preparing all the fabric to go off to Paris for the last few weeks.  I have a great printer up in Glasgow (CAT Digital), but I'm always a little nervous awaiting my parcel from them... no need to worry though the prints were fantastic!

It takes around two weeks to get the work back from the printer, just enough time to go on holiday in search of new inspiration (more on that topic in my next blog post)!

Preparing for the show

After the parcel of gorgeous silk-cotton arrives, I'm then busy getting it all ready to exhibit. Cutting, edging and mounting each piece. A rare sighting of a hot ironing board can even be seen!

For those of you who follow my Instagram feed @albaquirkydesigns you'll have been getting a few more insights into some of the work on the way to the show.

I'd love you to come and visit my studio Collect Scotland at the show (Sept 13th - 15th) to see the full collection alongside some other very talented Scottish surface pattern designers. Wishing everyone a successful show!

Summer update

Blooming marvellous! I wanted to kick off my first blog post with some creative updates from the Albaquirky studio... 

I’m back from a very busy and exciting first Surtex in New York, and have been keeping out of trouble with lots of new projects.

Florals everywhere

These photos are of the garden right outside my studio. Nice spot, Huh?! I love this time of year; nature is going wild with big inspirational displays. I step outside and immediately get distracted. I photograph as much flora and fauna as I can, and draw directly from sources if possible, but with so much in bloom it is tough to keep up with nature’s displays!

I'm in the middle of a big design series, preparing lots of fresh new work for Premier Vision in Paris. Florals are featuring big and small in my collections for this show in September. As the show is targeted at the apparel industry I’m afraid I can't share any of my completed designs with you. But can give you a little sneak peak into some of the motifs I’m working on. Follow my Instagram feed @albaquirkydesigns for further teasers, or come and visit my studio Collect Scotland at the show to see the full collections!

Recently I took a break from collection designs to work on a little Finch & Foxglove design brief. Our collective likes to keep the landing page illustrations fresh; updating our images each season. I have a new process blog post up on the Finch & Foxglove website all about the making of my meadow themed finch.

The butler has been working hard behind the scenes to update the website and we are excited to have it live now! He is the brains behind the logo and how it can work as a cutout template to preview designs.  There are a selection of new portfolio images to give a taste of my work. If you are a buyer or art director looking for more, please contact me and I can set you up to see my 2016 Surtex portfolio books or a more specific selection of work.