Friday 5 July 2013

Trying New Things...


Hello!
The weeks are flying by as ever, but I wanted to share a few things with you to follow up from a blog post I made on here at the end of May called 'Time to Make Some Changes'

Since that post, I have been steadily making changes and starting to make the time to attend to a few things I've planned to do for ages.  I've been longing to see some of my designs on different products such as printed fabrics, canvases etc.  

Spoonflower and Society 6   are two websites that have been on my radar for some time now as both sites have enabled me to discover some fantastically talented designers and artists.  I love the way they enable artists to do what they do best - create, whilst providing them with an outlet to produce and market their designs in a low risk way.

Since making changes to the way I work, I've been able to set a little bit of time aside each week to finally get the ball rolling on these grand plans of mine.  The tricky bit is, like anything new - there is so much to learn to make sure this plan gets the best chance to fly.

With designing fabrics for Spoonflower, there are lots of technical issues regarding colour reproduction which is very different to print on card or paper (which is in my comfort zone).  Adapting my existing designs which were originally created for greetings cards is not as straight-forward as you may think so a bit of research and development is in hand at the moment.  I'll let you know how I get on when my first designs start to emerge....



I've also begun to dip my toe in the Society 6 waters and see what that feels like.  So far, not bad - getting products up on the site is a breeze and I'm gradually getting to grips with being part of that community by learning how to follow and promote other artists on there.  From what I've seen of it so far that's the key to success on there, being involved in the community because the more your work is promoted by others the more visible it will become on the main site.  At the very least, it provides a way of making my designs available on a new range of products...



My other news is that many of my designs will be making their way to Harrogate this month for the annual Home and Gift fair.  If you are visiting the show you will find my designs on ArtEco Designs stand, number H40.  My designs will sit alongside some other delightful photographic and illustrative ranges.  

With this in mind, I've also been able to tick something else off my 'to do' list that has been there for a very long time.  I have finally created a Trade Brochure which has all my greetings card collections in one place complete with their trade codes to help make wholesale ordering easier and it is available to download as a PDF from my website here:  http://www.artworkbyangie.com/trade.html 

All the items featured in the brochure will need to be ordered via ArtEco Designs/ The Heart of a Garden . This brochure features my designs only, for their other ranges you would need to obtain their brochure from their website: http://www.theheartofagarden.com/



That pretty much brings us up to date.  It looks like this weekend is set to be a gorgeously sunny one for the UK.  Slap on the sunscreen and have a great one everyone!

Best Wishes

Angie :)