i'm finally ready to share my new ranges with you! up until now i have just been sharing some sneaky peaks into what i've been working on but now...here it is...
Mel Smith Designs' take on the wonderful Moroccan life!
you may have guessed i was working on something along these lines from all of my recent
pinning! i visited Marrakech in 2010 and it was amazing! an absolutely amazing if not bonkers place and i (as you can imagine) got quite snap happy with the camera! i would highly recommend a visit to anyone and would love to go back one day.
an obvious starting point for the project was looking at the tiles and architectural mosaics ('zellige') and i had a LOT of photos to work from! i read up a little on the history of zellige and it get a wee bit complex when you get into stars with 96 points! i'm not quite that skilled to tackle a pattern of such complexity...not yet anyway!
you may recall the 2 Moroccan prints i did for last seasons collection. blue and orange with an off white. i decided to keep these prints and have a play around with the palette so they could fit in with my new look . and i'm so glad i did...look how they came out:
as mentioned in the blog last week i have been working on illustrations as well as good old repeats. i have a thing about 'scenes' (again you may have seen my
pinterest boards already) and wanted to pursue this route. much like with my christmas card range.
i couldn't resist a camel.
so what made me choose Morocco as a theme? well, it's not just Morocco, this is all part of a much bigger project, an ongoing collection that will be added to each and every year. i am documenting all of my travels and sharing my experiences through pattern and illustration. Morocco seemed like an good place to begin as i had already created those couple of Moroccan prints last season and it is on trend.
you might also be wondering where i got my palette from. well, this is also part of my documenting - i am choosing palettes that link to either a place or event in that location. for Marrakech i absolutely loved the YSL Gardens. so peaceful yet full of colour and life. plus they were a nice little escape from the mental souks!
so where to next?
well, there will be a post on my
facebook and
twitter pages on Monday explaining the next stages and i need you to be involved. i hope you can join me there :)
