About time!

There is NO other way of saying this but...IT IS DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have officially and successfully completed several years of study in the one and only field that I would invest so much of myself into...
TEXTILE DESIGN!
Yes, I am and will soon be crowned (well conferred more likely!) with a Bachelor of Arts in Textile Design.
Oh how I have waited for this moment!

You know part of how I got here but thats only a microscopic insight into story...the story itself...well let it remain a mystery and let it remain frozen in time and forgotten for now in this moment of incredible joy and relief. Instead, let me take you through the final two projects of my university education! 

ONE AT A TIME...

First up...
Instanostalgia...
In lay man's terms, this was a fashion focussed project.
The concept :creating a dreamy,nostalgic feel using contemporary technology including screen printing and digital printing. Enough said?

Feast your eyes on the final outcomes!
These are pages from my final presentation book...

x
T

(all images copyright protected and bad karma will strike if used inappropriately!)

Branded...for life?

It is that time of the month/year/life where I get to put everything I know,love and am about textiles onto either a 4' by 7' piece of card or a condensed four page document...a series of pages in a slick black box...
It is that time where I get to see the fruits of my labour of love for the past few years come together in a neat little package that will hopefully do justice to my passion and love for this very special thing called textile design!
First up..
I've been working on...well its a business card really ...but to me, its a representation of what I do and an expression of how I feel about it...

Here's what I've come up with...

Here's a little thought behind the process :)
The image is an original photo taken in the print studio. Often the tools I use and the magical mess that screen printing creates can be so beautiful and engaging. A little bit of digital collage helped bring a couple of shots together into what I hope is something that will draw people in and if they can in some way connect to the image...them my work is done!

I must plod along now...My end of university countdown has begun with barely weeks remaining to do what I have to do.I'm filled with a nervous sort of excitement and I can't wait to share with you all the behind the scenes action of the past few weeks!

Thanks for sticking around :)

Until next time...
T

Merry Mess Maker

Ever since I began studying textile design I discovered a new found , legitimate reason for being messy!

I'd like to justify all the mess I create as a side effect of my textile education and for a while my family bought the excuse but (not surprisingly)the effect has worn off over the years...SIGH! 

BUT!despite messiness being my default personality disorder, there is some truth to the creative arts contributing to messy surfaces,spaces and situations.

This post is exactly about that, I hope to put the pretty into my 'mess' via a series of photos that I've been taking of my work in progress over the past few weeks...

Is it just me!?

Printed design research...often lies in a pile until I can stick it into my design journal...

Play with clay! I'm so excited about this project. More details in the next few posts.STAY TUNED! 

Colour mixing...I love a coloured mess!

What creative mess are you surrounded by today ? :)

x

T

P.S : All images are very precious to me and hence are protected by copyright.Please let me know if you want to share them, pin them , tweet them or any other lovely thing you'd like to do with them. Thanks!

The in-between...

Hello everyone! And special hello if you're here for the first time :)



As promised , I'm BACK and this time I want to share with you a little of what happens in the time between receiving a project and meeting a major deadline.
Fun part is... I've condensed this process into a set of lovely instagram shots but if I were to actually  talk to about it,well lets just say it wouldn't be quite so pretty!
Aaand since this blog is all about the sharing...I AM going to talk about it...(haha!) just a little...

This particular project is the one I've labelled 'MAJOR PROJECT' you might remember it from previous posts(see here!)
Its all about capturing the whole instagram culture and aesthetic and translating them into textile designs and so on...

So,after the research + report phase I dedicated a fair bit of my waking hours drawing/painting in an attempt to interpret my inspiration into my own design style...

Motif and pattern ideas inspired by Ancient architecture details. 
Painted in black ink

Textile Geek! This phase is where it gets quite technical and at times like this a 'little' knowledge can go a long way! ;)
In a nut shell, print prep involves putting my design work onto screen printing frames, mixing my colours in hand painting solutions and print pastes, sourcing fabrics to print onto and last but never the least, having some sort of a plan of what I want to do!

Once I've got all my elements set up then the long hours and never ending experimenting begins. The first deadline for the project was a collection of 20 different HAND PRINTED fabric swatches. The key thing was to EXPLORE a lot of different techniques and processes to ensure a creative and varied range of outcomes!

Here's some 'cool' shots of my fabric details...

And this is what it is all about...a very very small snipped of my printing process and final swatches.

What was once a thought in my mind , a designers vision drawn from a single source of inspiration...has come to life thanks to the wonders of textile design and is now tangible and accessible to anyone who cares to stop, look, touch and feel.

This is what I do...
and I try my best to do it well...

x
T

Coming soon...

The days of my life ( in the past few weeks anyway...) I have spent beavering away in the print room at uni and days and nights morphed into one as I raced to yesterdays deadline.

Scoreboard reads :

Tanya - 1

Deadline pressure - 0

Yay!

I'm still figuring out a way to best explain the pain,process,passion and pleasure that this project has brought so far, so please stay tuned until I can properly photograph and hopefully describe it all  in a coherent manner :)

In the meantime...here's a 'gridshot' of some instagram shots I took very quickly of some of my outcomes...

Instanostalgia : sampler grid


I've missed chatting into the blog-o-sphere and you all who care to read :)

So... Merci!Gracias!Danke! for sticking around and to a certain some of you A BIG THANK YOU for constantly ASKING about when I'm blogging next!Keeps me motivated to do so...

Be back soon,

T 

Baking and textiles...

...REALLY DO GO TOGETHER...
Over the years of spending much of my waking hours around paints,paper,fabric,inks,caffeine,more fabric and so on...I've learnt that there is a very special connection between the practise of textile design and the art of baking.
The two, though completely unrelated somehow co-exist in the textile designers world. Often, its because a slice of chocolate cake eases the pain and desperation of sleepless nights and looming deadlines, but to me personally, its an extension of my creativity and passion for all things lovely!
I more than often find myself baking,photographing and fondly admiring my  baked creations(usually full of butter and sugar,shhh!).
Baking refreshes me, restores my passion for the creative and most importantly provides the opportunity to take some time out from the mad rush of university commitments and enjoy the simple things in life...like a coffee and cake with a friend..or most times...JUST BY MYSELF! Bliss!

So for all you sweet treat lovers out there this post is for you and like I said, baking and textiles really do go together :)
So hope you like this little photo montage of some of my sugary treats and my textile patterns!

What's bakin' in your oven this weekend? :)

x
T

FAST FORWARD >>>

How did this happen? Its been so long since my last post! Thank you for checking in despite my disappearance over the past couple of weeks :)
Luckily,I have LOTS to show you...hereby hoping I'm excused for being MIA under the pretext of a classic reason/excuse of being ""BUSY"
So,no time to waste!
Here's what happened in the recent busy past...
I completed and handed in my ORIENTAL project for kitchen accessories!Yay!There was a lot of digital pottering,pondering,tweaking and grumbling until I was finally happy with my two collections!
So lets skip the whole development phase and fast forward to my final ranges! 

HERE THEY ARE...Hope you like :)

I hope that through this blog and by following the journey of this project its a little more clear as to what textile design is and more importantly...this is...WHAT TANYA DOES!

Thanks for taking the time to read my stories,look at my pictures and hope you continue to hang out here coz the race to the finish line is ON! and there will be SO MUCH more exciting things to show you and share with you!
Until next time...(I have a delicious post in mind...;)
HAVE  GREAT START TO THE WEEKEND!
T