yes, I started a tumblr

For years I have had a folder on my desktop called "things I like". Everything goes in there and it is chaos. When I am looking for inspiration it is always my first port of call, but its lack of organisation always leaves me a little frustrated. I finally decided to do something about it :) I started a tumblr.
Feel free to look, feel free to not. I made it for my own reference, but if other people like it too - good stuff.

Whilst setting up the tumblr, I decided to try making some custom scripty type like my friend Ashleigh Brennan does. I loved making it and really want to make some more in the future.

sophisticated gaming

Recently, the Queensland State Library's digital culture program, The Edge, ran a promotion of illustrators and bloggers revolving around the theme of gaming. With a topic so appealing (in case you didn't know, I love console games and am a big game nerd!), I was more than happy to take part.

Enter the sophisticated girl gamer - just a late night with her cat, her playstation and Nathan Drake ;)

click image to see more detail.

have a purr-fect tail-wagging christmas

I was given an amazing opportunity this year to do concept, illustration and design for a set of christmas cards for the RSPCA.

After looking at the other cards they have for sale, I decided they needed something bright and fun so I went with a colour palette of 6 pantone fluros. I made all custom illustrations to go with their brief of "a dog one, a cat one and a wildlife one", fitting the animals into christmas shapes. I also created custom embosses for all the designs to give a bit more texture to the animals.

The photos don't quite do the colours justice - they are so bright and lovely. I am so chuffed with the results.

The client loved them and from what I heard they are selling quite well (they have already ordered a reprint).
You can buy them here.

trying something new

My friend Belinda always asks me to do the invitations to her children's birthday parties. I always happily accept because she doesn't mind what I do - its totally up to me. An open brief like this is always fun, but more importantly it provides an opportunity to try a different style or do something a bit out of the ordinary.

For this one, her youngest's first birthday, I wanted to try doing animals in a different style to my norm. It was lots of fun and I especially love the racoon :)

chocolate packaging

This year I have been working on a different kind of design project, but an exciting one for sure ... packaging.
I was contacted by a new organic, handmade chocolate brand launching in Australia and was tasked with designing everything for their brand. Obviously branding and websites are things I have done before, but packaging was a new frontier I had yet to venture into.

Conscious Chocolate is an Melbourne based raw, organic, handmade chocolate launching in 2011. The packaging had to convey the brands personality and appeal to their target market, whilst being a luxury organic product.

The packaging I created was a small box made of a rich dark brown Mohawk Concept Vellum with black foil and emboss as the only detail on it. All the flavour specific details are on the coloured sleeve, printed separately on white paper. Each flavour has a unique Pantone coloured strip with its own quirky character illustration representing the flavour inside. I also sourced out some paper coated foil wrapping to cover the chocolate on the inside.

we heart winter

The We Heart Collective's current show "We Heart Winter" is currently showing at the whitebox gallery at Griffith University. For the exhibit, the girls involved expressed their love of winter.

It is not hard for me to think of things I love about winter - I am constantly talking about coats and snow and scarfs and fur trims. It seemed obvious to me to look at the clothing side of winter, so I explored my love of layering and the extra layers you can build up to through the different temperature ranges of winter.





^ click the above to see more detail.

I got some comments at the opening night that the less layered extremes of the image seemed very summery. I guess this is true, but in the winters I have experienced in my life - from a 23ºc QLD sunny winter to a minus 15ºc German Alps winter - I have worn this entire range of layers in times designated as 'winter'. It is part of the reason I love winter :)

photos by fellow collective member Katelyn Hankinson.

poster children

I was invited by Flat White Spaces to exhibit in the group show Poster Children in July 2011 on the Gold Coast as part of Surfers Paradise Oneway Project.
Tasked with creating a set of poster, I created 3 x A2 designs with beautiful girls ... of course (haha what else would I do!)
Each A2 print is in a limited edition run of 20. If you would like one, they are for sale on the Flat White Spaces website for $40 each for the next month.

cool kids

The QCA put out an invitation to all past and present students to design a cover submission for this years issue of Gold Coast Creative magazine. Below is my submission :)

I chopped out the cover text and the masthead for use here. What I submitted actually looks like this.
The plan is that the line drawings are printed in pantone 812 (which is an intense fluro hot pink) and the speech bubbles are spot varnish on a matte cello cover finish.

drawing commission ... for dad

After seeing the drawing of my friends, my dad asked for a drawing for his birthday, one of him with mum (awwww).
He asked for one of them swimming in the sea where we take our annual holidays.



I love it. He loves it. Mum loves how complimentary it is ;)
It will be printed on canvas (still deciding on how big we should print it) and put up in the house.

wedding invitations

Some lovely friends of mine got engaged last year and they loved their engagment-gift-illustration so much that they asked me to do their wedding invites :)



To match their ceremony and reception venues I made a few custom illustrations of vines and birds as well as some maps to help their guests find parking. The result reflects the couples personalities perfectly and of course they were really happy with their suite of wedding themed goodies.

The set included a DL folded landscape invitation, a thank you card and a gift tag for the favours. All were printed on a lovely thick white uncoated card and the names were embossed.