'Prints of the Orient' Exhibition

Throughout October, GraceInk Design will be showcasing Hong Kong inspired interior furnishing products at the Pushing Print Event taking place in Margate. The work was selected by Qing Art based in Margate to work alongside their own collection of home furnishings and furniture, which is a beautiful selection of throws, tables, lamps and cushions bursting with colour and pattern from the Orient. The website is well worth a look if you can't make it to Margate yourself...check it out here! (I'm saving my pennies for one of the beautiful throws)

And below, I finally managed to transfer my hand-drawn birdcage design onto screen and here are two of the finished results below (that are currently making their way to Margate), this design has become so popular that it's also adorning tea-towels and notebooks and I'm sure in the near future a whole host of other products. The notebooks will be on sale from Saturday, launching at the WASPS open studios!

WASPS Open Studio

The weekend after next (2nd & 3rd October) is the annual WASPS open studios which is happening Scotland wide and will be showcasing some of the artists and designer-makers Scotland has to offer. I'm based at WASPS in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, where there will be live music, cakes and plenty of inspiring artwork and artists...so if you live near by why not pop along or see if there's a studio closer to you!

Craft Residency Masterclass

Back at the end of June I headed off to Oban to teach screen-printing techniques to a group of pupils from schools across North Lanarkshire. As a follow up they came over to Heriot-Watt University in Galashiels to do a two day masterclass within the fantastic facilities there with two wonderful technicians and me (of course)!

The students got the chance to print images they had created while in Oban, including textures created from seaweed and slate picked up from the beach and images inspired by the shoreline and terrain around our base in Oban. The fabrics created will be cut into pattern pieces and made into shirts to be showcased at an event in November alongside a range of shirts from Heriot-Watt's campus in Dubai.

They got the chance to use a whole range of printing inks, dyes and adhesives including devoré (which burns away fibre), foils, hand-painting, pigments, opagues and puff binder. There were some amazing colours and patterns created which will go onto to make the coolest skirts.

And if you pop back to my original post on the Craft Residency back in June you'll see a picture of this artwork of boats (above) being drawn, which the student turned into the prettiest hand painted silk scarf.

Arrows at the ready...

What a busy month September has been so far...my feet have hardly touched the ground. The weather has been a bit up and down of late but just over a week ago the sun shone for the annual Archery Competition happening at Abbotsford House (home of Sir Walter Scott) near Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. As well as the usual bows and arrows flying about there was a lovely little craft fair taking place which I took part in.

As well as my usual bits and pieces, I've just recently finished an old/new design (old as it was originally for digital, new because it's now on screen), which I have been using on tea towels in duck egg blue above (it's the birdcages). More of the tea towels along with a whole host of other bits and pieces will be making their way to Pushing Print in Margate at the end of this month...check out www.qingart.co.uk News and Events for more information on that or check back to my blog in the next few days for a separate blog all about it!

I also had to include a picture of the fantastic birdie pegs one of my sisters brought back from France while she was on her travels...they will be making theie rounds to all the other fairs I'm doing in coming months because as well as looking cool they also come in extremely handy!

And just to finish, one of the towers on Abbotsford House with it's Scottish Flag flying, it looks like an ugly grey cloud is gathering behind but it stayed dry all day, just the way I like to exhibit my work!

Here comes the Bride...

One of many projects I have been involved with recently has included a commission for drapes to hang inside a marquee; 100 metres of hand printed fabric incorporating a butterfly motif designed and printed by me! I was really pleased that it all worked out so beautifully and I was commissioned to produce such a special piece of work. Thanks to Best Intent Marquees for all their help with logistics and getting them in-situ. After many days working out measurements, ordering fabric, creating designs and then finally printing I was pretty amazed at the finished result. Even though I had been with the drapes throughout their creation I just couldn't picture how they would look inside the marquee...so it was such a sense of achievement to receive this picture and know that it all looked pretty good!

Lets Celebrate!

So as it turns out I have some kind of a life outside of my own design bubble, and when I pop it every so often I usually find it's for a celebration of some kind...the best kind of breaks from the job! Just last week I attended the wedding of two very dear friends, and they, being absolutely lovely, asked me to design and craft their wedding stationary (above and below). I had the invite laser-cut for that little extra sparkle (many thought I had hand cut all 100 invites...I am mad but not that mad)!

Here is the menu in-situ and below is the invite stood up, before I fastened the blurb inside. It was an absolutely beautiful day enjoyed by all and I was soooooooo happy to be part of it...thank you!

Continuing on the theme of me putting my design skills to good use among friends and family, I also designed and made the invites for my Aunties Surprise 40th Birthday Tea Party earlier this year...check out the result below.

Harestanes Craft Fair

I may have moved away from a lovely studio space located at Harestanes just under two months ago now for pastures larger (!), but I was recently invited back to take part in a small craft fair the centre was organising, showcasing a range of crafts people from across the Borders. The weather has been so changable of late, so it was a nice surprise for the sun to make a guest appearance for the Sunday afternoon event.

It's great to be able to get involved with the local craft community scene and small events such as this are a great way of doing so. I just had a few smaller pieces on offer such as greeting cards, purses and tea-towels, but everything was still hand-screen-printed by my own two fair hands!

I shared the space with another fantastic screen-printer who is based over in Selkirk, where my new studio is. Her name is Gina Tebbutt and her attention to detail is spot on with a lovely mix of quirky owls and florals mixed in with some beautiful interpretations of the local borders region which whe creates into greeting cards and framed prints with canvas bags thrown in for good measure.

Me and Gina are hoping to do fairs together in the future as the work really sits nicely together, we both have a passion for screen-printing and want to sell it to the masses! I'm hoping to be taking part in a small craft fair at Abbotsford in the near future, so stay tuned for more information on that one.