Devon Carers Leaflets and Posters – New and Updated Work

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I have been working for Devon Carers for over 10 years now, and last year we decided to overhaul the branding. We kept the 3 colours, typeface and the logo, but decided to integrate the Westbank palette of colours in swell, and make the designs more colourful, use more imagery, and use a block-like design in the work.

I redesigned the main leaflets, and made up some templates for Devon Carers to use for their other literature.

I also worked on the Carers Rights Day and Carers Week posters and leaflets last year, tying this all in to the new branding, and the new magazine.

This year, Covid-19 has obviously had an effect on Carers Week, and I designed posters for the activities that were going ahead online.

The designs are much more fun, relaxed and eye-catching than the older branding, and more fun for me to put together! You can see some of my work, and all the good work that Devon Carers do here on their website: www.devoncarers.org.uk.

Monthly Art Challenge – April

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I am still a bit behind with the blog posts about these, but you’ve probably seen it from my Instagram/Facebook. Here’s April’s Moon…

My first real play around with acrylics, acrylic paint and gold ink on black card. I wanted to do something a bit different to differentiate it from my Spring Equinox image. Nearly caught up, will blog about May’s moon and finish June’s moon in the next week or so!

Some new, old, work…

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So as we’re in lockdown, and work has been a little quiet, and I have my evenings, weekends, early mornings, late nights… free to do whatever I choose as long as I stay in and stay safe, I have been doing all the little jobs that I have been putting off or haven’t had time for. I started with the loft, and found some work that I had been meaning to put on my portfolio since I updated my website a while ago. So here it is…

 

 I worked for the Duck Company for about 3 years. I started in December 2010 and worked there as a freelancer on and off for 3 years, leaving in December 2013 as I had a contract with the Met Office. I couldn’t keep both, and sadly left, they were a good company to do work for. I worked on designing the new website for them (it’s been updated again since then), photographing ducks and other products, designing emails for trade and retail and making images for their social media. I also worked a little on their product development in collaboration with the staff there and an illustrator who did some work for them at the time as well.

They also had another company – Daisy Memories and Coffins, which sold biodegradable urns and coffins. Again, I worked on the photography, helped with a website redesign and worked on marketing and brochures for the funeral trade. This was a very interesting job as it is a sensitive subject, and we wanted to make sure the imagery was tasteful and informative. We photographed the coffins in a church, but also took them outdoors in a more natural setting.

I’ve put both of these projects on my portfolio page – you can find the Ducks here and the Daisy Coffins work here.

Age England Association Annual Review – Updated work

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I have been working with Age England Association for 5 years now, designing flyers for Annual Meetings, and the Annual Review every year. The review or report is a 5-6 page document, with some graphs and infographics to support the text. I enjoy the infographics – each year they follow the same guidelines and branding, and I get to make them a little lighter and ‘fun’. I enjoy working for organisations and charities, and this is no exception!

I’ve just updated my portfolio with up to date images of this project – including last year’s report and infographics. You can visit Age England UK’s website here, and see some of the amazing work they do.

Have a look at my portfolio here to see more of my Age England Association work.

 

Monthly Art Challenge – March

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So I am a bit behind with all this due to quarantine, life… anyway, I am catching up. This is March’s moon…

I decided to move away from the watercolour, ink and pencil and go for a digital version this time, this is done purely in Procreate on my iPad with an Apple Pencil. I used the basic brushes that come free with the app, and had a play with using layers which was a great deal of fun. Hopefully I’ll do a few more using this as although it felt a little weird, I did enjoy it! I am particularly pleased with the crow!

As it was March, I also did a piece for the Spring Equinox…

This was back to watercolour and ink, and based on a piece I did for my Dad’s 60th birthday (he loves hares), and used a Celtic blessing for Spring Equinox. It was done around the time of lockdown beginning, and ended up being a bit rushed, but I am pleased with it!

I’ll post April’s moon next week, then May’s, and then it’ll be time for June’s…!

Coronavirus and me

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Around the beginning of March, I really started to worry about the Coronavirus. It was a scary time of not knowing what was happening, how bad things would get and what the future held. And then the lockdown happened.

So far, I have been very fortunate. We have had no illness, and very few cases and deaths in my region, so far. But it has affected my life, personally, mentally, physically, financially, socially… pretty much in every way that I can think of. The lockdown caused my part time job to put me on furlough, not ideal, but at least I had a small income. I lost several projects due to the companies/organisations having to re-organise events and services, or close for the lockdown altogether. I have not been able to pick up much new work due to the lockdown either.

It has not been easy, being in lockdown with a small child, trying to stay safe, keep ourselves occupied and getting on with life, and I have found myself gaining weight… and having good days and bad days, but on the whole, we are all okay! There has been much gardening, cleaning, a bit of baking, fixing, hair dyeing and Netflix!

I decided early on that the best use of what time I have when not looking after my 2 year old, would be to keep myself amused with craft projects, learn skills and to improve my business, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve knitted a hat, a pair of gloves and nearly finished a scarf, made birthday cards and some lettering and drawing projects, made some scrubs for the NHS and care homes in the area, dyed my hair blue and purple, made a birthday cake, cookies and cupcakes. I even made a window decoration to show our support for the NHS – a giant rainbow mandala on my living room window out of chalk markers (that took a whole day…)

I was very pleased with the rainbow window… here it is in it’s full glory!

So, back to the work side of things… I have been in business as a self employed freelance Graphic Designer for 10 years this month. There’ll be more about that soon, I will be writing a post about how’s it been, what I’ve achieved and what I hope to do in the future in the next few weeks.

I’ve been working my way through some Udemy courses, drawing, painting and calligraphy in particular, as well as. a Centre of Excellence course in Calligraphy. Here’s a few images of the work so far, and I’ll write posts as and when I finish them.

This has fed in to some ideas for more products for Sunshine and Shenanigans, and I’m hoping to spruce up the store in the next month. I’ve also been going through my site, and have new work to upload, I had gotten a little behind this year, so I’ll be posting more soon. I am also going to give the website a bit of a spruce up (I’ve spring cleaned and decorated everything else so why not!) so it may be down for a few hours here and there…! And of course, I have my monthly art project, painting the full moons, which I’ll post about here soon.

So, despite the lockdown, I’ve been keeping busy. And as things hopefully improve, I’ll hopefully be back to work a little more. In the meantime, stay safe and look after each other and yourselves, and see you all soon.

 

 

Monthly Art Challenge – February

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This month’s moon is the Snow Moon (sometimes known as the Hunger Moon or Storm Moon). I approached this as another watercolour design as I wanted to practice this style. We almost had snow here this month, but as normally happens down here in Devon, we had a tonne of rain instead.

However, I enjoyed this, more watercolour, more calligraphy… more moon!

All done 🙂 The Snow Moon.

Ron Campion Furnishers Updated Work

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I spent most of Autumn and Winter last year working on brochures and ads for Ron Campion Furnishers Bed Month and Winter Sale. For the ‘Good Sleep Guide’ we went for a turquoise palette, and used as many big images of beds (and other furniture) in situ as we could.

For the Winter Sale Brochure, we went for a red and dark blue palette this year:

We kept the branding and style similar throughout both, with just the colours changing for the 2 different campaigns. I also designed some adverts to go with the Winter Sale.

 

Monthly Art Challenge – January

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After a lot of thought and research I decided on a challenge for this year. My plan is to draw every full moon – they all have names founded in nature to represent and symbolise the seasons. January’s moon is commonly known as the Wolf Moon, so this was my first challenge.

My first draft was a sketch in my sketchbook which I painted… but wasn’t happy with it…

So I re-drew the design, and painted in watercolour, and used calligraphy and silver ink for the ‘Wolf Moon’…

Splattered some silver ink for stars, and outlined and detailed with black ink.

All done 🙂 The Wolf Moon.

Happy New Year!

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Well, 2020 is finally here…

So everything got a little busy towards the end of 2019, so I just wanted to fill you in on what’s been going on, and my plans and goals for 2020! Christmas is over, the New Year hangover has faded and it’s back to work.

I took on a year long contract with Paignton Zoo just before Christmas, I am working there part time for the next 12 months in their design studio. I started 2 weeks before Christmas and will be working on a few different projects over the year at Paignton Zoo, Newquay Zoo and Living Coasts. So far, it’s been lovely getting to know the other designers and artists and having a look round the zoo, and it’s definitely the first job I have ever had where I walk past a flock of flamingos every morning!

I managed to get some new products on Sunshine and Shenanigans, and I have many more ideas for this in the New Year. I really enjoyed the lettering challenge I did this year, and I plan to expand and learn on these skills. I am hoping to do more work based on lettering and calligraphy this year, and have a new challenge planned (more about that later). I am getting married this year, so I’ll document my work on this – invitations and signage etc, and some new bits inspired by this for the store.

I have the Devon Carers magazine editions for 2020 – the first is underway already, more work for Ron Campion Furnishers, and Essential Oils Direct. I have a big branding project this month which I’ve just started, and hopefully some new projects later in the year.

This May is my 10 year anniversary of being a freelancer, I have a few things planned, a few little pieces of work that I hope to get done to celebrate. 10 years as a freelancer is a long time…!

So, finally, my challenge this year… one project a day, however small, was hard work. I found it difficult to commit that the with work, a small child, other commitments etc. so I thought I’d cut myself a bit more slack this year! My plan is to come up with a piece of lettering artwork, once a week, either hand drawn, digital, painted, whatever takes my fancy. There will be a loose theme of celebration, so each one will be based on a holiday, event or festival over the year. My first one will be next week – 07/01 – 13/01, and there will hopefully be one a week after that. I really enjoyed doing this last year, but as I said, found it hard work to do every day, so I thought this would be a better option!

A lot going on – so I’m going to sign off now and get cracking… Happy New Year!