a line extension *

bracelet designs - Foundations line extension

* more shameless self promotion and/or potential Empire (creative) building.

The most successful and rewarding product design jobs/customers that I've found in my nearly 8 years of being on my own - of being a self employed product designer/illustrator have been found at monster.com and I continue to look there regularly for new customers and new opportunities. The hardest part is convincing a potential customer that they can and will have a successful, fruitful and carefree working relationship with a designer gal who lives far, far away in some tiny village by the sea. Fortunately a few have been brave enough to take a chance on me ... and I continue to have great relationships with them to this day. Merci ! I've always known, when on the hunt for a new customer .... if I can just get my foot in the door, if they'll just give me one project - I'm pretty darn confident ... I'll be in like flint. Madam Invincible definitely hangs out in this world.

This particular project was with Enesco. They already had a very successful, best selling product line called Foundations based on beautiful stylized angels, mostly figurines and they'd decided to add a line of jewellery to this collection. The tres talented designer of this (and many other) collections with Enesco -Karen Hahn was at the time swamped with other projects and needed to hire out some freelance help - and lucky me I got the job. The existing collection was already beautifully designed and extremely well thought out - my job was to glean little bits and pieces of her existing designs, use lovely pre-existing motifs and icons, and her soft pastel colour palette to create a line of jewellery to go with - ultimately evoking the same feeling and fitting perfectly within the existing Foundations product collection - a line extension. I worked closely with the Karen, she provided detailed art direction and then I was to run with it ... and run I did. I totally loved this project - could have drawn pages and pages and pages of thumbnails. Karen loved my final drawings and the jewellery collection was manufactured, well received and is now selling well. Perfect. A few more of the final jewellery pieces here, here & here

I absolutely love what I do - and the most challenging projects in the end are often the one's I'm the most satisfied with. Speaking of which - I'm just about to begin a big batch of final drawings (hooray !) here at the TTD (teak topped desk). 22 final drawings from the latest big batch o'thumbnails for Customer No Uno - I was aiming for 24 (ya know Mama loves to aim high) but 22's not so bad. So we'll be busy drawing now through to the end of this weekend ... maybe longer.

and ps. my new favourite TV show -' cause laughter truly is the best medicine. Just plain old fashioned silliness. Warning do not drink or eat while watching - Snort ! I gave myself the hiccups last night I laughed so uncontrollably hard. Don't say I didn't warn you.

oh my ! the sound of birds in our yard and gardens is unbelievable - I'm going to see if I can't figure out how to attach an audio blurb for you - you won't believe it - You'll say to yourself that girl must be livin' in an aviary.





another page of bracelets, two of holiday ornaments and a page of necklaces