I have never been very good at 'blowing my own trumpet' but today I feel I have good cause to do so. Two months ago I put forward an idea to run a course on Surface Pattern Design at a technical college in Turin. I was quite cheeky and proposed a trial workshop saying that the courses available were a bit out of date and that maybe some new subjects and input were needed. My trail lesson went exceedingly well so here I am planning my set of 10 workshops (to be run in October) and hoping that they will indeed prove to be 'exciting and new'. I am kind of proud of myself as I created this opportunity out of nothing, I just jumped in where I saw a gap and it worked out fine. I am also aware that this is probably the only Surface Pattern Course that you will find in Turin (very slight panic)!
For my trail lesson I had an idea to create some pattern cards to help the students understand how the repeat tile works, and even though I say it myself they went down really well. There you go I'm blowing my own trumpet again... it's never to late to learn!
It's kind of HOT at the moment in Turin.
Over the last two weeks we have had temperatures of up to 32 degrees paired with a lot of humidity and no breeze at all. It is quite normal, July is always like this, but when it happens it always seems worse than last year.
You begin to dream of swimming pools, cold drinks and ice creams, not to mention the sea, a walk in the woods or a day trip to the mountains.
So there we have it, a day in the mountains, Bonneval-sur-Arc to be precise. Located 27 kms from Val-d'Isère in France, a bit of glacier skiing going on above us, beautiful views and more than anything, cool, fresh, thin AIR!
Whilst someone was tiring himself out with a long bike ride I had a couple of hours sightseeing and took lots of photographs of the lovely village (and quite a few flowers).
There was a small market selling local cheeses and cured meats and as always in this part of France, stalls selling every immaginable type of dried fruit and boiled sweets.
I bought a bit of everything like only a serious tourist does and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I took about 100 photographs of flowers and my favourite purchase was some lovely flower shaped violet flavoured boiled sweets!
At the end of the day, tired and above all COOL we returned to Turin.
Time to download another month from the 2013 Designer Calendar Project. What is so special about this month is that the design is mine! The Freebie Designer Calendar Project is an idea by Maria Jose Bautista V. Back in December 2012 she asked 12 surface pattern designers to each create a month using their unique style. The result is a very different calendar for 2013 full of fun designs and patterns.
I designed my month during a cold December thinking about July and what it would be
like. I love the beach and shells and thought that a mermaid would go
down just nicely. You can download your A3 copy of July from Majo's blog here, you can also read all the lovely things she wrote about me and my work!
I do hope you like my mermaid enough to print and use as a monthly planner for your desk or just to hang on the wall for the fun of it!
Thanks to Majo for organising such a fun project. x
