New work, New Shop, New Year!

It certainly has been a while since I wrote any updates on my blog so I’d like to thank you for coming to take a look.

I’m committed to making 2024 all about a year of creativity and I’m very excited by the various plans I’m currently hatching up. I’m signed up to whole series of amazing courses over the year, which will definitely get my mojo back on, so watch this space for new work to come. If you’d like to follow along and see a bit more behind the scenes of what I’m doing and how, then don’t forget to come and find me over on Instagram I’d love to see you there.

In the meantime, I’ve been going through old work and giving it a new lease of life mostly in the form of surface pattern designs. And, I have a new Spoonflower shop in the pipeline for any makers, quilters or interior designers among you. I’ll make an announcement here when it’s up and running.

I’ve also finally got around to opening a print on demand shop at Society6 where I’ve listed a few of my current illustrations and designs for sale on products, from homewares and stationary to mobile phone cases. You can see a few of the designs I’ve listed below, if you click on the image you should find it takes you directly to my Society6 shop.

For now though, I hope you are having a wonderful New Year and are managing to achieve some of the goals that you’ve set yourself for the year ahead.

Woodland Birds surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Into the Wild surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Mermaids Beneath The Waves surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Fleur De Lys - Rococo Inspired Design

I realised that although I’ve shared the visualisation boards I created for my last BA submission, I haven’t actually shared many of the designs here. This one was inspired by a popular highly ornamental trend of the 18th and 19th centuries; Rococo. I adore all those swirls and elaborate embellishments and I imagine I’ll be creating more inspired by the same theme. You can view this one in the ‘Pattern’ gallery on my homepage.

I experimented with this design using various processes in the textile print room at college. I’ll share more of those in a future post.

BA Textiles - Product Visualisation Boards

The last week has been completely nuts in preparation for the great ‘Hand In’ tomorrow! The list of requirements is seemingly endless and each aspect takes sooo long to manifest! I am a virtual stranger to my poor long suffering family. For the last 3 days I’ve been working solidly from 5am to 9pm while my dear supportive husband take’s care of the day to day running of life at home with a busy family. If only he knew just how much I appreciate him… perhaps I’ll think of something fantastic and creative in equal measure to make it up to him!

For our brief, we were each given two words to work with, mine were ‘Opulence’ and ‘Ornamental’. We then had to take those two words and investigate a whole series of design making solutions culminating in two completely different collections. So, here are my final visualisation boards for those two separate collections. Neither board has all my designs on it, but I will have more time to share those with you after tomorrow. Now, wish me luck, I still have a very long list to complete!

BA Textiles - Preparing for Year 3 Submission

I haven’t posted much for a few months and that’s quite simply because I’ve been absolutely snowed under with work. Switching from Illustration to Textiles and Surface Design for the Final Year of my degree has been such a massive learning curve, it’s utterly wonderful to learn something new, but at times it has also felt overwhelming. I’m now in my last week before having to submit the entire body of work I’ve created in the last few months. Our module has been all about Innovation and Experimentation. Quite honestly, each and every new process I’ve learnt… and there have been quite a number of them, has for me been experimental in itself. There are so many new skills to learn and get up to speed with, from seemingly simple things such as how to make a collection cohesive to different dye techniques and fabric surfaces and a huge variety of different technical processes. Gradually, very gradually I am getting there, although I still have a huge amount to learn.

For now though, I thought I would leave you with a development on my New Year design which has sparked so many new creative ideas of its own.

Time for Tea

Thrush with Crown and Flowers Watercolour

Sweet Williams & Cosmic Serpent Letter S

English Garden Flowers Watercolour Painting Inspiration

Inspirational Packaging

It's hard to believe that the Summer holidays are almost over and school starts in just 2 weeks.   I must admit I was rather surprised when I noticed just how long it's been since my last blog post.  I have however, been rather busy quietly fitting in creative time over the last few weeks.  I entered the Global Talent Search with the wonderful Lilla Rogers and although I didn't get through to the shortlisted 50 for the second round, I did learn so much in the process.  The assignment was to produce a tea cup, saucer and napkin with hand lettering, here's the piece I submitted and a close up of the design on the tea cup.

In the lead up to receiving the first assignment we were given a series of 5 preparation exercises.  The first 3 of which were packaging research, colour palette inspiration and an illustration of the letter 'S'.  My letter 'S' is of sweet williams, sacred symbols and a cosmic serpent.

The 50 finalists produced some really amazing work, check out the gallery here: https://www.facebook.com/LillaRogersGlobalTalentSearch/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1078343725585673

The second assignments are due in this Monday 29th August at which point the judges have to pick just 5 finalists with a 6th being chosen by the voting public.  Very exciting, can't wait to see what they come up with.