designing

I've recently (as in, last night and just right now) made a couple of rough sketches of possible designs that can be turned into stationery (the letterset kind), possibly notecards too (there's just so many notecards out there already though!), and one day, with some money in the bank, textiles. I dream of the day I can turn my designs into textiles, to be made into all sorts of goodies!

Meanwhile, I have to remain realistic. I am 20 (turning 21 in a matter of weeks) and finishing up my last two semesters of college (graduating early, remember?). And hopefully make use of my B.A. in social welfare doing something that hopefully makes a difference on somebody's life. (I know, high expectations, right?). I didn't take a four year journey learning about family, childcare, social services, psychology, race and education, etc etc for nothing after all. But my heart lies in the arts and crafts and I know I'll find a way to make them both work.

Now... back to design talk. My first design is still quite hideous (pictures soon, it's night right now so photos would look horrible), but it's based on the "mushroom flower" I painted as part of our forrest/wildlife themed mural in the garden of my co-op house. I hated it when the other girls called it a mushroom flower. It wasn't my intention. I was merely following the outline of some other flower I had seen and wanted to paint it. But now, I realized that this "mistake/misunderstanding" might be of use. And my second design, that I just did a few moments ago is of Asian-inspired houses situated atop little rocks. This is heavily influenced by the "blue and white" porcelain style drawings my art teacher M. Sarah Klise (link at left side bar) enjoyed very much and would find opportunities to incorporate into our lesson drawings, including her fondness for stripes!

I'll have to work on a few more sketches to get it right and then figure out how to turn them into stationery letter sets. The easy way would be to print them off my printer (what 20 year old has a printing press in her dorm room? or the funds to mass produce anything?), but I do not like the quality of that. Any suggestions for an inexpensive way to produce small quantities of printed material? I'll have to find a place that wouldn't charge much to print for me or something. Or else I'll have to find some creative way to make use of a copy place like Kinko's. The quality is still not what I would like it to be (not professional enough for my taste) but at least the ink won't smear or smudge like printer ink would if you spilled water (that's my biggest pet peeve about printing straight from my computer printer - ick!).

Photos coming soon, I promise!