Is it just me or are the weeks just flying by? I’m losing track of dates and days and suddenly it’s nearly February. Where is all the time going?! It’s been such a long time since I posted that I should probably give a quick update on what has or probably hasn’t been happening.

In November last year, I had a stall with my lovely friend at the ANZA Bazaar. It was months of planning, designing and spending weekends sourcing all the bits we needed for our stall. The day arrived and I was nervous and excited… I was ready to sell out of all my goodies. Unfortunately it wasn’t really the run away success I was hoping for. I didn’t make as much as I hoped, nor did I sell a lot, and I started feeling all dejected about the amount of money and time I had spent on it. Having said that, overall it was a good day in the sense I met some lovely people and had some fantastic comments and I did sell some things. It was just nice to get out of the house and do something for me. But I realised that making and selling product is NOT my thing. I’d rather leave that up to someone else and just sell my design work. I did manage to get a couple of fabric orders of my designs which was really nice. BUT, despite my attention to detail, I realised I made an oversight and had one design printed in the WRONG colourway for one order. Argh! What a very bad mistake. The only way to rectify this was to have it reprinted for free. So there went my profit. Clearly, I am not good at doing this business stuff and should just stick to designing. So my new goal this year; just focus on being a better designer and illustrator.

So I’ve decided to focus on designing for A Fresh Bunch at the moment. It offers real opportunities to get my work out there and there is a lot of potential if I stick with it, and keep designing, even if not all the briefs are to my strengths. I have an opportunity for SURTEX, which is really exciting and involves lots of challenging work. The second is still wanting to do the surface pattern designing. I still want to focus on building some design collections; I just don’t seem to have my head in the right place to pull together collections at the moment. I know it will come when the inspiration is there.

Phew! On top of all that is the soon to be fact we are moving back to Melbourne. I’m excited, but also nervous. I guess change will do that to you. Despite finding things difficult here in Jakarta at times, I will certainly miss quite a few things; people are so friendly and helpful here, amazing friends I have met, the ability to have help at home which has allowed me the time to design.

Oh yeah, two beautiful daughters are very much keeping me busy and tiring me out. Who thought a three year-old could be such hard work!

Here’s some wall art I did through A Fresh Bunch for a framing company showing at one of the trade shows in Las Vegas. Fingers crossed it went well 🙂

Till next time.

I find my creativity comes in waves. Some days I’m really into a design and there aren’t enough hours in the day to keep working on a particular design. Other days, I feel tired, a bit de-motivated by the other awesome work out there and I don’t feel like doing much designing, or feel it’s just not up to scratch.

I think the hardest thing for me, is still finding my ‘style’. I see some really great work out there, which really inspires you to try out different styles and techniques, but I haven’t quite nailed my style.

I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to work on any personal designs. My aim was to produce a collection each month, so I’ve managed to keep up with that so far, but I really need to start building a new collection to get done by this month. I’m also planning on having a stall at the Christmas bazaar here in November, so I really want to have some designs ready to print and hopefully sell.

In between all that, A Fresh Bunch has been keeping me quite busy with their assignments… I’ve been keen to jump in and participate, as I know this is going to be the best way to get some work out there at the moment.

Anyway, hope to post up some new work soon. In the meantime, I really need some sleep!

I thought I should take some time out between designing and kids to blog about my experience of Module 3 of the Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design. I know when I was thinking about enrolling, I too was searching for reviews of the course to know whether it was worth my time and money.

I enrolled during a busy time; I already had a 4 month old baby (as well as a 2 year-old) and we were about to move to Jakarta… so I wasn’t sure if it was the best time to be doing an online course. I decided to jump straight in, seeing as the next Module 3 wouldn’t be until 2015… a bit too long for me to wait.

I’m glad I enrolled when I did, because even though there were lots of things happening in my life, I still found some downtime, during naps or in the evening to read through the course notes. And there is plenty of time after the course finishes to catch up. So you can essentially work at your own pace.

I jumped straight into Module 3, since I have a graphic design background and I know my way around Illustrator and Photoshop. I already have some patterns under my belt, but I just didn’t know how to get my work out there.

Firstly… the course was definitely worth my time and money. I am so glad I decided to do it when I did, because now I feel I have some direction for the rest of the year. Each week, the course covers a different topic. There are blog posts daily (except on Sundays, I think), exercises, loads of information and templates to download, as well as live briefs. I didn’t get to complete all the exercises in class, but they are there to work on in your own time. I tried to focus on the live briefs instead. They were quite challenging, as for many of us, we have a certain style and market we like to design for. I was stoked my nursery collection for Mitas & Co made it into the Top 7 designs, with some really positive feedback.

I found the selling (licencing and selling outright) part of the course most useful as that’s the avenue I want to pursue, rather than manufacturing my own products. There was some interesting information on trade shows, but again, it wasn’t so relevant to me as I’m not quite there yet. But it’s good to have on file, if I decide I’m ready for it (Surtext is on my dream list in the next 5 years!). There is also a competitions page on course website, so lots of us were also entering these – I was fortunate that two of my designs made it into the Top 15 and Top 10 of the To Dry For and Digital Fabrics competition.

You can also ask Rachael any questions you may have on a weekly basis and she is very generous with her responses. And the Facebook page is wonderful. It’s so great to connect with other like-minded designers to talk about all things pattern and a private space to share your work and get feedback.

I highly recommend the course – if you are umming and ahhhing about it… just jump in and go for it. You might be like me and have your hands full with kids, or are working full-time, or have lots of other commitments on the go, but if you don’t do it now, then when? A great quote I read somewhere said ‘A year from now, you’d have wished you started today’. I definitely feel that resonates with me, as I wish I’d gotten into my pattern designing before kids when I had more ‘free time’.

What I’ve taken away from the course is a plan moving forward. Before I was just creating random designs and didn’t have much direction. Since doing the course, it’s become clear that I really need to do the groundwork and focus on my folio and developing my style. I want to put together quite a few collections I’m happy with before approaching manufacturers or companies who may be interested in my work. Wish me luck!

It’s not even 10pm and I’m yawning and feel as though I could drop off at any minute.

Again, it’s been a long time between blog posts, so I thought I should write something before I just never get around to it and before my daughter wakes up. This post isn’t so much about designing, as there hasn’t been much lately. I’m just too tired at night-times and my daughter’s nap-time in the afternoon has turned into my rest and recharge nap too. I have resigned to the fact that I probably won’t get to focus on my design work for a little while longer… it will have to take a back seat for the moment.

I’ve been back in Melbourne for 2 months now. The first month was great. There was so much to do and people to see. Not that that has changed at all, but my energy levels have dropped to 50% or less. I’m so tired ALL the time. This is what happens when you are pregnant with your second (and in the third trimester), have a toddler at home with you full-time and a partner who is working overseas. It’s exhausting! Thankfully, I do have family around, so I’m not doing this alone, but I’m mostly doing everything myself. Motherhood is by far the toughest thing I have ever done. Imagine if I had to juggle working as well! So what gets done is only the basics; cooking, washing, minimal housework. My focus at this point is to keep my growing girl busy. No longer content with staying at home, if we don’t go out outdoors or for a play date to tire her out, she gets all stir crazy and bored. So as much as I’d love to relax and watch a DVD/read a book, especially on those chilly days, I’m out pushing the pram down to the local park, library, market or whatever else I can find, sometimes twice a day so she gets tired and will sleep better. Anyway, I’m sure life will be much busier and more tiring once the second comes along.

I know I did say not much designing has been going on, BUT, I did manage to work on this pattern recently ‘Spring Fling’. It may be the last for a little while…

My winning pattern for Repeat(ed) Challenge 4.

So it’s already July. Where has the year gone? I have to admit, I am hopeless at this blog updating stuff. I quite like reading other people’s blogs, but when it comes to my own, I just seem to never get around to it. Maybe I don’t think my life is that interesting enough to publish to the world wide web.

Well I am about to leave Indonesia (again!) and head back home to Melbourne. Mixed feelings about returning home, but hopefully it will be nice to be back around family and friends. The constant heat is getting to me, being in Jakarta, that I’m desperate for some cooler weather. But I’m sure once I’m in frosty Melbourne, I’ll be yearning for some warmer weather. The grass is always greener, isn’t that what they always say.

There has been a little bit of designing going on. Not as much as I had set out to do since the start of the year, but the Printed Bold Repeat(ed) Competition has been keeping me on my toes. I was so lucky to have my patterns in the last round selected as the winner. It made my day, especially as Amy Butler was guest judge and had such positive things to say. I just finished the final challenge – designing a pattern collection. This was really hard. I felt like I was losing energy and focus to get it done. There was a couple I just wasn’t sure about, but I ran out of time. So we’ll see the results in a weeks time! I think the other fab designers will do a stellar job, so I’m not expecting to win. I think making it to the Top 3 was an achievement enough and I know I did my best. But, I do need to brush up my skills on working on some collections 🙂

Hoping for a brighter second half of the year! Till then. x