What I did for my summer vacation (part 2)

My other major project for Merida (besides the usual intern tasks like assembling three dozen sales binders) was to use existing rug designs to develop patterns for greeting cards. Every pattern was created in Illustrator and I'm really thrilled with how these came out; the sales reps for the company are already using them for correspondence with clients.

They wound up printing five designs in four colorways each. Here are the cards and the designs that inspired them:















The final thing to come out of the internship--and this was suggested but it was still a surprise to see arrive in the mail--were two notebooks using variations on two of my card patterns.





The blue one, based on a poor-quality photo I saw of the rug that inspired it, is probably my favorite pattern and colorway of the series.







The best part about these notebooks is the huge production quality. They're printed on recycled paper with matte covers. Merida is a fairly green company, and I'm so happy that they gave me the opportunity to create so much work and then produced in such a high-quality and responsible way.

What I did for my summer vacation (part 1)

I finally had some free time during a sort-of sunny day to photograph some things, including the work I did for Merida over the summer. Five decks of these finally came in the mail a few weeks ago:



These are playing cards I designed from start to finish; each card has a pattern from Merida's Viewpoint Collection, and each suit represents one of the four sets within the collection. They're going to be handed out as promotional items at trade shows.




Every card was done in Illustrator and is symetrical like a commercial playing card. The company had them printed by a service, so they look really great.



These are my two favorite cards, along with the informational card included in each deck. Since the rugs are all wool, I made the Joker a sheep (the King, Queen, and Jack show the process of designing and making a rug). And one of the designs from the Kids' Viewpoint Collection is called Eloise. I take it as a sign.

An Anti-Valentine

I am done (done! Done!) with the most intense Wintersession of my life, including my first show and a fifteen minute presentation. I took machine knitting (which was truly amazing), and I should be posting my work within the next couple of days. In the meantime I'm reposting (a better image of) this...



For Dabbled's Anti-Valentine contest. Wish me luck (new content soon).

Back! (Again)

Just a little something, with the promise of more to come. This was a valentine for the lovely and talented Erica Henderson.



It's mostly from Peter Venkmen (that is, Bill Murray from Ghostbusters). He and Erica were both fun to draw, and inking this was disproportionately fun.

This Wintersession I'm taking my very last art history class and a machine knitting studio. The knitting is awesome; it's a great combination of clear technical procedure and free, exploratory artistic expression. I have a garment and a big pile of samples in my room, but it turns out that any time it would be a good idea to take photos (i.e. when the sun is up) I'm in the knitting studio. I'll be posting things soon, including some patterns I'm really enamored with.