Creative Quarters...Emma Rees | Dainty Forest

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Emma Rees aka Dainty Forest.

Emma Rees, is the illustrator and designer behind Dainty Forest.

She gained her BA and MA in Visual Communication and shortly after graduating, she began her design career in London working for a prestigious gift ware company, creating patterns, packaging and products and travelling to India to source fabrics and create new products. 

After several years of living in the big smoke, Emma moved to the midlands to pursue her freelance career, designing for a number of high street brands from a tiny but lovely studio in an old mill in Derbyshire.

She went on to design for small businesses and realised this is where her true passion lay. 

In June 2018, Dainty forest launched with a small collection of prints and Emma secured her first stockist, Handmade Nottingham and continued to grow her collection.

Dainty Forest has recently celebrated its first birthday and now includes a wider range of prints, greetings cards, illustrated flashcards for little ones, mirrors and a tote bag!

The range is stocked in a number of number of independent boutiques across the uk and several online marketplaces.

With a strong focus on typographic elements and a delicate colour scheme, Dainty Forest aims to have a little something that everyone can enjoy. 

Emma splits her time between designing for lovely small businesses , growing Dainty Forest and running after her toddler.

She loves to help other small businesses and is available for commissions and collaborations. 

Below you will find links to her work:

Website: www.daintyforest.com

Shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Daintyforeststudio

Instagram: @DaintyForest

Facebook: DaintyForeststudio

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Emma,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If youre interested in working with Emma,

or want to get in touch, please visit the links above.

x x x

Creative Quarters... Klara Hawkins

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Klara Hawkins.

Klara has been an illustrator for over twenty years.

Growing up she always loved drawing and this only increased when she received a set of watercolour pencils for her 8th Birthday.

It was the best present ever and she began drawing landscapes which she entered into competitions at the local village show and won.

Upon leaving school, Klara went to art college and it was there her tutor suggested she would suit illustration.

It hadn’t even occurred to her that being an illustrator was a possible career choice but the

seed was planted and she never looked back.

Leaving Lancashire for London, Klara did a degree in illustration.

Upon graduating she was lucky enough to land her dream job as an illustrator and designer for a top greetings card and gift company.

Here she learnt a huge amount and grew her skills developing best selling ranges for a well known UK department store.

After 16 years working as an anonymous designer Klara was yearning for more and embarked upon a

freelance career. Mostly working on greetings cards and children’s book she has also discovered the

wonderful world of surface pattern. Klara has falling in love with making patterns and enjoys the freedom that it brings to her drawing.

Inspired by different cultures, colour, nature and the great outdoors her work has a naive quality that

appeals to both children and adults alike. Now in her 4th year of business she has been lucky enough to work with clients such as The British Museum, Harrods, Marks and Spencer, Paperchase, Penguin Books, Selfridges, Scribbler, Waterstones and Woodmansterne.

Klara lives in Surrey with her husband and daughter and most days she can be found at her desk happily drawing pictures.

Alongside freelance, Klara is excitedly working on a new venture to launch herself as a publisher.

She’s busy designing greetings cards and gift ranges which she will wholesaling as well

as selling on her website.

Website - www.klarahawkins.com

Instagram - @klarahawkins

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Klara,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If youre interested in working with Klara,

or want to get in touch, please visit the links above.

x x x

Creative Quarters... Beth Fletcher

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Beth Fletcher.

Beth is a freelance illustrator and designer based in Shropshire, UK.

She likes nothing more designing cute characters and colourful prints, especially for clothing.

She loves creating patterns, and likes to switch between her sketch book and graphics tablet when creating her work.

Beth studied at Birmingham City University and graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Illustration, and it was there that she found her love for all things pattern.

She then went on to spend a number of  years working as an in house designer at a childrenswear supplier, designing garments, graphics and prints for the UK high street as well as various international brands. 

In 2019 she set up her freelance illustration and design business, where she has continued her work designing children's and babywear. 

More recently she has began expanding her portfolio into the stationery and giftware industries, designing greetings cards, wrapping paper and gift bags. 

She also creates bespoke wedding stationary and personalised nursery prints.

Beth has designed for many different clients big and small, including George at Asda, Primark, Nutmeg at Morrisons, Babyshop and MiniKlub.

When she isn't busy drawing, painting and making she likes exploring new places, listening to David Bowie and watching Liverpool play football. 

She has an Etsy store where you can buy some of her designs: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BethIllustratesStore

You can also find her work on Society6! 

https://society6.com/bethillustrates

Beth is always on the look out for exciting new work and commissions. 

If you would like to discuss a project, license a design or work together please get in touch by email

bethillustrates@gmail.com

Website: https://www.bethillustrates.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethillustrates/

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Beth,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If youre interested in working with Beth,

or want to get in touch, please visit the links above.

x x x

Creative Quarters...Dora Cuenca

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Dora Cuenca.

Dora Cuenca is a Costa Rican illustrator, muralist & print designer currently based in New Jersey.

She is a graphic designer by trade but when she moved to the states she discovered surface design, and she fell in love.

She has spent years experimenting and growing her artistic voice, while raising three little ones. Needles to say motherhood and it’s many aspects are woven into her creative process. 

Drawing & painting provide her with time for reflection as well as act as a release from the day to day.

With reflection comes gratitude/joy and with releasing comes empowerment.

Her narrative illustrations and playful patterns cultivate these emotions, with the use of watercolours, gouache, pens, digital techniques and always a dose of tropical vibes from her native Costa Rica.

Surface design also opened the door for mural commissions.

She has painted murals for Mission Taqueria, Freedom Apothecary in Philadelphia and has been commissioned for a couple of other exciting mural projects this summer. 

She’s currently working on some personal projects, developing a fabric collection and art prints that will be available online soon. 

Dora is available for custom murals and illustrations and would love to connect with other creatives or brands for commissions or collaborations.

Instagram: @dora_cuenca

Website: www.doracuenca.com

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Dora,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If youre interested in working with Dora,

or want to get in touch, please visit the links above.

x x x

Creative Quarters...Madison Herman

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Madison Herman aka Merrylittle Studio.

Merrylittle Studio is a design label by Madison Herman that focuses on surface design, illustration, and hand lettering for products.

The name, a play on her maiden name (Madison Lytle), represents all the things her brand aspires to be: sweet, small, approachable, and full of joy.

Based in Kansas City, Madison is a card designer by day at Hallmark, and by night she illustrates her own prints and patterns.

Her main creative tools are gouache, her iPad, and Photoshop. 

Madison loves utilising patterns and illustrations through products because it is a way to delight and connect with people through functional goods that become a part of someone’s life.

Her biggest hope is that her colourful, joyful images brighten someone’s day and help them appreciate the beauty in nature and travel.

Some of the key themes in her work include the carefree joy of childhood, exploration, discovery, and wanderlust.

This year, Madison is focusing on growing the Merrylittle Studio brand by participating in local craft shows and re-launching her Etsy shop with brand new work.

She plans to release a range of tote bags, silky scarves, hair ribbons, as well as archival art prints.

In the future, Madison dreams of developing more products for the baby and children’s market, women’s accessories and apparel, as well as textiles.

While her Etsy shop is being developed, you can find her work through Spoonflower and Society6!

Some of Madison's favourite things include flowers, sunshine, ice cream, her husband, her cat, dancing poorly to 90s hip hop, floating in lakes, hiking, and befriending all the animals. 

Below you will find links to her work:

Website: https://www.merrylittlestudio.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merrylittlestudio/ 

Spoonflower: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/merrylittlestudio

Society6: https://society6.com/madisonlytle

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Madison,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Madison, or want to get in touch, 

please visit the links above.

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Camilla Carvalho, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, please send examples of your work
with links to website portfolios, and some info about you and your background, etc..
to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Camilla Carvalho

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Camilla Carvalho.

Oak Print Design is the creative studio of Camilla Carvalho. 

Camilla is a Brazilian self-taught surface pattern designer and illustrator based in Montreal, Canada. Her Brazilian heritage is definitely present in her designs through nature inspired motifs and bold colors.

As a child she loved drawing and painting but she never pictured herself on that career path until her kids were born.

Before being a pattern designer she worked for almost 10 years in the financial industry and that’s when she started to realise that she really liked the creative world.

Having to prepare several presentations for clients, she was always the one that would pay more attention to the formatting details than to all the numbers.

Camilla then decided to leave the financial world and pursue her passion.

She took some graphic design courses until she finally discovered the surface pattern design world and fell in love with it. 

She draws most of her motifs by hand and then works on them in Illustrator afterwards.

She loves to walk around outdoors taking pictures of leaves, flowers, buds and everything else that might inspire her.

She also loves to get inspiration from botanical illustrations.

Some of her clients are Quiltweaves, Julius Zoellner, Estudio iCertain, Printed Village and Minted. 

She would love to see her designs on a fabric line and home goods but her biggest dream is to see her designs on a swimwear line, maybe because she is Brazilian, right? 

Camilla will be exhibiting at SURTEX this year where she will be showing lots of bold maximalist patterns with eye-catching color combinations that create an expressive feel and statement. 

www.oakprintdesign.com

www.instagram.com/design.oak

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Camilla,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Camilla, or want to get in touch, 

please visit the links above.

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Carly Watts, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, please send examples of your work
with links to website portfolios, and some info about you and your background, etc..
to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Carly Watts

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Carly Watts.

Carly is a self-taught illustrator based in sunny Sheffield, UK.

The city is home to a pretty big creative community as well as some wonderful galleries so there's always plenty of inspiration to be found or exhibitions to visit. 

Carly studied Drama at University but often found herself leaning more towards art and design, 

and enjoyed the set and stage design aspects a lot more than directing!

After University she worked in a range of different jobs and picked up illustration as a fun hobby, starting a blog soon after to showcase her fashion illustrations and designing website headers for other bloggers. 

This is when she began to learn how to draw digitally, which she found to be a big eye-opener and a steep learning curve, but ultimately extremely worthwhile! 

After running her blog for many years, Carly finally discovered surface pattern design and decided to give it a go, falling in love with the whole process. 

She now spends her days creating repeat patterns which she finds very calming and therapeutic,

and selling her designs in her online shops. 

In the future, she hopes to be able to see her patterns on children's clothing and homeware. 

Colour is one of the most important sources of inspiration for Carly, and she loves to collect all sorts of colour palettes for future reference. 
She also finds a lot of inspiration in nature and space, and adores painting flowers because of their endless varieties. 
She also loves folk art and particularly enjoys illustrations with a magical theme. 

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Carly,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Carly, or want to get in touch, 

please visit her website via the link above.

She can also be found on Instagram and Twitter as @CarlyWattsArt

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Lisa Koesterke, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, please send examples of your work 
with links to website portfolios, and some info about you and your background, etc..
to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Maria Atanackovic

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Maria Atanackovic.

Maria Atanackovic is an Irish Surface Designer based in Dublin. 

Working under the name, Studio Maluda, she specialises in designing quirky prints for application onto a wide range of products. 

Inspired by the oddities of the everyday, shapes, silhouettes and natural forms she aims to create uplifting artwork that is unique, versatile and playful. 

Maria holds a BA in Surface Design from University of the Arts, London where she specialised in printed textiles. 

Since graduating, she has lived and worked in countries as culturally diverse as Taiwan and Panama. 

These experiences enabled her to collect a lot of visual research and enriched the eclectic style of her work. 

Using photographs and sketches as a starting point, she mostly draws her motifs by hand. These, will often be combined with collage and mark making techniques before being digitally rendered and put into technical repeat. 

She likes to create a sense of ordered chaos in her work and is particularly drawn to clean lines, vibrant colour and the way shapes interact with organic forms.  

In 2017, Maria won the Make it in Design scholarship competition. 

Since winning the prize, she has licensed work to Card Making and Papercraft Magazine, Deny Designs and Wraptious. 

She also exhibited at Blue Print earlier this year with Dot and Flow. 

In addition to her digital Surface Design work, Maria is also a member of Print Block, a textile collective based in Dublin. 

Here she experiments with dye based screen printing, block printing and facilitates workshops. 

She would love to collaborate with you. 

If you would like to discuss a project, license a design or work together please get in touch by email maria@studiomaluda.com

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Maria,
and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Maria, or want to get in touch, please see below for various ways to contact her and also see more of her lovely work...

http://studiomaluda.com/

https://www.instagram.com/studiomaluda/

If you'd like to be featured, 

please send examples of your work with links to website portfolios, 

and some info about you and your background, etc... 

to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com 

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Lisa Koesterke

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Lisa Koesterke.

Lisa Koesterke is a German-Australian illustrator, artist and designer currently based in Trieste, Italy.

Her creations are bright and cheerful, featuring bold colour palettes and quirky characters that add a little joy and summer time magic to the every day.

Lisa often takes inspiration from her childhood growing up in Australia, the natural world and food...especially food!

She uses a range of media to create art, everything from coloured pencils to gouache and watercolours, experimenting with printmaking and most recently drawing digitally on the iPad Pro.

Lisa graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Communication from the Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia in 2015.

Since then she has spent some time teaching visual arts to children and is now focussing on developing her freelance illustration career in earnest following her move to Italy 

(she moved for love, in case you were wondering).

Lisa has recently been working on a range of personal projects as well as some exciting commissions, such as illustrating custom portraits, wedding stationery, postcards and tote bags for some interesting clients.

She is also working very hard on a new range of prints and paper goods that will be for sale online soon!

Lisa is always open to new projects, commissions and collaborations.

You can get in touch with her via email:

hello@lisakoesterke.com

You can see more of her work on her website:

http://www.lisakoesterke.com/

And you can see little updates and process pics on her instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lisakoesterke_illustration/

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Lisa,

and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Lisa, or want to get in touch, 

please see below for various ways to contact her at the links above.

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Emma Allsup, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, please send examples of your work 
with links to website portfolios, and some info about you and your background, etc..
to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Emma Allsup

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Emma Allsup...

Emma Jayne is a freelance illustrator and pattern designer working from home in beautiful Cheshire, UK. 
She’s represented by The Bright Agency and also designs under her name Emma Jayne. 

Emma graduated from University with an Honours Degree in surface pattern and later a Masters Degree in Textile Illustration. Since leaving University, Emma has worked in design studios and freelanced for a number of clients. 
To date, these include Dorma, John Lewis, NEXT, Coca Cola, Chester Zoo, TESCO, Deva Designs, Scholastic and The Art Group.  

Emma likes to enter competitions, and so far, has come first in a Russian scarf competition, received an honourable mention in the Global Talent Search 2016 and came within the top twenty out of six thousand for Sock It to Me 2017, which she found was a fun project to work on! 

More recently, she took part in the 100 day project, which she found was great experience and exercised her discipline as she had to produce a piece of art each day for 100 days. 
From the challenge, Emma made new friends, got to create images based on a topical theme, ’the ocean’ (she learned so much about what’s happening with our oceans and learned as well about all the different sea life) and made lots of new design pieces for her portfolio! 

Some of the illustrations are now prints, which she sells on etsy. 
She has also recently added designs onto Spoonflower, where she sells patterns for fabric, wallpaper & gift wrap, and Emma says she has still plenty more designs to add! 

Emma loves colour and bringing joy and happiness through her work. 
She describes her style as bold and whimsical, and loves to experiment with different techniques. Emma’s earlier work was produced mainly using gouache and for nearly a year now, she has been using Procreate.  Emma often mixes the two; gouache artwork with Procreate. 
She later tweaks and polish the final designs in Photoshop. 

She really enjoys the work and takes inspiration from many artists and illustrators. 
A few to name are, Henry Matisse, Betsy Walton, Penelope Dullaghan and Beatrice Alemagna. She finds their use of colour, quirkiness, drawing techniques and style just beautiful.  

Emma would love to have her own greeting card range, fashion fabric line, to illustrate for children’s books and to do editorial work for magazines, journals and publications.

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Emma,
and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Emma, or want to get in touch, please see below for various ways to contact her and also see more of her lovely work...

Portfolio - portfolio.emmajayne-designs.co.uk

instagram - instagram.com/emmajayne_designs

Facebook - facebook.com/emmajaynedesigns

Etsy - etsy.com/uk/shop/emmajayneonetsy

Spoonflower - spoonflower.com/profiles/emmajayne-designs 

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Tasha Warren, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, 

please send examples of your work with links to website portfolios, 

and some info about you and your background, etc... 

to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com 

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x

Creative Quarters...Tasha Warren

The next designer to be featured in Creative Quarters is Tasha Warren...

Surface pattern designer based in the Midlands and the North West,

Tasha is an award-winning textile designer who specialises in print and surface pattern. She has recently completed her studies at Birmingham City University. 

Her passion for bright and bold colours is evident throughout her work and she has a particular love of collaging. She takes much of her design inspiration from her surroundings as she enjoys spending her free time outdoors with her two dogs. 

Her work also takes inspiration from the likes of Josef Frank, Marimekko and Henri Matisse. 

Her Final Major Project collection titled ColourFlora is an interior textiles collection inspired by floral motifs. Through a variety of processes, Tasha aims to bring vibrant pops of neon into interior textiles in a contemporary and tasteful way. 

​

With her love of hand rendered collage, Tasha applies her distinctive use of colour to create unique and bespoke designs. 

Her sketchbook pages are then worked into repeat screen prints or are edited digitally to form digital designs. 

Although she has a distinctive style, throughout her degree at Birmingham City University Tasha has developed her skills in working towards client and trend led briefs. 

In 2018 she won the Trend Awareness Award from Colour Hive for her interpretation of the Hush trend. 

Most recently, however, she was awarded the Pattern Award by Sarah Campbell for her ColourFlora collection.

​

Tasha is available for new projects and commissions.

To get in touch please contact:

tashaewarren@hotmail.com

or

07943823208

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For more images of Tasha's work and to keep up to date, follow her on Instagram 

www.instagram.com/tashawarrendesigns

Or find her on Facebook

www.facebook.com/tashawarrendesigns

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I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about Tasha,
and seeing a selection of her work.

If you're interested in working with Tasha, or want to get in touch with general enquiries, please visit her instagram account for contact details.

If you missed the last Creative Quarters post featuring Noe Onoff, you can read it here.

And don't forget, if you'd like to be featured, 

please send examples of your work with links to website portfolios, 

and some info about you and your background, etc... 

to Louise at loveprintstudio@live.com 

Look forward to hearing from you!

x x x