I thought it may be helpful to share some creative apps, favourite tools and tips for use in visual arts and design.
CamScanner App
A great convenient, ‘on the go’ tool for scanning using your phone and the CamScanner app. You can either take a scan/picture using the app or can import an image to convert that into a scan. The app locates the boundaries of your image and adjusts the light so you can even scan in low light. It’s a huge time saver and has a good memory capacity before it requires any payment. You don’t get bugged by ads. CamScanner is 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 in my opinion.
Screen grab of my CamScanner latest work
iPhone XS
My phone is a key tool in my work, for photographing, drawing, editing. The camera on this phone model takes beautiful images and the ‘portrait’ mode is a useful feature for product shots and photographing work. I like the ‘pano’ feature for creative shots. Couldn’t function without this. Great size, weight and stable when used with a tripod. iPhone XS 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I take a LOT of photos and create new designs on my iPhone
Pixelmator App
How I love Pixelmator. I can’t say how much I use it as it’s seamless in my work. I’m probably across in the app 5 times a day. Layering images, drawing, adding text, creating social media ads, resizing, mocking up ideas, creating repeat patterns. The app is intuitive, making it easy to learn and to use. This is a corker of a creative tool 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Pixelmator App Screen Grab Showing Layers of a Design.
Bernina Sewing Machine
I would never have thought that I could love a sewing machine as much as I do my Bernina. It’s reliable, compact, and with the digital display I know what the machine settings are at a glance. I want to make the marks myself so I’m not interested in sewing machines that take over and do the sewing themselves. Swiss engineering is renowned and my Bernina is a fabulous example of this that runs like clockwork. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Bernina B215 Sewing Machine sewing an ice cream themed fabric that I designed.
YouTube
A learning gateway for everything you might ever want to learn about, where someone always seems to have the answer for using a new product, or technique. I’m going to give YouTube 🌟🌟🌟🌟 as the ads can be annoying, but then again it’s ‘free’. YouTube is about the people who take the time to share their experiences and knowledge. Of course it’s best to watch a few videos for any given subject to be able to gather a few perspectives/ methods.
I’ve always enjoyed making films so I love that I can share my movies and reach people through YouTube. Here’s a link to go to my channel.
Inspire by Kim YouTube Channel screen grab
50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life
This book is like a hug of a drawing course. The creators of Flow magazine have done something magical by bringing together exercises from their illustrators to make this big beautiful collection of inspiring, drawing skills inducing delight. Love it with some good TV and a pencil or fine liner. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Flow Magazine.
Collage of the cover and pages of my drawings in the book.
Instagram
The place to see image based posts, as opposed to more wordy content. A window on creative studios, processes and what everyone is working on, it’s such a creative time that we live in. Instagram makes the world shrink to the size of the app and I love how we can connect with kindred creatives and find people with shared interests. And there’s always someone somewhere on Instagram, even in the middle of my night – when the darkness becomes a blank creative canvas for new idea seeds to germinate in my mind. Hoping the ads, which have increased in frequency, don’t takeover, like they appear to have on sister site Facebook 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Inspire by Kim Instagram Screen Grab
Also I have to mention PicCollage, which now allows a mix of still images and videos in collages, and WordPress for my blog.
I hope this proves helpful. Wanted to share these findings and also this is a way of expressing gratitude for this tremendous tech and fabulous phone based functions which are my fundamental tools.
Please stay and see some more posts here.
If you’d like a street these are my favourite ones.
It’s a year this week since my Heat Press machine arrived and made it possible for me to press my painted designs from paper onto fabric.
I’ve been reflecting on the work and continue to enjoy exploring the potentials of this colourful science of heat sensitive dyes.
Here are the highlights of the work using these fabric design techniques.
Most recently this colourful doll. All the fabric was white when I began the work. I added colour and stitch inspired by my favourite things.
One of the first things I made with my machine was this miniature bunting.
As I wanted flowers to always be at our Juliet balcony I created this tulip box draught excluder.
To help me relax and snooze whilst travelling I made this pretty eye mask, printing the fabric and the bias binding with my hand painted designs.
In a campaign to raise awareness of bell pepper allergies and intolerances I created this piece by painting then free motion embroidery.
I collaged pieces of painted paper to create this portrait.
Blue Hair Tulip Lady
My latest make was tennis themed bunting, joined with heat pressed ribbon, as part of promotion work for a tennis club.
In February I created samples to show different techniques and shared these at a half day workshop. Thanks so much to the workshop attendees, it was wonderful to see how you enjoyed putting your designs onto fabric. I can’t wait to see your creations with the fabrics you designed and made.
One of my favourite creations was the miniature cheese plant. Using hand painted leaves I pressed them onto satin, and using wire I stitched them and arranged them into this pretty home decor gem which doesn’t need watering or tending.
There’s the opportunity to play with these techniques and design your fabric for a craft, fashion or home decor project at my next workshop.
I’ll be demonstrating and teaching these techniques at a one day workshop in Sheffield on Sunday June 2nd. The workshop is at Stitched Up and Fleeced studio from 10 – 4pm, £60.
The one day workshop will bring stitch techniques into the process to explore how stitch can be used before and/or after pressing the designs onto fabric, to achieve some beautiful effects.
The workshop can be booked at the venue website. Just complete the contact form to ask any questions or to book. You can of course ask me any queries at inspirebykim@outlook.com
We’ll be exploring how we can reuse and upcycle existing fabrics that you already have, to breathe new life into them.
I had an idea to make a cheese plant, this was inspired by seeing the cheese plant when doing Yoga With Adriene. I didn’t want a cheese plant that would grow too big or might result in soil spilling onto the carpet, so decided that a mini one would be ideal.
My favourite fabric at present is satin, I love how the light catches it and used it recently for the Bird and Flowers Cushion. The cushion featured leaves and so I can recognise the idea flow through these projects.
The Bird and Flowers Cushion
Following this commission project I made a bookmark, a pretty lady emerged, and then an eye mask.
So botanics were a theme flowing, or should I say ‘growing’ through my work, largely this was inspired by Botanica – Encyclopedia of Inspiration by Uppercase Magazine, a book I love. My garden is also a huge source of inspiration and vital to my creative process.
Here’s the cheese plant creation process in a one minute video. Including a quick animation that I was inspired to make. This quickly shows the steps to creating the miniature cheese plant…
This video and my growing collection of art videos can be seen on my YouTube channel.
I’m really pleased with this outcome and eager to see where this leads on to, I have some ideas but not ready to share them just yet.
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