Each Photo Represents 10 minutes Practice.

I am currently reading I Just Like to Make Things by Lilla Rogers. It was highly recommended by a classmate in the  Make it in Design Summer School I am doing. The book is full of prompts and exercises that both encourage and inspire you, filled with tips that steer you towards Making Art a Business. It is great for the the newbies (such as myself) that want to be Surface and Pattern designers as it is full of advise and interviews from professionals in the field. So far I am about half way through but the number one take home is message is .... be true to your style and number two.... Practise Practise Practise.

Here is a photo journey of one such practice prompt to see how you/I work.... Using a photo that was provided in the book you draw what you see.

"Only draw what's appealing. Stop when you are done and wait for the next bit of inspiration [...] you are to focus only on staying in a place of passion and creative motivation."

I gave myself 10 minutes of work time, between each step I moved onto something else. Maybe it was tidying up my work space or assisting my kids with a chore and or making breakfast, lunch or dinner and cleaning the kitchen. 

Each Photo Represents 10 Minutes 

I worked when I had time, it took me nearly all day but what surprised me is that I stuck with it. Flowers are not my favourite thing to draw. I don't have very much patience for them as I get frustrated that I can not represent them accurately enough. Because of the 10 minute cap I was able to keep looking at it with fresh eyes and stay on task. The time limit gave me permission to walk away and to be less self critical. 

What excises do you use to practice, how do you work? Is practice work or is it play, Can it be both?

Summer in Palm Springs a Retro Design Inspiration

Prompted by the Make It in Design Summer School I came up with this design...  Fun retro and reminds me of lounging next to the pool in Palm Springs... 

A forever Retro Shape: Ogee

Just for Fun, a mock up.

The Make It In Design Summer School is an amazing resource for surface and textile designers. Every two weeks a prompt is sent out full of inspiration, suggestions and resources. There is a range of ability from the never even touched Ai or PS and do everything by hand to seasoned professional who are just wanting something creative to build their portfolios with. I consider myself new but not quite new and am using the great online community to inspire and gently nudge me to keep at it (even though I could quite easily throw myself into shibori and indigo full time)! There are so many wonderful Designers out there.

(Oh yeah.... Don't forget to check out my Etsy Shop Scrappy Carp Living for a mini sale... For your use couponcode SOFTOPENING, 15% off orders of $5 or more....)

Just For Fun, Someone suggested I add Toes By the Pool As additional inspiration!

Also Next to the Pool In Palm Springs!

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.

Target design- Parker Palm Springs Chandelier.

As I am designing more I am trying to think of what my target market would like to see. A great tip I read on some business blog somewhere was "Your target market is you, with more money". So my first collection is based on that idea.

I have called it the Parker Chandelier Collection based on none other than the Parker Palm Springs Hotel's ballroom chandelier. It is where I would spend all of my time .... if I had more money... 

Just a heads up, I will no doubt talk about The Parker, Palm Springs and Jonathan Alder more in future posts.

Starting to see a pattern...

I am moving right along in my current design class (ps Thank you everyone that helped me reach my goal)... This week we were asked to look at colour and what it means to you. I dug deep into my wardrobe- actually I didn't have to dig that deep as it was everywhere. Though I wear the typical mummy wardrobe during the day- usually jeans and a black top, I dress up to the nines when my husband and I go out and as the sun reappears that date night wardrobe starts to invade my day time wardrobe... Here are a few things I picked out:

grouping 1

vintage vera scarf

grouping 2

vintage Fredrick's of Hollywood 

(why yes, I did wear it to a movie premiere)

grouping 3

love this one! a vintage sheath dress

that I call strawberry fields

I don't normally shy away from colour... I wear it, I celebrate it and more and more I am loving it! How does colour show up in your world?

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!