24 hour at the studio. The mind of a creative spirit

Firstly, I make no apologies for this blog post, heavily laden with photos.
I've reduced the pictures in size in the hopes that the download time will be quicker. I want to take you through a journey. A thought process that many artists go through when faced with a brief.

This is the one of a number of solutions I will offer to this particular client. Practice and jumping off pieces if you like. I've used the name Tanya and Dave from a previous client as the Bride does not want to reveal herself yet.

The Bride brought in some pictures of invitations she had seen and particularly liked the funky swirly patterns, hearts and butterflies...that was my starting point.

I refuse to use pre-decorated paper, so commonly found in craft shops. I feel I can hardly call myself a designer maker if I use other peoples designs.....so I started with a simple swirl design and added some hearts....

The pattern looked a little bit weak... so the attached hearts were coloured in.

But, before I went any further I took the first design and printed that in colour first.....then did a second pass through the laser to see if it was possible to combine colour and foil together.....

It was, so I tried a few other colours too....

Hmmmm.... a bit weak and wishy washy if you ask me, but it may appeal to some....it depends what someone is looking for.

So I worked on the design even more, added a few more spirals, and a few little bubbles here and there....

I seemed to be getting somewhere....but still didn't like the gaps as I had an idea of using it as a background and the more filled in the better...

I then printed the pattern onto red card and foiled it.....

then cut out some hearts.......

Hmmm.....nice.....let's try in on purple!

Ah, now the ideas are coming thick and fast...

I need to get on and make a corner border....with a few tweaks here and there, I was quite happy with this

but needed to see it printed and foiled,

and try out a printed heart on it...

Much better in hot pink heart with hot print foil....

Of course there's always a chance that

she may ditch the heart idea altogether and go for a butterfly

And there's lots more ideas in the pipeline.

I try to offer 4 roughs for the Bride to choose from

and this is only the start.

I wanted, however, to show you a truthful thought and working progress which took place over a 24 hour period. Some thinking was of course done at home and each trial sparks off new ideas....those foiled hearts for instance....who knows where they will lead. Whatever happens, I'll keep you posted.

I just love hearing a Brides ideas and then working with them and coming up with interesting solutions. It's how the creative spirit works :o)