A new leaf.....

I am turning over a new leaf... well actually it is an old leaf, in the form of lots and lots of doodles, drawings, inspiration, memes ect and so on... if you are an artist or a creative OF ANY KIND you know what I am talking about... it is this the reams and reams of paper you collect with little tiny ideas or big ones. It is the work in progress- The eureka moment!!! Sometimes that moment loses momentum and well you're left with a random scraps, a half thought- something that you will save for later.

In love with this motif, I have revisited it a lot of times for borders.

Well later has come and and I have decided to get off my butt and  and do something with all those little ideas- and maybe just maybe you can do something with them too. Each time I discover one of these half form ideas I am re inspired and taken back to the original thought- I love discoveries, even if they are rediscoveries!

So bright!

Introducing Clip Art... Maybe it is just the thing you needed for your scrapbooking project or you just want to make a little inspirational card for someone and you just need the right the illustration to embellish your thought.... whatever have you I thought I would share some of my best little drawings with you. I want to let them out into the world to live and breathe as their own thing.  So please follow along as I add more and illustrations to my Shop on Etsy!!!

Remember these are for personal use, if you want more information, colours, designs etc I am happy to help or even if you want to add them to a pattern or use them for commercial use contact me.

My Kids want Halloween Cards!!!

Happy Halloween!

Here is what I have so far... 

 Do you think I should do more?

In my Sketchbook inspiration for print and pattern.

In my Sketchbook, ideas for print and pattern. 

One of the best sources of inspiration can be found in your everyday life.

This summer we added a pond to our back yard with a few Lilly pads, 

lotus flowers and large fancy Gold fish.

The Best time of day was sitting around the pond in the evening, floating candles watching our fish catch the tiny bugs that would inspect the water. 

Scrappy Carp Card

  You can find my fish illustrations on simple blank cards in the Scrappy Carp Etsy shop.

Looking for your own inspiration?

Tomorrow I will be starting a new class... Seven Days of Paper Love!

Join me and share what you create!

A Reason to Love the Process

One of the reasons I love doing things by hand is because of the results... Because you never know what you are going to get! I work both  digitally and completely by hand. From Silkscreening, Block printing to Hand dying fabric. Every process is something treasure and quite often my finished product is not what I had imagined. Here are my most current experiments with Shibori.

A simple  Running stitched resist, to make long stripes!

I used old scratched Up CD's to make large dots!

This was the most interesting.

 I folded it in half, one side as a triangle and the 2nd

side in a rectangle.

Really only the top runner stitched example was the one that came out most like planned, the Second and third examples were truly experiments though they too came out close to what I thought they may look like, just less striking than my imagined goal...

And Speaking  of Goals! I have been working hard on pattern and surface design, this passion is leading down roads I never knew where possible, my little shop Scrappy Carp Living is growing growing growing and my soft opening goal was to add 30 items! I did that last Friday. To celebrate I am having a soft opening sale. Please go check it out... Give me feed back, tell me what you think, what would you like to see added? and yes Clothing is coming soon.... I will have a Hard Opening at a later date.... Like any good restaurant, there are still kinks to work out, but I will announce that at a later date.

If you are so inclined please check out Scrappy Carp Living, enjoy a 15% off couponcode SOFTOPENING on all purchases over $5 until August 10/14 .... You will find more Shibori, Scarves, Macrame and Block Printed treats.

Top 5 favourite things for Summer

Like most good Pacific North Westerners as soon as the sun is out, I grab my flip flops and go the....

No 1. The Beach

I will attempt at least once a year...

No 2. Camping, but lets be honest I much prefer a cabin near the beach with a great fire pit.

Every chance I get it is...

No.3 Oysters and think Pink Wine (Try the Kumamotos from Taylor Shellfish Farms).

 

No 4. Cherries, we are starting to get Eastern Washington Cherries and we are loving them! Do you see the peep looking one? It was delicious.

one of my first illustrations in illustrator 

And finally...

No 5. Patio Dining under a deep Blue Sky, what's not to love about eating outside- especially when someone brings you a glass of rose and oysters.

looking onto the Herald building from the patio at
Rock & Rye Oyster House

What are your top summer activities?

Visual Language

Building a visual language: just about everything around us us offers a source of inspiration. No matter  how mundane, innocuous with a closer look there is always more there.   Even when the water is still it is forever moving. Simple lines form complex patterns, repeating then breaking creating a visual focal point. I hope I can do in my designs what was created by an early morning breeze on an empty pool.

My Story

Scrappy Carp got it's name for all the reasons listed above but but what is Scrappy Carp Designs? Scrappy Carp is a newly hatched Surface and Textile adventure. I want to combine my years of practical craft, design and art education into a company that's focus is on the love of good design.  You can read my story or skip to the end to get the synopsis. 

At a very young age, I knew I was an artist but had no idea what that meant. I thought to be an artist you had to have your pictures in an art gallery- yes I had designs on that at age 4. I still remember the picture I drew that I was going to 'hang' in a little community gallery. It was a picture of my Mother (with frizzy hair- 80's bad perm & a striped shirt) and my dad (with a beard), sadly I don't know what happened to this drawing but to me it was the most fabulous thing in the world.

I also wanted to make clothes from a very young age, being to small to operate a sewing machine my mum used to hand draw paper dolls for me, that I would create outfits for. Later in years when I could take Home Ec, I took as many sewing classes as I could. I fell in love with not only fashion but also fabric.

I eventually went to art school and got my BFA from Emily Carr University (then Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design) focussing not in design, or drawing/painting but ceramics! I got the fine craft bug. Four years of ceramics and not one perfect pot! But it wasn't about that, it was about the process, about doing a job and doing better the next time and the time after that.

My ceramic/art education (though I squeaked by and graduated) came to an abrupt end with pregnancy. Though I had it all planned out- I was going to have my baby months after the final Grad and Graduation show, i got news as I was loading a gas kiln that I was having twins. At 20 weeks I went on bed rest, missing both Grad show ( though I think I had help installing something- can't remember what it was, my mind was on other things) and Graduation ceremonies. I got one more shot at it the following year, they made an exception and let me redo my last studio class and I got to be in the Grad show, this time with a full body of work that caught the attention of a local gallery that had an Emerging Artist show each year!

Yay me... I was on my way! Nope not quite. Those babies that interrupted my last year of school sucked just about all of the ambition out of me. And I became a domestic. No art, nothing...  Just head down, getting through the days. My Husband was in grad School and I was a stay at home mum, just trying to keep going. I didn't notice how unhappy I was or how unhappy my husband was and we had a wake up call- a strain on our marriage and we knew we had a choice to make- we now had infant twins, Shit or get off the pot. I started drawing more, I started cooking more, I started sewing again, and though it wasn't easy I started being happier. 

Since then I have pushed all those skills as far as I can take them- do I go back to becoming a full time artist? A chef? A Seamstress? My Husband now graduated and working in his field has to go to where the jobs are. We have moved countries, moved states from one side to the other and we honestly know that territory comes with his profession and are fully excepting that it may happen again as his career changes and grows. So where does that leave me?

And now we get to the real reason of Why  Scrappy Carp Designs and what is it.... I don't know if I am leaving the house anytime soon.. My husband and I consciously chose to chase his career for very specific reasons, leaving me as a stay at home mum for for a while longer, thus making me redundant in the working world. Luckily I am stubborn and refuse to believe that my worth is only that of my job title. I started looking at all the things I was/am doing and how they relate, quite frankly it was there in front of me for a long time.

Have you have ever picked up a hand thrown mug and ran your fingers over the surface and felt the tactility, or stared mesmerized at tiles trying to figure out just where it the pattern begins and ends or drape a piece of fabric and watched how the pattern shifts to reveal a new one? My love of fabric, design, surface, texture- I never dreamed in a million years that Surface Designer was a job but it so makes sense for me. Scrappy Carp Designs is that love and passion. My Aim, my Goal is to design textiles and surface for living be it for a professional company or home sewer that is looking for originality, quality and a little playfulness.

Megan H Carroll

Why A Scrappy Carp Design

There are many reasons for the Scrappy Carp name. 1. I have small children and as an avid user of colourful language I had to come up with some more suitable phrases... One of them was Oh Carp!!- yeah I know, not very inventive, but I thought I was hilarious and maybe it was the martini or the lateness of evening that I first said this- chances are my husband was away so I would have been delirious (infant twins will do that to you) it kinda stuck. Later going through a bit of a rough patch ( yes small children and travelling husband will do that to a gal) the quote Carpe Et Diem had value to me and my life, I knew if I did not do something I would fade away .... 3. I am an artist, seamstress, cook, designer.. I have scraps. Paper Scraps, Fabric Scraps, Food Scraps, Magazine and Knick Knack Scraps, why not use them as a source of inspiration? &  4. I really liked the idea of a Boxing Carp!