Lucy Patterson HANDS-ON » Artwork / Illustration / Design

Autumn Matryoshka

Lucy Patterson — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:42:37 +0000

We’re in the middle of a fierce, Autumn storm on top of our little hill here. It got me thinking about my ‘Autumn’ Matryoshka Russian dolls. She was inspired by purple thunder clouds, fallen leaves, wet bamboo and watery golden sunlight. Here’s a bit about how I created her.

My Autumn Matryoshka focuses on four vintage kimono fabrics. Each of these pieces of fabric came into my collection as one-off scraps, no bigger than a postcard. Sometimes I try to image what the original kimonos might have looked like. I wonder what other details were contained in the full fabric designs. Aren’t they beautiful?

The faces for my matryoshkas were created using a combination of hand drawing and Photoshop. I think of the ‘Autumn’ face as being Japanese, with her deep brown eyes, warm skin tone, soft cherry lips, and salmon cheeks.

For the print on the back, I selected four colours and two little swatches from the kimono fabrics and combined them into a diamond print with my logo across the lower centre.

I’ve made her (and her ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ friends) into cushions, keyrings, postcards, magnets and bead strand kits. You can see them all in my Etsy shop. You can also see more photos of my Matryoshka’s here, in my flickr photos. Enjoy!

Creative kits header cards

Lucy Patterson — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:31:37 +0000

Yesterday I was so excited to finally get my hands on the new header cards for my range of creative kits. Yay!

I picked them up from the printers in their satisfying, shrink-wrapped bundles of 100 cards, all perfectly cut, creased and with holes drilled, ready to be stapled onto the tops of the kits. I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out. I’ll post some more photos soon to show you how they’ll actually look once they’ve been attached to the kits.

It’s the most beautiful, crisp, fine Autumn day today. Stunning! But I was definitely happy to have the fire lit this morning.

Hope each of you is having a happy day wherever in the world you are.
Lucy x

My new fabric shop on Spoonflower

Lucy Patterson — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:49:18 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve just opened my own little fabric shop through Spoonflower! I have a range of prints that I’ve designed myself which are available to buy as swatches, fat quarters or by the yard.

You can get my designs printed onto a beautiful range or natural fabrics, including organic cotton, silk, linen-mix etc.

Several of the prints incorporate gorgeous little details taken from my collection of vintage kimono fabrics. I’ve mixed those details up with blocks of colour and geometric patterns.

I’ve also done some monochrome prints like this simple, geometric Indigo Shibori (Japanese tie dye) print below.

I can imagine so many uses for these prints! Cushion covers, purses, upholstery, pillow cases, table cloths, all sorts of lovely things for kids…

This classic indigo and white print is inspired by ikat fabrics from Uzbekistan. The print looks like it’s woven into the background.

Visit my shop to view the full range of my fabric prints. And while you’re there, did you know that you can design your very own fabric prints through Spoonflower too? Enjoy!

New things!

Lucy Patterson — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 05:12:59 +0000

I’ve been beavering away like a crazy creative thing lately and am launching a whole lot of new products tomorrow at the annual Summer Fair at Michael Park Rudolf Steiner School (the school that I went to). Exciting! I’ll be doing a big shop update over at my Etsy store soon, but in the meantime, here’s a sneak peak.

First up, Matryoshka cushions…

Mini matryoshka key rings / bag ornaments…

Mini matryoskhkas on strings of beads….

Matryoshka postcards and vintage kimono cards…

Purses / make-up bags made from fabric printed with my own designs…

Kimono Felt Craft kits…

Individual packs of kimono felt…

Kimono Paper Craft kits…

Kimono Bunting Flags…

Crafty sewing kits…

Needle cases…

Strings of birds and beads…

And stamped brown paper bags ready to be filled….!

Hello again blogland! It’s good to be back.
Lucy x

2010: My year in blogging

Lucy Patterson — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:05:32 +0000

I started this blog back in April. Over the past months there have been many times when I haven’t managed to blog as often as I wanted (or, let’s face it, at all!), but looking back over all the posts I’ve done since I started, I have to say there are many things that I’m really proud of. So I thought I’d put together three little photo albums of “post thumbnails” for you to look at (with numbered clickable links below). Enjoy! And here’s to an even better year of blogging!

1. Matryoshka Kimono Dolls, 2. Colour palette: Green, 3. Tamarillo chutney, 4. Cutest of cute hats!, 5. West Coast adventure, 6. Hands-on dog food!, 7. Pirates treasure bag PART TWO, 8. Autumn, 9. My new crafting space, 10. Friendly cat toys, 11. Birthday pancakes, 12. Magical toadstools, 13. Bush bath bliss, 14. Coral, shell and bone, 15. Autumn Blues, 16. Big skies, 17. Garden meditation, 18. The joy of wood, 19. Gratitude, 20. Birthday bunny

1. My shop is now open!, 2. Cosy Friday evening, 3. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 4. Happy weekend papercut, 5. Colour palette: Red, 6. Tin can lanterns, 7. Shop update: Tom Cats, 8. Spring love: magnolia blossoms, 9. Poultry PS, 10. …and the winner is…, 11. Display jars for treasures, 12. Pin board inspiration, 13. Monday’s inspiration: Honour, 14. Happy Equinox!, 15. Fresh start and a GIVEAWAY!, 16. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 17. Morocco on my mind, 18. Midwinter mandarin lanterns, 19. Rainbow eggs and a basket of flowers, 20. Vintage kimono palette

1. London by night, 2. Travelling feet, 3. Poultry Show, 4. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 5. New things, 6. A new season…, 7. Hand carved stamps: lanterns and blossoms, 8. Monday’s Inspiration: Creativity, 9. Rob Ryan’s shop on Columbia Road, 10. Happy Christmas!, 11. Happy New Year!, 12. Plant skeletons, 13. Header artwork, 14. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 15. Earth Hour 2010, 16. Contact me, 17. Monday’s inspiration: Communication, 18. Pirate’s treasure bag, 19. More gratitude, 20. Olive Harvesting

Happy New Year!

Lucy Patterson — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:01:20 +0000

Wishing you all a very happy 2011!

Thank you to each of you for visiting my blog and sharing this journey with me over the past months. Blogging has brought a huge amount of creativity, joy, community and fun into my life, and I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t for you all. So thank you again.

I look forward to sharing many new things with you this coming year: I still have loads to show you from my trip to Morocco, the UK and Germany, plus some exciting creative projects I’m working on, and who knows what else will happen in 2011…

I hope the new year brings you all much joy, success, contentment and new adventures.

Greetings to you all from Summery New Zealand!
Lucy x

New things

Lucy Patterson — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:43:42 +0000

A couple of new things around here today… The first is a freshly hatched chick! So adorable. One of our hens, Blax, has been sitting on eggs for the past three weeks, and yesterday the first one hatched. More may have hatched today, but when I checked earlier, Mother Hen was all fluffed out in the nest and not giving anything away.

Blax belongs to a little flock of chickens we call ‘the Xs’. There’s Blax, Frex, Beatrix and the rooster, who’s called…um…Spandex. (He’s a very flashy fellow.) The eggs that Blax has been sitting on are all rare breeds. This little chick is a Barnevelder. Barnevelders lay eggs that are a dark orangey-brown, often with freckles. They look a little like they’ve been spray tanned!

The other new thing in my life today is a fresh, blank notebook. I just finished my first blogging notebook, and have been hunting for perfect notebook number two. It turns out I’m very fussy when it comes to choosing notebooks… I like them to be un-lined (for illustrations as well as writing), to be about A5 in size (to fit easily into my handbag), not to be spiral bound (so pages don’t rip out), and to be fairly thick. Turns out there aren’t so many notebooks out there that tick all those boxes.

Today I finally found one (yay!), and decorated the cover with an illustration made out of cut up kimono fabric photocopies (test prints from when I was creating my Kimono Paper Tape). I think I’m going to have to explore this way of working with paper some more, I really enjoyed it.

Hand carved stamps: lanterns and blossoms

Lucy Patterson — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:17:23 +0000

Yay! I’m so happy to be back blogging again! Over the next few weeks (I have a lot of photos to show you!) I’ll share some of my recent adventures in the UK, Morocco and Germany, but in the meantime, here are the results of my first ever foray into hand carved stamps – printing Christmas cards and envelopes.

I’ve been wanting to try making my own stamps for a while now. I’ve been particularly inspired by Geninne’s Art Blog and her use of hand carved stamps (Geninne is crazy talented, if you don’t already follow her blog, you should!). Geninne has a great ‘hand carved stamps tutorial’ which I found really useful. Thanks, Geninne!

I’ve also been really inspired by the stamp sets created by Yellow Owl Workshop. I want, want, want! (Do scroll sideways through all their stamp sets, I especially love the ‘landscape’ ones at the end.) What’s so clever about Yellow Owl Workshop’s sets is how, with just a few stamps, you can create detailed scenes by overlaying and repeating different elements. As you can see, that’s the same approach I’ve taken with my illustrations here: building up layers of branches and blossoms using just two very simple stamps.

The first stamps I carved where out of linolium (the branches, blossoms, moon and green/orange lantern). I then carved a second lantern out of an eraser. I found both the lino and eraser to be surprisingly easy to carve, but the eraser stamp had a couple of definite plusses going for it: It seems to take the ink better and so gives a more even print, and it’s easier to hold when you’re stamping because it’s that much thicker than the lino.

I love all the little imperfections and rough edges you get with stamping. So different from digital graphics.

If you’ve been doing any stamping yourself, do post your links in the comments sections, or if you have any particular stamping inspiration, I’d love to see it!

My shop is now open!

Lucy Patterson — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:21:10 +0000

I’m so excited, my online shop is now finally OPEN!

I’ve been busy sorting out my shipping and shop policies and getting all the visuals prepared for my listings…not to mention actually uploading each listing onto Etsy inself. It’s been a great learning curve for me, I can tell you! Here’s a bit of a montage of some of my shop images for you to look at. I’d love to hear any feedback you have about how I’ve put my listings together. It’s all new territory for me! : )

My Kimono Paper Tape which comes in a HOT or COOL selection…

Vintage kimono postcards which are printed on 100% recycled card…

And of course my Paper Fan Inspiration Cards…

Have a great week!
Lucy x

…and the winner is…

Lucy Patterson — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:57:38 +0000

CONGRATULATIONS to April Yedinak who has won the giveaway!

Here’s what April had to say about where she lives and what she’s loving about this time of year: “I live in Hodgenville, KY. Birthplace of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It is a small town with great people. We have finally had a break in the scorching heat and now it is sunny, breezy and beautiful. We have a long weekend for Labor Day and I intend to enjoy it as much as possible.”

Email me with your address, April, and your prize will be winging its way to you shortly.

Thank you so much to all of you who entered my very first giveaway. It was such a joy to read your comments each day. I felt really touched by how many of you stopped by – from all over the world – and shared a little bit of what you’re loving about this time of year. I wish each and every one of you could have won! : )

I hope you’re having a happy day wherever you are.
Lucy x