Spring has sprung.

After the success we had with our Christmas window display, we thought as it was looking more and more like Spring was arriving that we should come up with a fresh new window display idea. Inspired by origami we began researching simple ways we could incorporate these ideas with fabrics. We all agreed that pinwheels were a fun, whimsical ways in which we could inject colour and really showcase the fabrics that are sold at The Makery.

Mr plumes.

The Makery already has it's own very distinctive logo, the very cheerful little bird motif, Mr Plumes. This is something I'd like to keep within my designs because I think he's a great way to market their company and keep within their already sucessful advertisments.

Time to get designing.

Being inspired by the vintage packaging and designs of the old sewing patterns and buttons cards I found in The Makery, I began designing my own logo. My brief was to design something simple that could be used as a sticker, or packaging logo.

After looking at doily's and lace I began doing my own designs, here are a few of my initial ideas. To make sure I kept the Makery brand, I experimented with incorporating their logo and initials.

Project.

As well as helping out around the place, The Makery have given us individual projects to work on during our own time and at our weekly get togethers. Playing to our strengths, we chose the project that would be most suitable and enjoyable for ourselves from the ideas and starting points they gave us.

Having a long hard think about it, I chose to take on the project of designing a new sticker like logo to be used on their spools of ribbon and as a packaging sticker. This allows me to explore my love for print and use The Makery's style and existing logos as inspiration.

I hope I can come up with some new inotvotive ideas for them, wish me luck!

A little bit late...

Our Christmas window got lots of "ooo's" and "ahh's" and positive feedback, even the odd photograph taken of it. We all felt proud of our hard work, especially after individually hanging each heart, we even added a few bows and Christmas jingle bells!



It looked magical lit up at night!

More vintage inspiration found at The Makery.

All things vintage.

Feeling a slight Christmas overdose already, The Makery have mixed things up a bit and given us a more long term project to get our teeth into. Being given a broad selection of ideas and our own ideas being welcomed I've been churning ideas round my head for days.

They're looking for new packaging designs for their creative kits, possible designs for their own rubber stamps and unique to The Makery ribbon and fabric label designs. In keeping with their haberdashery style, I started with looking at old sewing cards, books and styles.

I think the vintage look will suit the shop. The graphics used in these pieces gives a nostalgic homey feel and it's more personal then the mass produced packaging we see these days...

All lit up.

The jars look even better lit up. Small artificial tea light candles do a pretty good job of looking like a real tea lights, they even flicker.

Starting to feel the christmas love.

Here's a few of my first attempts at creating the small heart cushions and playing around with colour and pattern combinations. They still need stuffing and a few final tweaks.

Christmas window.

Following last weeks discussion for ideas of how we can bring Christmas to this years window at The Makery.We had the idea of creating something we can hang multiples of in the window to create a dramatic and eye catching statement. After the success of the previous cotton reel window display, we looked at the Christmas fabric and colours and came up with the idea of creating small heart shaped cushions and ways in which we could hang them.

Finally we decided upon hanging around 40 of these hearts, in 4 different sizes at different depths and heights.

 Now it was time to rummage threw the beautiful hand picked fabrics and ribbons they have at The Makery and get busy sewing!

Initial designs using the natural hessian fabric and the red and green colour scheme for the fabrics and ribbons.

Quick sketch of The Makery window, with an idea what the hanging hearts will look like.