29
Apr
Using Illustrator and Photoshop to create a product
This week my create your product and sell your product webinar sessions were off to a great start. To get the webinar participants excited about the 4 weeks of intense sessions I show them the many possibilities I do a quick preview of the product creation websites that we are going to learn to work with. Anyone that has Illustrator and Photoshop skills can create and sell a professional looking product.
The greatest thing about these websites is that there is almost never a minimum so you can test it out with one sample.
During the live sessions participants can ask questions and many do, but a lot of times participants opt to simply watch the step by step training videos. My favourite session is the create your own textiles & screen print ready files. To find out more about the content of the 4 different sessions click here.
17
Mar
Flat sketch with embroidery & book tip with download
Today’s download is a print swatch in ai. format that you can use inside of your flat sketches as in the example picture. Years ago I received an embroidery machine with a digitizing software. I wish I had more time to work with it. Every time that I see the needle work it’s magic and stitch the embroidery floss along the the fabric in a very precise manner I feel mesmerized. It’s almost better that Yoga, very relaxing, well unless the thread gets stuck or the fabric tears. I will try and make it a priority to come up with more embroideries. Below I wanted to share the process of using an graphic inside of a book called “Geometric Patterns” by Pepin press, as inspiration and then taking the image into Illustrator to tweak it and simplify it. After that I had to take my illustrator artwork into an very old embroidery digitizing software and then finally I was able to safe it onto a little card that goes into the embroidery machine. Does anyone have any recommendation for a current inexpensive embroidery software? I then embroidered some silk fabric scanned it, cleaned it up in Photoshop and then took it into Illustrator to create a print from it. Which you can download and use by clicking here. Enjoy and please share your work with me on my facebook wall.
9
Mar
Free Friday Mini Fashion Webinar – Laces in Illustrator
To create a lace for your Fashion Flat sketch in Illustrator you can do many different things, I am going to show you a basic technique that I used almost daily as Lingerie Designer. Take a peak at the snapshots below to see how I did it and if you are unsure about the process go ahead and join me during this next session.
Attendees will receive the free files after webinar ! Reserve your spot now.. Read more 
24
Feb
How to design and sketch a handbag in Illustrator
Whenever I teach an Illustrator for fashion design class that covers how to create brushes for trims and other repetitive details such as laces, stitches, ribbons, rhinestones and chains I try and remember to tell my class about a website that is called thehandbagresources.com. This site provides inspiration for many detail brushes and provides you with the a free sample download of their vector files. Their business is to sell flat sketches, textiles and detail brushes of handbags that are current. You can then put together different combinations a lot faster than having to sketch everything from scratch. Here is a really old example of me playing around with these. As I am writing this entry I actually checked the properties on the files and they say “10/26/05″. Wow! If any of you decide to “doodle” around with their samples feel free to post a pic on FashionChalkboard.com’s Facebook page.
16
Feb
Live Fashion Drawing
Are you in New York, NY anytime soon? If so try and check out the live fashion Illustration events that are happening thanks to Brandon creator of wouldyourockthis.com Brandon has created a friendly space for like minded fashion sketch artist to come together and practice their skills. If you are like most of us designers in the apparel industry you find yourself working on the computer hour after hour and probably think many times that this (the job) isn’t anything like fashion school or what you see on project runway… NO time to sketch by hand and deadlines everywhere. I myself wish that I could attend one of these live sessions and re-train my hands to sketch more beautiful than they currently do… or just simply achieve a zen-like state where there aren’t any production problems.. ahhh that would be nice! I already joined their meetup group online hoping that one of their future meetings falls on one of my NY visits. You can also join their facebook group to stay informed about both their website and live events. Here is one example of one of my hand sketches that I drew a couple of months ago, before a live class that I taught on how to trace the sketch in Illustrator and add a little sparkle… problem was that there was no live model!
3
Feb
Free Friday Mini Fashion Webinar – QR-code fancier than your competitor
QR-codes are everywhere and they have quickly become mainstream. QR which stands for quick response is one of the simplest ways to peak interest in products, promotions and perhaps your portfolio? Anyone can create such code for free and the basics are very simple. Let’s be creative and make it more colorful and fun. I put my QR code in a heart shape and changed it’s color in Illustrator. It took a bit of testing to eliminate some errors but now you can scan it with your smartphone and you will find yourself on my Facebook page. Enter QR code in Fashion into Google images and become inspired by what companies around the world are doing with this free yet fun and possibly exciting mobile technology. Click here to reserve your spot now |
| When: Friday, April 8, 2011 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM PDT |
| Any smartphone can install a free app like barcode scanner for android or qr reader for i-phone. I have seen simple tee-shirts with a screen printed QR-code to knitted QR-codes on scarves. Check out the dress by designer Sam Trout that features a cyber treasure hunt by clicking here. Advertisers in Magazines for different target audiences like Vogue or Seventeen are using the codes to drive traffic to their promotions and contests. Other magazines let you discover more details of their stories such as behind the scenes video footage or more photos of products. Fashionablymarketing.me reported in 2010 about Calvin Klein using a giant QR code on a billboard on Sunset Blvd. that let customers view a short add on their phones. |
11
Oct
What is the Cut & Paste event?
Give them Illustrator, Photoshop, other software, a brief to follow, music, an live audience, a time limit and you have a competition that will be educational and fun. Yesterday, I saw a tiny little add on facebook.com about the yearly Cut & Paste event in Los Angeles. Every year since 2005 I missed it for some reason or another, so this time I had to go! And I am glad that I went. Among a nice, like minded, geeky audience, good music and an open bar 3 hours of quick paced competitions were fun to watch. Additionally one of the sponsors “Converse” held a drawing contest of which I will post some images in another post.
For those of you who do not know what this event is about here is a brief summary:
The annual Cut & Paste live event, is a competition that challenges digital designers to create artwork within a limited time-frame sitting on stage in-front of a live audience. They are giving a brief… (see videos), then compete to create most creative artwork in 2D or 3D and win a prize at the end of the evening. The winner of the night will then participate in the final event that brings together competitors from around the world.
Create a yearbook layout with the theme “Frienemy”. Frienemy refers to any enemy that you have to be friendly with.
Create any tutorial of your choice
20
May
Alice in Wonderland’s book review and costumes at the FIDM Museum
I often times bring books that inspire me to the classroom and share it with my students. So I thought I might as well talk about it on my Blog and share them with you.
For those of you who have not had a chance to see Disney’s latest Alice in Wonderland Movie created with the incredible creative vision of Tim Burton, I highly recommend to go and see it.
It really was a colorful, wonderful feast for the eyes. From the gardens that Alice wanders in our regular world to the gardens in wonderland filled with magical creatures such as talking flowers, butterfly winged rocking horse and many more. The castles are highly intricate architectures and then of course the stunning costumes. Alice’s costumes are developing and changing as she changes and goes through the process of finding courage as well. Beautiful! But her costumes are not the only one’s that left me feeling inspired.
During my recent mini vacation in Disneyland I stumbled across a book that captures the creative process that was involved in creating this Movie. Through it’s 256 pages, every page has amazing images that show everything from close up on props, costume illustrations, actual close ups of costume details of the main characters as well as other characters. The book reveals how many scenes were shot of which I thought they had to be computer-generated-imagery (CGI), but they were not…entirely. The book is called “Disney Alice in Wonderland a visual companion”. I put a link to the book at an IndieBound website in hopes that you will support them.
I was very happy to find out that the original costumes are going to be on display at the FIDM Museum in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition is open to the public and runs from May 27, 2010 through September 30, 2010. The best part is, that the exhibit is Free.
The FIDM museum is located :
919 S. Grand Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90015
For anyone who is not in the Los Angeles area, I do highly recommend this book
Click here to more Book information 
