Cover Draft 2

Another day with a 100 things to do. All my Mondays seem to be like that lol. I think I schedule everything for the start of the week and spend the rest of it chasing my tail. Anyway, I did put aside time to work on the cover artwork...

So it's nearly there for the big share on Saturday. We are to upload our projects at 10pm on Saturday 30th. Only a few days away. Need to think about how I plan to do this. But in essence, I don't think I'm going to have much more to share this week until the deadline looms.

Until then

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The Cover - 1st Draft

I spent my assigned time today designing the cover for these papers. It's only a first draft and isn't finished yet, but that doesn't matter. What's important is to share my progress so far...

It loosely follows a similar design to most collection covers and I've left room for a logo and a header.

It's my sixth day out of seven, so thankfully tomorrow I can take a rest and next week look at it with fresh eyes.

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All Done on the Design Side

That's it. All done. Every paper has been ticked off. Like it or not, there is no more tweaking.

The only paper which had more than just tweaking was the starry patterned design which has now been replaced with this one.

But I still have a few things to do before the 30 days is over. I want to design a cover for the collection, including a logo and I want to print them all out. Just a little over a week to go and the challenge will be over. I'm really pleased I was able to stick with it too.

However, I need to focus for one more week yet.

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1 Purple Dot

Not much to show today, just done my regular 20 mins worth. Busy with other stuff today. However, snow is forecast and on its way, so I should have plenty of time tomorrow to work on this project some more.

But for today, I've tinkered with the purple dots paper.


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Only 10 Days To Go

Blimey, I logged onto the forum this morning only to be made aware that we only have ten days to go before we have to "show" our project. Okay, not so bad for me I guess, I've upped the ante for myself by showing my project and its progress everyday almost.

And speaking of which, here's todays final designs, a few tweaks and textures plus a complete change of pattern for one of them.

The grey design had an oval pattern which jarred, so I switched it to a striped design. The purple has had the pattern muted down and the brown starry design has been distressed lightly on the pattern. Textures and variations were added to them and then they were deemed complete.

I should hopefully have these all done by the end of the week, leaving me free next week to create a collection cover and logo.

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Still tweaking my way through the collection

Only subtle changes to the designs for the most part today. I've ticked off nine of them as finished now. Here's three of the latest.

Love seeing the patterns, nice and graphic and bold. Can't really say I'm into them looking completely clean so I've added what I feel is enough texture to make me happy.  I look at them and ask, would I actually use this and when the answer's yes, it's done.

Further Tweaks & Another Colour

Hopefully going to make this quick and simple. In order to actually play around with my paper project today, I needed to use what limited time I have, instead of blogging.

There's been a pause on here over the weekend because a) I'm allowed one day off in seven & b) I awoke on Saturday to my neck pulling a muscle and stopping me from moving. I certainly could not sit and look at my computer screen. However, though it's still sore today, it's not as stiff as it was, so I'm back on track.

First decision I made, is not to use black on my designs. However, I decided instead to add it to my palette and have therefore created this lightly patterned design to go with two textured designs in also in black.

I also decided that the lined pattern wasn't working with the deep purple colour so I swapped it with the pattern I used on the dark tan.

After that, I began to go through each paper adding just a little more texture and colour variation but it's too subtle to show up on here.

Okay, that's all for today.

I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with further updates

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Having a Half Way Wobble

Now that I've finished the pattern side and began to tweak, I'm having my wobbles. The "It's all a pile of rubbish" talk in my head. So I've not done anything major today. I've just had a couple of plays with adding black to my colour scheme to see if I like the effect.

The top one has the border over the pattern. The bottom one has it behind. It's not much but I have done my allotted half hour play.

I've a hundred and one tasks awaiting me today, so I shall plough on and come back to this, hopefully afresh. According to the rest of the group in this challenge, having the halfway wobbles is perfectly normal lol.

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Adding, tweaking & Playing

I've been taking the designs and adding to them today, to see the results and whether I think they work or not.

As usual, I will reserve judgement until a day or two has passed. I seem to have the habit of spending hours tinkering with a piece and then dismissing it almost immediately as a pile of the biggest rubbish to ever been designed. So I shall try and learn my lesson and give myself a pause. Usually, when I come back to it fresh, I see what I like about it and realistically whether something isn't properly working and needs further tweaking.

I'm also on a course where there's a select few of us doing exercises and discussions on uncovering style. I flit between distressed and clean, design and art, so it's proving fascinating to see how my own style is unfolding.

Anyway, I've taken the design above and taken away the textures to leave something cleaner, to see if I prefer it.

and then I took away the subtle texturing so it was completely clean

I now need to sit back and look at these three different styles and see if I can come to some decision. All my answers on the course, lead me to the cleaner, unfussy style but I must admit, that I love layers of texture. Again, it's something to sleep on.

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Papers 13, 14, 15 & 16

I've zipped through adding patterns and a light texture to some more background papers today.

Not sure about the star pattern yet but I shall withhold judgement until after I've slept on it.

However, my progress chart seems to show that I've now completed all the pattern papers now. So the next step, after I take a creative breath, is to see if I can add any more interesting layers to the designs. Play around with them and tweak them here and there. Give them some finishing touches where I can.

Not sure what or how yet. But that ca be decided tomorrow

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Paper 12 - Revised

I'm waiting for some glue to dry, so I've been putting extra time into the papers. So here's a revised design for Paper 12...

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Paper 12

Sorry but I couldn't leave today without at least trying to reach the halfway mark, so here's paper 12

Papers 10 & 11

Nearly halfway. Not sure I have enough variety in my designs but then this part is not the finish  I'm hopefully going to have time to add a few more layers and images to some of these. Anyway, I won't rabbit on as I haven't the luxury of time today, so without further ado...

Papers 10 and 11.  Oh yes, and I decided to mute the saturation of the whole palette just a smidgeon which took a bit of time applying to the rest of the stuff I've done. Thank goodness for recorded actions. Made the job a lot easier.

Right until next tomorrow. Px

It's A Bit Confusing but it's Papers 5, 7 & 9

I feel I've done a lot and not done a lot all in one day. Yesterday I took a break. I deemed it my seventh day and our commitment is to plug at our projects for six days out of seven. So I went back to it today and well, I don't seem to have a lot to show for it.

Also, because I've been working on previous designs I wasn't happy with, the numbering has gone a bit haywire today. So that's why today's final haul is for designs 5, 7 & 9.

Part of the reason why the process was slower than usual is that I invested in some new software over the weekend and I've been learning how to navigate it. It's been mostly straight forward but, as usual, it's the finer points which aren't covered in the manual, that take up time.

So that's todays progress. I've also had to pledge my new commitment for the week so I went with creating another 6 designs. I'm therefore nearly halfway now. Mind you, I'm hoping to do more than promised by the Sunday 8pm deadline.

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Paper 8

I wasn't going to work on any designs today. The idea is supposed to be to work on your challenge six days out of seven. So I'm due a day off. But I've been a bit off my game  for the last couple of days and I wanted to at least see if I could quickly make something a little better than yesterday's awful design.

I'm feeling a lot better about this design. The same as Paper 7, it isn't complete yet. It needs extra texture adding to it. That'll be my next job, to work on both 7 & 8. But I think I came to the realisation that I prefer geometric patterns especially of no discernible shape. Flowers, for instance, aren't floating my boat as a repeat pattern.

Anyway, I'm feeling a happier bunny today.

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Not Feeling It

Today's post will be short. Just enough to honour my commitment to blog my progress each day. I'm afraid I'm just not feeling it today. Tired. Grumpy. All my ideas are _____  (input your favourite expletive here).

But to show one of the pattern plays which just isn't doing it for me...

It'll all come right in the end. I just think I need to walk away and come at it afresh another time.

There are ups and downs for everyone taking part in this challenge. Today is my turn to have the wobbles.

I promise I'll catch up on my sleep before I next open Photoshop.

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Papers Five, Six & Seven

Onwards & Upwards. I managed a few more designs today. I completely revised the fifth paper, as you can see.

However, I didn't waste the diamond pattern. I used it on paper six.

I know! Very rich & colourful. Finally, i played around with another design for paper seven. It's not complete yet, but i'll show how far I've gone with it.

I might need to tidy the pattern up a bit.

Anyway. Gotta dash. I spent so long on the last pattern, tweaking it, I'm late preparing the dinner. Good job it's only scrambled eggs. I can whip them up in the blink of an eye.

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Paper 5 - Making A Start

I haven't had a whole heap of time today. Other stuff needed to be ticked off my lists and well, Wednesday is visiting 'Aged P' time. However I have at least made a start on the next paper. I'm not thrilled with it so far and it may well not make it any further but it's the progress for today.

I'll look at it afresh tomorrow and see if it can be improved or not.

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Papers One, Two, Three & Four

Cracked on with the project today. No interruptions (well, not many). So without further ado...

Here's paper one again with an ever so slight alteration. I redesigned the dots to a 'half-drop' format so they look as if they run diagonally rather than horizontal.

This is a result of playing around with the filters in Photoshop from the dots in the first version of Paper One. By using the 'Maximum' filter, the dots transformed into rounded squares. I inverted the effect, so I could use the gridlines instead and placed them onto a blue background.

And onto the stripes. I created a striped pattern, placed it over the dark maroon background, added some texture and it was good to go. Another design under my belt.

Finally, for today, I created a Damask style pattern. Phew! I'm now more than halfway to my Sunday commitment.

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Paper One

Well, today's prompt was to make a weekly commitment. Apparently there'll be four of them occurring on each Monday for this challenge. So I pledged that by 8pm on Sunday, I'd have completed six designs. If I can do any more, then perfect. And my reward for meeting my commitment is to buy a Big Blue bath bomb from Lush & have a nice long soak in the tub on Sunday evening with it.

Anyway, back to today.

I figured that just to get the ball rolling, I'd start with a simple design. Dots. Believe me, when you know how, this pattern can be knocked out within seconds.

And though I thought I'd be able to make this design within minutes, it proved to be otherwise. Thing is, I didn't just want to add dots over the textured background. I wanted to add a few subtle textures and fades into the design, behind and in front of the pattern, to give it more oomph and substance. And that took me quite a bit of faffing around until I had what I thought was an acceptable design.

But at least I have one paper now ticked off. Tomorrow I plan to create another simple design and hope to be a bit quicker about it.

Until next time
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Circular Blobs

Again, being a busy weekend, I've not had time to play very much but I did muck about with some images. I'm not happy with any of them yet but it's all I've done. Some days, it just doesn't click and today's one of those days.

You never know, i may wake up tomorrow and have an inspired idea on how to use them but if not, they could be headed for the bin.

Anyway, that's all I have to show for now. Hopefully tomorrow will bring a more productive output.

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Small Blocks of Time

Today's advice from the group was about working on your project every day even if you don't have a whole heap of time. Very apt as today is one of those where being short on time rings true. And as much as I snorted at the idea of only doing a few minutes worth, I felt I should give it a go before dismissing it.

So I opened up my two texture files and saved each in all the different colours. I then imported these into my progress sheet from yesterday. And I discovered that I'd neglected to add the lighter violet colour. So I rejigged again and now there are three of each shade in a combination of the two textures.

It may not be a giant leap forward but it's progress nonetheless which is what today's prompt was all about.

Until next time
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And I'm Off

Yes it all kicked off yesterday afternoon. The community website was opened up and we all poured in to add our project challenges and commit to seeing them through. I'm supposed to spend at least 20 minutes a day on it but it's taking me a lot longer to just create a small part.

Anyway, I'll share, as promised, my progress for today. I've began by creating an InDesign Document in which to place finished paper designs. And initially, I'm also using it as a guide to show many of each prominent colour to produce.

However, the main play for today was in creating textures. Something which should be very easy to do.  I can happily create plenty of textures, knocking them out in minutes, so I didn't forsee any problems. However, when I laid the two different textures over the same colour, one came out a very different colour to the other. It took quite some fiddling in Photoshop to fine tune both textures so that they kept the same tones.

Hopefully, I've sorted it but judge for yourselves...

They are both quite subtle. They are going to just gently add something to the background before I add the rest of the design. If I want a more dynamic texture, I can add this over the top. But at least I have something to show today.

And just one final thing. I made a cool brush from a vintage image in a book page. So I've added it here to show how it might look.

Right that's all for today. I'm going to be busy tomorrow so I may use it as my one day off. But we'll see.

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A Little Preparation

Okay, so it's a bit early to start posting but it's only a little preparation before the whole shebang kicks off. So I'm going to let it count. Besides, it has taken me nearly four days just to make one singular decision. The colours I'll use. I have been through quite a few ideas and frustrations before coming up with a scheme I''ll hopefully remain happy with.

I've trawled through many photos and inspiring websites. I've sampled colours from all kinds of sources and yet remained indecisive. So this morning, I saw this beautiful collection of fabrics by Holly Taylor Designs, called The Enchanted Pond.

I love the rich jewel colours here. Much brighter than the usual desaturated tones I'd been playing with. It inspired me to start looking at a richer, darker palette.

Using the photograph, I did away with the green because I wanted a blue to sit alongside the violet colour. The brown, which was a perfect accompaniment to the green, was therefore redundant. I replaced it with a mustardy yellow, as gold goes really well with the purples and violets. It was still a little intense for my preferences, so I desaturated the whole palette a notch. There was a dark and light colour for all but the red-violet so I added a lighter hue from it, to the mix.

I then sampled the colours and finally I feel I have a selection of I can start playing with. All I had to do was give it a name. It didn't take long for it to pop into my head. Veronica Frannie.

So there you have it. With a huge chunk of inspiration from a quilting bundle by a professional designer (thank you Holly), I have begun the process to creating the Veronica Frannie Collection.

Until Next Time
h&k
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