“Charlotte Day combines her passion for pattern and illustration with her love of plants to produce unique botanically influenced designs for textiles, stationery, wall paper, merchandise and editorial projects. While her main tools remain pencil and paper, designs are digitally assembled in order to create perfect repeats and provide work in commercially compatible format.”  (http://www.charlottedaydesign.com)

The above image is some of his designer wallpaper that I thought was fitting for the season.  Simple, creative, and visually remarkable Day’s work is a great example of tasteful wallpaper.  Charlotte’s artowrk is reminiscent of the arts and crafts movement and takes the period of art in a new direction.  Instead of my normal rants and reviews of artwork, I’m simply going to show some of Day’s work.  Make sure to visit her website at:

http://www.charlottedaydesign.com

I’m back from my Hiatus with a cup of coffee and motivation the likes of which this blog hath never seen.  Today I have the pleasure of finally writing about Douglas Hill: print designer, father, artist, and programmer.  Douglas originally contacted us to take a look at his work to review and comment on.  Well I must say that after a thorough review, we decided to get back to Douglas and a few back and forth emails later, the staff here at Creative Fluff was completely convince that Hill was an artist that deserved a thoughtful review.   I personally find that the best way to talk about an artist is to describe their background; luckily Douglas wrote us an autobiography and below is a short clip from his bio:

“During the development of TILER, I discovered that outside of the world of COBOL report generation, programming was pretty interesting.  So, degree in hand, I went out into the world to earn a living as a computer programmer, and geometric patterns went into abeyance for years as I got married and raised a family.  Though I mainly worked on embedded systems (printer mechanisms, medical devices, audio workstations, motion controllers and the like) I always took advantage of any opportunity to work on the image generation portion of a project, if there was one.  Developing test patterns and color halftone patterns for inkjet printers, for example.

My daughters both have artistic abilities and I thought I’d provide a model for them of how to make an income from art as a sideline.  Ha!  Some model.  A mere babe in the woods I have been.  I learned how to print, mat and frame.  I’d take these things around to craft fairs, which is a pain and a lot of fun.  I loved being part of a creative community, having a foot in the art and craft world, seeing how other people solved (more or less well) their problems and found a way to keep going.” (http://patternsofreflection.com)

This short clip gives just enough insight into Douglas’s background to emphasize his creative spirit and motivation for seeing what patterns lie beneath the surface in our every day lives.  Below are the samples that were sent to our local designer, Katherine:

Simply stunning aren’t they?  Douglas managed to translate his patterns into successful print design pieces that are easily levels above what is sold in most print boutique shops around New York City (and trust me I’ve been to all of them).  The patterns that Hill has managed to take from objects in the real world and translate into art would function on paper, on the computer, even as wallpaper for children’s rooms and as fabric designs on quilts.  I personally feel as if these could easily be sold to fresh fashion designers as ideas for their own projects.   If you haven’t already headed over there, I suggest you go to http://patternsofreflection.com and go through the rest of Douglas’s work, and check out his online shop

(I really want more of his stuff for our work space).

Above is a picture of her “Ombre Lace Grey Tiny Card” which is an excellent example of her creative textile design which features a visually stimulating juxtaposition of foil and playful patterns as the cover to a normal sized note card.  The note card, obviously meant for meaningless scribbles, gives anything that a person has to put down with ink significant meaning.  Her work instantly transforms anything written within the notecard into a keepsake no matter how inane.

Another example of her famous ‘playful patterns’ can bee seen with her “A Note – Agate Grey” which features an interesting “textural combination of…high and low elements” (Nantaka.com)    Lineart has always been a creative artform which only recently held attention in the high art and design spotlight.  If you go to the MoMA store anytime in the next couple of weeks you’ll notice a large collection of line art stationery for sale.  Though Cho isn’t featured at the MoMA (yet) that doesn’t mean her work doesn’t deserve museum treatment.  Below is another piece of her work which came out five days ago: “Woodcut Floral File Folders – NEW!”

If you’re still reading this post you shouldn’t be.  You should be over at her website taking a look at the rest of her work because I’m sure my descriptions of her wonderful work don’t give her enough credit.

Cyperus Designs and Printing has been printing stationery and invitations for a little over 19 years now in the Syosset, Long Island area.  They offer paper products such as wedding invitations, thank you cards (like the one above), journals, RSVP cards, birthday invitations and more.  Though the stationery is personally to feminine for my personal tastes, it doesn’t stop me from appreciating the quality of the material or the fact that a pack of invitations from their company isn’t nearly as expensive a single invitation from a trendy designer.   Below are two examples of their in demand, and well known, wedding invitation stationery by Cyperus Greetings:

Okay, so The Japanese Paper Place is Canadian. But they stock a wide variety of papers, thousands of different types, prints and weights, machine-made and hand-made, from Japan. And among their beautiful papers and their wholesale “Potluck” packs, they have a nice bunch of gift products as well.

Click here to go to The Japanese Paper Place.