Where to find me

From the 20th July, every Friday & Saturday, you'll find me here:

 

City Designers Market

 On Saturday 28th July, you'll find me here: 

 

Auckland Art & Craft Fair

Ready to go and catch some inspiration!

My last post was about a new design called the 'inspiration catcher' satchel bag.  I finished it off today and its off to its new home early next week.  Never fear, this design can be made to order if you to want to catch some inspiration while you run your errands!

The hand-cut yellow design is made from kangaroo leather and the main bag leather is cow hide.

The straps are adjustable in length.

I picked out a cool 'around the world in 80 days' hot air balloon cotton print for this design.

xo Shelley

Inspiration catcher bag

The 'inspiration catcher ' bag was a design that came out of my love for geometrics and also thinking about the American Indian dream catcher - some of which are very geometric in their designs.  I currently have a collection in development for Winter 2013, and have been taking some of my inspiration from self portraits of world famous artists throughout history. 

 image source

When I started thinking about this bag design, I wanted a piece that could slot in with my Winter collection and through the merging of these concepts, the 'inspiration catcher' was born!

I have a customer to thank for getting stuck into this design so fast, because it really was down the list in terms of pattern making and development for Winter.  But when Nikki contacted me and asked if I would make a tan coloured bag with perhaps a different design, I sent through sketches of a handful of concepts and she fell in love with it.

This is the design sketch, from which I made my template for the leather cut out by scanning in and tracing over with illustrator and reflecting to get a symmetrical template.

Below you can see my computer printout, my card template which I did by tracing through with awl points and then drawing it in - a process which I found was far too similar to doing a difficult join the dots game!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to post for today. The bag is still under construction, so I better go get back to cutting it out!

Will be sure to post the finished bag when its done.  If you too would like to pre-order one, email me at shelley@shelleyd.co.nz

Bye for now

GEO-BIRDS

Since the last post I was inspired by the little geo-bird pendants so much so that I was thinking non-stop about birds, their feathers, their colour anything about birds really!  They are such beautiful creatures and its often that artists and designers take inspiration from our feathered friends.

So I had been working on a notepad folio or compendium type of product and I wanted to do a finer bird cut-out.  I thought an interesting thing to share would be the way I came up with the cut-out.

So here it is.  The evolution.

 

I started with an illustration of a bird from an illustration book. I liked this bird's pose so I chose this lucky fellow. Then I split up the bird into shapes, refined it, and then created a card template. I then traced it to the leather and used a knife to cut out the shapes. Its pretty long winded and fine work, but I can do this with pretty fast turn over as apposed to getting it all set up and cut by a laser-cutting firm.

And the finished product:

I'm not finished thinking about birds yet, there will be more to come I assure you.

A LOVE FOR ANYTHING GEOMETRIC!

My recent new additions to my accessories line are taking an obvious direction down the path of abstract geometric patterns. I'm totally inspired, it verges on obsession.  But if you are going to be designing great things, I think an obsession with your inspiration is in order.  I'm seeing geometrics in anything and everything as the research continues.  During the searches and endless flicking through images you often come across pieces, items or products that you simply cannot ignore.  These pieces below I thought deserved a mention.  And therefore my design and inspiration blog is born today.  Enjoy!

I first discovered these geometic necklaces on Etsy in my search for inspiring geometrics. These necklaces are extremely well made and such a great idea! They are laser cut using materials such as walnut, perspex, acrylic and leather. Instead of laser cutting the pendant and discarding the cut-out pieces, they are placing them back into the pendant mixing the materials and creating these incredibly gorgeous geometric arrangements.

The seller nylonsky is based in London and their necklaces are totally affordable and unique!

If you really want to make a statement with your statement necklace then look no further.  This nOir "Artisian" large geometric collar statement necklace does exactly that in a big way. The deco-cubist style of the necklace is just the beginning.  The brass rods are all gold plated, and the black sections are all different kinds of black glass beads.  Its definitely a piece of wearable modern art and something that will make you stand out whereever you go.  Though, at US$310, this necklace does come with a price tag that might seriously make a dent your next paycheck. 

On a more lightheated note, I'm totally in love with these oh so cute geometric bird pendants from etsy seller bRainbowshop.  Inspired by tangram puzzles with a muted retro colour palette, these precious wooden pendants could turn anyone into a necklace collector!