daisyjanie

purple "e" custom fabric update

Remember the purple "e" fabric? Well, here's what a 26" x 26" square of custom fabric will get you: 1 uptown handbag, 1 roxy wristlet, 1 zoey mirror/pouch, 1 headband, 3 key fobs and 4 extra fabric-covered mirrors. How about that?!

My client is jumping for joy - she said her son has never been so excited to give his sister a gift! Yay!! Glad I could be a part of making people happy - good karma!

Email me at jan[at]daisyjanie[dot]com if I can help you with a custom fabric design or printing project.

working on: cool custom fabric project

I've been working on this very cute project for about 2 weeks now. The client contacted me to print a custom fabric for her, which I will then sew into some Daisy Janie items for her: an uptown handbag, a headband, a roxy wristlet, a couple zoey pouches and maybe a key fob or 2.

The initial concept was done by her son and is a gift from him to his sister in celebration of her Bat Mitzvah. You might recognize the "signature style" upon which it's loosely based. (Considering it's not an exact duplicate, the colors are completely different and it's not for re-sale, I thought it was safe to go ahead with it.)

I tightened and cleaned the client's design, set-up the repeat, colormatched the purple shades - and off to the printer!  The bottom image is the strike-off (pardon the yellow cast from my camera!!). It looks splendid in person - the client loves it. So it's a go. Yay!

She said her daughter will be over the moon with her brother's gift! I think it's awesome not only that he wanted to do this for his sister but also that his mom encouraged him to 'go for it'! (Did I mention he's 14? What a brother!)

If you' re interested in custom fabric design and / or printing, please get in touch.
jan [at] daisyjanie [dot] com.

from a simple sketch

Every Friday at 10am, I'm sitting in a Marketing meeting for my dayjob. I perform such a specific set of tasks that most of the meeting borders on the immaterial, except to fill in the strategic foundation for why I'm doing what I'm doing (actually that does sound sort of important). No matter, I doodle like mad anyway! I try to keep one ear open so my mind doesn't wander too far into The Land of Fabric Design Possibilities. A major challenge fer shur.

I've transformed a few of the Peanut Man's works of art into fabric designs and other fun things, too. Nobody is above the law in my house! I'll share some of those things in the coming weeks.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

fabulously fantastic fabric!

Yes, I like alliterations, and I really, really like starting off the week with special deliveries!

Look! Look! Look! The fabric is here, the fabric is here! 8 of the 12 rolls at least. Forget about my ear-to-ear grin, I'm singin', I'm dancin'!! Cotton-linen blend was def. the way to go - they are so gorgeous! It's a good day!

I'm prepping my website and getting some images taken so's I can load these beauties up - I'll let you know! I'll try to get a couple preview shots, if time allows.

Once these are up, Daisy Janie will have officially moved in a new direction (one I've mentioned more than a year ago...took me that long to wrap my brain around it).

All previous inventory is currently 50-60% off to make room!

at the printer

[2/19/08 Update: The fabrics are in my hands and will be available at Daisy Janie by Monday, Feb. 25th.]

The next collection of lovely fabric is being printed as we speak! 12 designs inspired all at once by mod, retro, vintage, abstract, bohemian and Mother Nature. I worked my bu** off on these, and gratification does not begin to touch what I'm feeling.

They're being printed on a cotton/linen blend and should be in my hands in early March. I can barely get over myself and my excitement at this point!!

I am back in the sewing room after a long hiatus, and I'm brewing and scheming a few products for these custom fabrics - handbags (of course!), pillows, tea towels, aprons, boxes, __________ - available on a limited, small-scale basis initially. Can't you just see them on everything! (oh, is that just me?!)

Most importantly, I will be offering these fabrics for sale by the quarter yard (18" x 27"), separately or in sets. You can make your own pretty things!! Please send me a note if you're interested already:
info AT daisyjanie DOT com

*designs not to scale

Copyright 2007-2008 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved. Besides stealing is not cool!

math girl

My former business partner and I had an incredible vibe when we worked together, always spouting off crazy creative ideas as if they were plucked from one another's brains. Yet we had VERY different approaches as to how those ideas should actually get from a paint can to a brush to a wall, and it was this pivotal difference that made our designs work. Her nickname was "Ran" for random and mine was "Pre" for precise. I was definitely math girl, crunching numbers like a mad accountant on the eve of April 15th. Love the ruler, the level and the calculator! And with fabric design, it's no different at all! If you don' t like being chummy with x- and y-coordinates, being wickedly precise to the thousandths decimal place or looking at art with a graph behind it all the time, then this is definitely not your gig! I happen to love making a flowing design sit 'precisely random' inside my bounding box and figuring, twisting and tweaking the whole thing until it's just a blend of energized harmony. My mouse hand is swollen, my fingertips are numb and my eyes are bleary, but it's all part of the process...these papers are only the tip of the iceberg!

Here's an example of a design I painted in a Designers' Showcase a few years ago (a worthy charity event) - you can see where precision and randominity come together to make it work. My sister and brother-in-law liked it so much that they had me re-create it in their powder room (which is what is shown here b/c I can't find the original showcase image):

cool new fabrics for jcaroline by jessica jones

Have you seen the new fabrics Jessica Jones has designed for jcaroline creative? It's smashingly delightful...the vividness of the palette is so refreshing! Check it out here. I'm a big fan of leaves, too (I've been painting them for years).

I have purchased a good load of raw materials from jcaroline over the past 3 years (some of her prices are quite good), and her one-woman-owned business has grown by leaps and bounds. She remains completely hands-on in her business - nice to see and easy to appreciate. And I learned about Jessica when she somehow found my other blog Scoutie Girl about this time last year and commented on one of my posts - that's when I started following her blog. She's a talented graphic designer - love her clean, precise style. So, what a great collaboration between these 2 creative ladies - their ideas have come to fruition, and they must be pleased! I'm sure their respective legions of followers will be, too!

Side note: About 6 months ago, I sheepishly emailed Caroline (of jcaroline) to introduce myself, let her know about Scoutie Girl and Daisy Janie and to offer services to create some one-of-a-kind fabrics just for her business. I thought it was a wonderful idea - original fabrics just for her! - but I was sooo nervous to send it, thinking I was overstepping my bounds and she would be like, "Yeah right, lady!" I never heard back from her, but knowing now that she was already working with Jessica actually boosts my confidence a bit, even tho she's not working with me. At least I was on the right page with the possibility, and next time, I will listen to the little voice that tells me to 'go for it' (sounds a lot like my husband) and NOT to the little voice that says 'yeah right, lady!'

cannot wait to get this

I've been thinking about one of these for soooooo long, and soon enough I'll have one to call my very own. Creative freedom at my fingertips! This is a Bamboo Tablet from Wacom. {photo courtesy: wacom} Not too expensive, either. I figure I'll start with a baby model and possibly trade-up later if necessary. Woo hoo!!!

vine swirl revised and demo

Here's the latest version of the vine-swirl fabric design I wrote about a week or so ago. Initially, each element was individually hand-drawn with the mouse, then they were pieced together in a string. Using the stroke tool in illustrator was not giving me the final effect I was looking for. So, I unstrung them, ungrouped them, took each swirl and re-worked it until I had more of a paintstroke swirl - heavier in places, lighter in others. This is a standard doodle for me - what else is there to do in marketing meetings at my dayjob?! :)

I'd like to send out a special thank you to the "reshape tool" in illustrator for making this design possible. Never used it before, but what a little unsuspecting savior it was! Here's what I did (basically): made a copy of a swirl; aligned the original and the copy on both vertical and horizontal centerpoints; scaled the copy to 75%; realigned the tips that swirl toward the center; used the reshape tool to pull it wider or narrower in various places; then joined the endpoints of the copy and the original. Done. See the basic steps in the layout here. Try it out!

working on...vine swirls

This is a fabric design I'm hoping to have finished by January. (I have about 4 other fabrics in the works, including this one as well as the ones above in my header that are complete.) Each element of this design is one freehand "squiggle swirl" that I created and then linked, linked and linked. I don't have a stylus so it took awhile to get each one just right. I would like the final look to have a more damask-y feel to it, and that will require a good bit of manipulation. I'll post the before and after when I have it done.

There's a lot of math and symmetry involved in figuring the layout, and I LOVE that part. I used to paint designs like these on furniture, mirrors, walls. My fabric designs are similar to my painting style - always geometric, layered and balanced. My brain won't let my fingers generate random patterns, although I appreciate it and love it when I see it. Same reason I have spatial reasoning issues.  [don't have a score yet...must get to my dayjob!]

working on...fabric finishing

This fabric design will be available in January. $17/piece (27"wide by 18"tall). I'm sticking to about 11 colors right now so everything will coordinate nicely!! Love that.

This particular design emerged after about 50 iterations of an element in one of my son's school art projects. I find a lot of inspiration from his sketches and doodles (he just started his first notebook of drawings that I'm not *allowed* to look at it). I see repetitions and patterns in everything, and his artwork is no exception. There will be others...thanks Peanut Man!

I'm working on scaling, colorizing and naming this one. This is about 67% of the regular scale. Current colors are chocolate brown, caramel brown, robin's egg blue and chartreuse. Any suggestions on a name are welcome! Here are a couple more options below. Picture a finished product of some sort, and let me know what you think.

All designs are the property of Jan DiCintio, Daisy Janie. Copyright 2007. Stealing is not polite