Children's Wallpapers for Kate Usher

I've just recently finished the final module of my first year which was a work based learning module. The live brief was to develop a collection of wallcoverings for north east based design company Kate Usher Studio. Kate Usher is famous for her quirky, hand drawn children's wallcoverings and more recently for her work for the boutique hotel market, so we were asked to choose between the two options for our designs. I chose to follow the Children's route and after much research I went with a wildlife theme. Unfortunately with there being no zoos near where I live, I took a little trip to the Hancock museum in Newcastle and drew some of the stuffed animals..

Continuous line elephant - one
of my fave drawings

Blind drawing of lion

Continuous line rhino
using fineliner

Zebra in freehand machine embroidery

I photocopied a few of my drawings and had a play around with scale and position of my drawings in repeat patterns. It was nice seeing my drawings start to develop into a design.

design development

Final Collection of designs for Kate Usher

I scanned my original drawings into photoshop and played with colour and scale. I found that using a half drop repeat worked the best. I really enjoyed using photoshop and developing my skills, so I'm keen to use it again in future projects.

I added a pattern to the background of this design inspired
 by my drawings of elephants skin. I feel it gives an extra
 something to the design!

One of my favourites

I have really enjoyed this module and I was very pleased with the final outcomes.

Printing off my final designs- exciting!

Wallpaper collection
ready to present to
Kate Usher

 At the end of the module our class presented the wallpapers to Kate Usher in a final crit. Kate chose a winning collection from the class which included a cash prize of £100 and a 40 hour work placement. Congrats to Jan Baxandall who won!

Newcastle Fashion Week 2012

A little glimpse from the felt making workshop I did a couple of weeks ago at Newcastle City Library as part of my work placement for the course. It was one of Newcastle Fashion Weeks fringe events where myself and other students from my course ran various bitesized craft workshops throughout the week, and members of the public popped in and learnt some new skills!