August Empress

By no means do I consider myself a painter or illustrator, I simply enjoy playing around with watercolours and sketching, as well as creating little elements for designs occasionally. I came across The Sketchbook Project last year and knew I wanted to get involved this year, and it would be a good opportunity to experiment with the new Peerless Transparent Watercolours I bought recently.

The colours of the tube based watercolours I had been using seemed much too dull, especially after scanning the artwork. The Peerless set have the most vibrant colours, and because there are so many colour chips I don’t need to worry about mixing any together to create something quickly. They really are super vibrant!

So I decided that for the project I’d focus on florals and nature inspired imagery, I’ll need to do at least one or two a week to get the sketchbook finished and sent back in time. Here’s the first two entries.

When we first moved out of home 5 years ago we needed to buy the usual main pieces of furniture for our rental – couch, bed, dining table etc. Like many other Aussies who don’t want to spend a fortune, we dropped into Super-Amart, where everything comes in either chocolate brown, black or white. Everything we bought was chocolate brown. These items have served their purpose, we’ve been in our new house for almost a year and a half and I have been aching to replace all the chocolate brown since we moved in.

First thing to go, the dining table and chairs. I did want to reuse our tabletop as the base for creating a new wooden patterned tabletop. I originally thought of creating a chevron pattern, but it would have been more difficult to do and chevron seems to be a passing trend. Checking out brooklyn to west made me consider a more timeless pattern that still incorporated diagonal sections.

Lucky for me, my partner is a carpenter. He took care of cutting up the lengths of pine, nailing them to the old tabletop, and finishing off the edges of the table with his super skills. My job was to fill the holes, sand it all down and coat it with danish oil for a natural look. I did want to use a light coloured wood for more of a Scandinavian feel (and obviously avoid more dark brown), so pine was the most affordable option. It is a soft wood though, so it’s probably not ideal for a high traffic area and kids.

The new tabletop was paired up with Vike Moliden table legs from Ikea, and four white replica Eames Eiffel dining chairs. We did cut down the length of the original table to suit four chairs. I love the result! I have many more projects in mind, I will be recycling two of the old chairs, and I’ve bought some chalkboard paint for another idea, more on that to come in the next couple of weeks.

Keeping a journal is a wonderful way of tracking memories, inspirations, dreams and achievements. With all the gorgeous craft supplies available now you can make your journal colourful, vibrant, handmade and personal, something you will keep and look back on for a long time. Kikki.K not only has some great products to do so, but I love their blog and pinterest board which features over one hundred ideas for things to create or write about in your journal. Here’s just a few of them.

Images via Kikki.K

Well I’m still completely drawn to geometric patterns and after a break from designing I felt the urge to play around with these graphics at odd hours of the day while my body clock is still adjusting. They haven’t be created for anything in particular but I thought they would be fun to share, perhaps I’ll use them as motivators to get back into my usual work schedule.

Looking for something crafty to do this weekend? Sweet Paul features some lovely DIY projects, along with recipes for delicious meals, treats and drinks. It’s even worth checking out just for the yummy photography as Sweet Paul is a talented food and prop stylist.

It’s the home stretch now, here’s what I created for these 5 days, some of which are available to download:

Day 21 – Illustration of a ‘heart tree’

Day 22 – Playing around with colourful monograms, click here to download the EPS vector file for free. Please read the Terms of Use before downloading files from August Empress.

Day 23 – Another watercolour pattern free to download, click on Coral or Sand and save file. Please read the Terms of Use before downloading files from August Empress.

Day 24 – I was just playing around with taking photos with my DLSR, which I don’t do often enough, and for some reason I just loved this leaf lying there on it’s own.

Day 25 – We finally planted a garden in the front yard!

Well I definitely fell way behind during the middle of the month, the only thing I created away from client work is playing around with some pen and watercolour illustrations of pretty dresses (thanks to my lovely friends at Princess Polly and their awesome clothes).

Below were the first quick few I did although I didn’t have a waterproof pen, but I don’t mind that the lines bled with the other colours. I love the unpredictability of using watercolours (although I’m sure for those who are well skilled with watercolour it’s not so unpredictable!).

Day 6 – Printable Timesheet and Sketchsheet - I created these to use daily for work, you can download and use them too!

Day 7 – Pencil drawing scanned in and digitally coloured

Day 8 - Geometric paper artwork – paper square folded in half and glued onto white cardboard – inserted into a reused wooden chocolate box

Day 9 – Beginnings of a design for a new project – more details coming soon (can you tell I’m into geometric triangle patterns?)

Day 10 – Doodling shapes and patterns

Check out all the other creations for 30 Days of Creativity on Pinterest: Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10