Butterfly prints flutterby

 John Lewis Edition Spring 2014?

Only because the dark needs some colour to it
and a lightness to it lines.

Advert for Marccain @ Marie Claire January 2011

Spring Coming Soon

Spring is coming, it's on the horizon.

The green shoots.

Marie Claire (2011), January 2011, pp unknown

Flowers scanned

Pressed between book pages and newsprint, all-sorted flowers heads.

Clothing Labels: Maximalism and Floral

 

Falmer Heritage
Label @ Matalan

 



Lovely floral motifs which I find are rare on clothing label tags. Really pretty in red with the dark green swirls, all finished off with the grunge effect, giving the label an aged appearance.

Matalan's quality and price are an amazing combination, more often or not their clothing items are made from better cloth (and better stitched), with prices that are almost akin to Primark.

 

 

Denim Co.

Label @ Primark

 

Details on this one are simple, Greece like in motif and the colour is modern and indeed the very image of Primark with its ever colourful items of clothing, items that can be used as layers, leggings, bags and hats and so forth. A thin grey ribbon adds a neat finishing touch on top of the thin semi sheer fabric.

Primark's key to success is maximum sales at lower prices and importantly reacting to the fashion world and its trends of the moment.

Colour Archive: Stylist (unknown issue no, 2012/13)

Magazine online @ http://www.stylist.co.uk/

 

 The pages below, scanned in from the magazine, would make a particularly beautiful desktop or mobile wallpaper (maybe even literal wallpaper for interior design?).

Why not include the text too?

See, this is why I use magazines to collage from, their sources of colour is immeasurable.

Due to the cost of inkjet printing and colour laser printing (which is mind numbingly high), printing sheets and sheets of coloured stuff just seems like madness. In the end using pages from found or bought magazines makes more sense and to sweeten the deal different magazines use different kinds of papers. For example, Stylist uses this soft paper that is like newsprint but much better quality for printing on and unlike its glossy sisters, you can in fact draw, annotate and doodle on the pages.

 

Beautiful Technicolor.

Yes ladies and gents, that is colour spelt the British way :) 

 

 

 

Chintz roses; odd colours of pink, red and purple-blue

The chintz pattern has a lot of history and many books written about it.

But here are some chintz patterns that are have been brought to the present,

to the contemporary pattern structures and use of colours.

        

The colour palette is very expressive and bright and warm,

despite fabric having faded through multiple washes,

the colours still strike me as being original.

Especially that strange purple-blue.

These tiny rose buds are beautifully printed onto the fabric,

which is a kind of synthetic blend of materials -

and seems like it would be difficult to print upon.

Peices of emulsion 'rock' forms

These kind of look tasty from a distance (if colourful things had food like taste to them),

but they don't smell of anything and feel very chalky - no surprise as I used matt emulsion

paints to make these by pouring emulsion mixed with a little glue onto plastic sheets,

from which the paint pieces then peeled from.  

I define these more as paintings than anything else, their forms are sculptural but their brush like strokes and spills of colours portray the personality of a painting and are reminiscent of colour field painters - with their staining of canvas, where as I have poured colours from tins of emulsion.  

 

 

 

I was hoping to include these in my degree show somehow, preferably making bigger pieces but because of their fragility I decided against it. They are brittle and crumble very easily, even after mixing three parts paint with one part PVA. Needs more experimentation.

Testing Sumptuous Plum and Teal Tension

Photos form some recent experiments on paper and an old cotton bed sheet,

using emulsion colours from the Dulux range:

The rich teal that becomes more blue than green here

thanks to being watered down and mixed slightly with white.

Bits of Dylon dye powder dropped it begin to absorb the wetness around them.
A 2B pencil drawn set of random lines.

The shiny silver effect upon emulsion is actually quite pretty.

 A bold pink that I have really began to love.

It is a very strong and bold pink - like a hot pink? 

The effect of these strokes is done by putting some white paint down first,

a thick blob that is then brushes out into a line or shape, and then

a bit of a colour on the same brush that is then brushed out on top of the white.

Not too much of the colour otherwise the effect isn't as strong.

Painting on cloth is something that really interests me at the moment -

the way the paint seems to react alongside a material that

rarely carries something so heavy as emulsion or wet ink.

Again white paint is laid out and then some random

splodges of blue are added with a smaller brush.

Unpicking knits, pilling and colour

I had hoped to re-use this knit but as of yet nothing has been done.
Originally a scarf, I am guessing it was discarded because

it was bubbling up (another term is 'pilling'),

but the colours are still really beautiful and

the wool itself is soft with a nice

golden metallic thread running through it.  

Stripes and dots in pink and purple

 
 
















Stripes and spots

 

Spots, circles and polka dots.

Is it a coincidence that sibilance is in these words?

In reality this fabric is pink only,

but my camera made areas of the fabric appear purple.

This piece of fabric is one that I am working with at the moment; it is a particularly bold fabric piece. The pinks and the bold graphic patterns that consist of wild cat print patterns,

like the stripes of a tiger and spots of a cheetah, blend together wonderfully. The material itself is lightweight and fairly thin, though not really translucent. The print is very stripe orientated.

As with any other kind of fabric that is produced with saris or shalwar kameezs in mind there is another piece that matches this in terms of colour and print, I imagine this piece is meant to be made into the shalwar/trouser and this above piece as the tunic/dress/kameez.

Hopefully I can find the matching piece to it.    

 

Light colours and organic forms

 

 

 

 

 

I took these scraps from various interior catalogues.

Where there is a bit of pattern, it is broken up by layers of light colours.

The organic forms of brambles and holly

play with these muted hues of blues and greens beautifully.

 

I couldn't help but include a random bit of pink.
Like a ribbon.

Geometrics and the red telephone box

Old red telephone box.
Black and white dots.
Golden-yellow lines and boxes.

A part of a series of collages I made last year.
Looking at both colour and geometric shapes that bring together a strange kind of theme to the collage.

 
 

Flowers, petals and roses

 

 

 

 

 

Its strange when scanning dying or dead plants,
the light that is produced for the scanning or copying
process illuminates the parts of the plant
so that it still looks green
when it isn't.

Scans of some petals.

Billboard - a collaged surface

The billboard has become a collage of papers, I just remembered these photos I took when today I saw the billboard that looked so amazing as it was below, now has another advert upon it, covering the lovely torn and worn and wet surface.
Lots of torn papers - segments and odd bits of imagery and words.

Sequinned Chunky Heels

I found these one day when looking through the sale section of T.K.Max at the Metro Center in Gateshead (UK). I was fascinated by how sequins have seemingly for me, moved form coloured to transparent, upon which behind is a print of some kind. Just imagine the possibilities of this - perhaps even tinted sequins on top of a colour or black and white print. Any way I'll be digging out some interesting sequins and beads to post up when I have a chance.

See through sequins are incredibly popular for girl and women's wear at the moment, 

both on clothes and shoes - especially t-shirts and flat ballerina style shoes.

But these caught me as something much more different,
the shoes are in fact heeled and are slipper like when putting them on.
Oh and they come in a freakishly small foot size XD - considering the size of them.

Of course sequins themselves, not just particular colours or shades of them

have always been fairly popular and on trend, and not just on foot-ware. 

The Greeks are known to have used their own coinage as sequins,
drilling holes into them and threading them onto their shoes.
Info from here
[http://damojackson.hubpages.com/hub/Sequin-Shoes]

Of course sequins now in the present are made of plastic,
are disposable, and come in hundreds of different colours and shapes,
not just the original circle shiny thing.

These brass circular button like things on running on the sides are quite an interesting detail.

I'm thinking these shoes may be puma made but unsure as these weren't tagged very well. 

But the fine small flowers on repeat were quite dinky, 

reminding me of the ballerina shoes that Primark and other shops have had in for the past year or so.
with the interesting flower motifs.

The most well known pair of sequinned shoes are the many pairs worn in
The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM Studios) by the actress Judy Garland
who played Dorothy. These shoes have a small heel to them and
were decorated additionally with butterfly bows encrusted
with either tiny jewels or cheap glass beads of sorts.
The slippers themselves were designed by Gilbert Adrian,
at that time he was a known costume designer for MGM studios.
Info from here.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers]

Found Wrapping Bears and Cute Papers

Ok so this sort of stuff is twee. I know.
But look at how the repeats at the papers edges create
brilliant vertical lines of colour that seem to waver.

I had a fiddle on Gimp with the colour as my camera
struggles with whites and greys on images such as this,
where the background is white and uploaded it here

The repetition effect is the most appealing this to this wrapping paper,
personally I love repetition, its a building block to pattern, kind of part of its DNA.

I really need to do my research as I don't know who produced or created this wrapping paper.

Wedding sweets, pink and green

Yum yum.
Especially the mix of the grapefuit like pink

and that nice cool green.
The flower shapes I think are stylised chrysanthemums flowers,
very nice pattern work.

And lets be honest,
everyone likes ribbons.

For those who don't know what houses weddings sweets can be anything,
often using interesting folding techniques or fabric.

Purple Moon and Pink Bird

Ok so it's not an Easter related post. Thankfully.

Photos of graffiti near the MA building
at Northumbria Uni's main campus in Newcastle.
Their quite pretty I think and on a nice scribble black background,
keeping with graffiti aesthetics.

And look that little pink purple blob is trying to make its way to the drains!

Fabric Selection

A few photos I found weeks ago that I never posted but really should have. 
Below is a border design like piece on
a dress styled kameez (tunic top), which is a detail I love.
The whole suit puts purple alongside orange,
and then the touches of brown on the embellished
areas help when it comes to looking for matching jewelry and shoes. 

Just brilliant, two colours rarely worn in my opinion that are brought together.
The trim uses pink, white and brown shiny rayon like threads,
looking into damask like designs that
surround the flower shapes.
Lotus like blooms horizontally lined up.
The light plays with the shiny thread;
creating areas of shade, of light and dark.

The embellishments to the above neck area of a top are quite interesting, using thick black thread to create this beautiful leaf motif
and these splodge like flowers drops,
alongside swirls with sequins dotted around the shapes.
Leaves venation in gold thread – lush!