Weekly creativity via Anchobee

I joined another of Andrea of Anchobee's fun weekly creative projects last week - just about in time for the Monday reveal - it was to create some fabulous floor tiles.
It has been a busy time with a lot of things happening but I had something just about ready to use so it was purely a matter of making it fit the brief and submitting.

Here is the design (as a set of four tiles):

Historical Times © 2013. All rights reserved. Pattern Addict

The China Experience...part 6. Random musings about water villages, dog panties and Tesco.

I haven't posted for a good 14 days, or so, as I have been pulled out with work.
Plus, managing all this social media could be a full time job in itself! And never mind the designing to be done on top! :))

Here, in Shanghai, we haven't done a great deal outside of the immediate area we are in.
Two weeks ago we popped down to Fangbang Lu which is the old part of the city. It is quite lovely to see something 'old' here and is bustling full of Johnny Foreigners of which we were two and, of course and all the tourist tat to match but we had fun and spent a fair old bit on a few bits and bobs (incense sticks being some of those purchases) whilst taking in the sights of the old style buildings.

Incense coil pots

Building detail

Street View - Yu Market

City Temple - Yu Market (FangBang)

The Sunday was another day of doing, so we decided to head over to Qibao on the metro. It is only 15-20 minutes from Xujiahui and an ancient water village so we thought definitely worth a 'looky-see'.
My goodness it was busy (and hot!)

The main alley into the old village was ten deep of folks and it stank; of what, we didn't know but today found out there is something called 'smelly tofu' so decided that could be it as it was emanating from most of the canteens. I have to add it was a bad enough odour to singe the hair off the inside of your nostrils, mind.

Entrance Gate for Qibao Ancient water town

Qibao itself, is in part a bit if a dump outside the main drag. Not too many Westerners there either...put off by the smell or the umpteen beggars perhaps....? There were stalls aplenty selling the usual tat which we avoided on this occasion...

Around the canals the scenery was pleasant and standing looking out from the bridge it oozed Chinese style charm as they seemed to have made the effort to keep it quite nice. Plus it had a few gondalas taking tourist down the waterways.

Qibao canalways from one of the bridges

As we were walking along a side street I spotted this poor doggy - presumably the owner had popped her into some underwear for a reason as I am quite sure she didn't get into them on her own but I did feel a tad sorry for her.

A new trend? dog panties

Chinese Lantern blowing in the breeze

Decorative panelling down a side street

We mooched about for half an hour but it has been pretty hot here so headed away from the craziness (of which there were masses) and headed up towards what looked to be a rather splendid temple in the distance.  I quite like a good old bit of temple-spotting so was quite pleased to see it.

Canal meetings -heading towards the temple

Qibao Temple

Temple view

Buddha enjoying a spot of sun

A bit closer

Roofing tiles for the said temple

Ceiling detail

Bunting in the courtyard

Some sort of good luck charm (I think)

For just over 50p we got a ticket to go inside to have a good look around. Wonderful just about covers it. Worth every penny.

We had a good hour of being culture vultures and then headed back to the metro only to spot a Tesco sign! Well, of course, we had to go and find it. It was huge.

Quite cheap by UK standards so we ended up doing a weekly shop! (Like you do)

Basic nature - Seedlings of change

Seedlings of change © 2013 Pattern Addict

As the blog post is now live I am happy to share my design that was part of Anchobee's weekly creative brief. It was to be only in 2 colours - white plus either black, very dark grey or a dark blue.

Mine is using the dark grey with a 60% opacity applied to the offset motifs.

There are some other smashing designs posted there to so pop along and have a look and perhaps join in for the next one!

The China experience - part 5 - Meandering off course and explosive dogs

I am meandering off course here with this post - but it made me giggle quite a lot.

Yesterday, I was out and about in Xujiahui doing a bit of food shopping and on the way back to the apartment I came across the Shanghai World Music festival - there was an Indian trio playing some lovely haunting music (love tabla and flute music), anyway, that is by the by really but there were a lot of police around - not sure why - did they think that the music would cause some civil unrest perhaps?

Or the tensions between China and India at present could have been a factor?? Not sure but there alongside his/her master was a lovely police doggy sniffing out anything suspicious!
Not only was he/she a lovely police doggy but he/she was an EXPLOSIVE DOG - well according to the jacket the dog was wearing it was.

I would have loved to take a picture as just the very idea of an explosive dog set my imagination off but I doubt the policeman would have been too keen so I thought better of it!

Whilst I am on the subject of animals, did I mention I held a tiny female monkey in Chengdu - I think I forgot to include that in the Chengdu post. The cutest wee thing. It wasn't by choice either as I am not a advocate of animal exploitation but the guy shoved her into my arms - wow - just plain gorgeous. No something I ever thought I would experience!

Here she is!

sweet little thing

Latest Tigerprint competition

Butterfly festival © 2013 Pattern Addict

I haven't taken part in a Tigerprint for quite a while - I am not sure my style really matches with what they are looking for but today was a day for 'taking part' so I decided to submit just one design.
It was created in PS using a selection of my own brushes to create the various layered effects.
Hope you like it! No idea if it will make the grade...if it does it could end up in Marks and Spencers.

Yesterday I was 'feeling the heat'...in more ways that one.

There is a new competition running for A Front Row Society at present going by the name African Heat!
As I am mad for all objet d'art and textiles African inspired/hailing from Africa, I simply could not turn down the chance to take part and set about working on my design, the problem was the complexity of it. I wanted to get the allover heavily patterned nature of African Wax printed fabrics but using Illustrator..mmm... anyway, it was a day or two fraught with errors where I had done something stupid and it meant a rework at least twice - the first design ended up in the virtual bin - but not the original sketch of course. You know the feeling when you get that hot tingling sensation in your lower back through irritation and stress! Well let's just say I was 'feeling the heat' trying to create "Feel the Heat"!

After a break and a proper think on the best approach I was back on the digital drawing board and fathomed out the method to use - create the overlay layout in AI in repeat - import into PS and place on the top layer -create the main pattern in repeat in PS - lock the overlay on a top layer and delete all the parts underneath that were not desired and repeat for the second element of the pattern - each time deleting the top layer and flattening the bottom layer, finally saving each and placing into AI.
Once in AI - they slotted underneath the overlay fairly successfully and voila! a complex repeat in vector format!

Feel the Heat © 2013 Pattern Addict

(I may have forgotten to mention my success in a previous comp - Sahara v Jungle -pretty chuffed about it and I am very much looking forward to seeing the end product) - below is the design:

Jungle Fever © 2013 Pattern Addict

A lovely weekly event to take part in - Anchobee's weekly design brief.

...Just earlier, I spotted Andrea Rincon of Anchobee's design brief for the week -'Basic Nature'  (almost at the 11th hour) and decided to join in, so prepared a design to send over via Andrea's blog 'brief? me! button.

I can't show you the design as yet - that will be available to view on Monday when the post goes live but as these are weekly events so I thought that if you are interested in taking part, check out Andrea's blog, via this link http://anchobee.com/blog for the latest brief ,which has just popped up!

Anchobee's blog header - copyright Andrea Rincon.

'Bye for now
Gill

Life on the Ocean wave...Spoonflower's Sailing competition

Spoonflower's latest competition was right up my street - love creating nautical type designs - even the restricted palette (often a toughie) was pretty nice to work with.

Here is my offering - open for voting as I type :) - there have been some lovely comments left so far.

http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/2009637

Life on the ocean wave © 2013 Pattern Addict

Taking the plunge...(not literally)

Just recently, I have been taking the bull by the horns, so to speak and enquiring with various entities about being signed on as a freelance designer/licensing partner, getting designs published, being featured on blogs etc.
It is all new to me having come from an industry type role and whilst confident in myself, I do find self-promotion quite tough.

Some months ago, via twitter, I came across A Fresh Bunch and was rather intrigued about it but one of the criteria to being accepted is that you have Adobe CS5 - I didn't at the time but have since invested in CS6, so after a few more months of cogitation decided to take the plunge and make an approach to find out if I could apply and sent off my online application.

A couple of weeks later I got a 'yes' - yay! 

Funnily enough, Jenny who is the owner of A Fresh Bunch had been following The White Book developments so I was pretty thrilled to hear that.

After some deliberation on what design work to put up on my profile slides it is now live on the A Fresh Bunch site so I am really thrilled to be part of a fairly elite group of creatives - currently there are only 70 or so of us.

my AFB Facebook banner © 2013 Pattern Addict 

Here is the link to my specific profile page: http://afreshbunch.com/member/gill-eggleston/

It is a slightly unnerving experience, waiting for a positive or negative reply but so far so good and there have been a few favourable responses at this stage so I feel quite buoyed by this.

So my advice if you are in the same position - just do it!

'Courting butterflies'...something to make you smile

Amongst all this travelling and gadding about in Shanghai and whatnot, I have been designing too. Without a scanner I have been using my dig camera to capture my drawings then processing them in PS and then AI. 

At the moment here there has been lots of what appear to be 'courting butterflies' so it inspired me to create this design.

'Courting Butterflies' copyright 2013 Pattern Addict