Bella's Birthday!

Along with one of my Christmas card orders, I was commissioned to design a birthday card for 3 (almost 4) year old Bella, who aside from her sweet name, 'likes dogs and pink'. A girl after my own heart. What fun!

I wanted to experiment with raised areas and of course add glitter and gems - what girl can live without either?! Here's the end product..

Roleymole meets Facebook

This week saw the launch of Roleymole to Facebook.. It took a lot of encouragement from people, both clients and friends to launch and promote my design more actively. To be quite honest, I wasn't sure it would be greatly received by people other than those who know me. How wrong could I have been!?

I was greatly encouraged by a very dear friend of mine to design some 'good' Christian Christmas cards, quite a few months back. So since then I've been see-sawing between going for it and waiting another year. 

Within this time, countless people have told me I should go into business properly, and assured me of the gap in the market that I would fill with good Christian design, admittedly there is a gap! So with God opening all of the doors, and lots of prayers for confirmation, I thought I'd take a leap of faith. And how much the Lord has already blessed that leap.

I've been inundated with orders, so many that I've had to double the card stock I ordered originally, and source some more wood. 

The element that fills me with the most joy is that by using the gifts and passion God has given me to make his words aesthetically beautiful, more and more people will be in direct contact with His words - for it's there where life is found. Fellow Jesus followers - please pray that the people who receive these cards will read His words of life and seek Him. Thank you all for your prayers, support and kindness!

Thanks be to the giver of all gifts! 

With love from a very overwhelmed,

Laura xx

To see the range of 'The Reason for the Season' Christmas Cards, click here.

Wood you believe it?!

Recently I was commissioned to create a wood burning for a 5th wedding anniversary (yep you guessed it - it's the wood anniversary). I worked together with Lily (my client) to get something really special for her to give to her husband. She had the idea that she wanted to have a collection of places and dates that were special to her and her husband, so she sent me a list of places, dates and songs and here's what I created. There were extra friend points for whoever could work out the relevance of them all!..

DIY day

When we moved into our lovely flay, many lovely people gave us many lovely things (to help us on get on our feet). This sofa and toy box came from my parents' house. Now I love wood - but there's the one shade of wood that I just can't bring myself to love - that kind of orangey wood that goes with absolutely nothing. These two lovely pieces of furniture were that colour, much to my dismay. But, nevertheless I loved them - and FINALLY I got around to giving them some much needed TLC. With a couple of coats of 'Habitat' multi-surface paint (colour 'dust'), a touch of sanding and a brush over with some white to finish - they were given a new lease of life. 

Now the toy box has always been something I envisioned coming with me from home to home, and with so many kids in our lives - I wanted to do something fun with it. The kids at our church are so great - and so honest. When asked what they treasure the most, the answer is nearly always some form of toy. So on top of the toy box I wrote God's words - 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where  moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also' Matthew 6v20-21

A helpful reminder not only to the children that play in this house, but to us. Every worldy treasure will one day perish, but our heavenly treasure is eternal as is our Lord..

Easter's Coming..

Hey guys!

So after a few weeks of knuckling down with greetings designs (previews to follow), I gratefully accepted an invitation to design the Easter Celebration flyer for our church. I wanted to make a slight steer away from the more 'feminine' look that many Easter designs often encompass - but if you know me, you'll know that in my opinion Easter colours are to die for (I just LOVE them) and naturally I had to include at least one ;-) 

Easter is a beautiful time of year, not only with the first blooms and beautiful pastels, but with the greatest love story of all - The Son of God freely giving his life in place of the lives of so many of us retched sinners. This time of year is, in my opinion, the MOST beautiful. 

And so if by any coincidence any of you Loughborough bound on 31st March, come and hear the greatest love story of all time!

What I've been working on..

I've definitely fulfilled my design quota for this month (after a whole lot of time off taking advantage of all things Christmassy) but here are some of my favourites from January...

 

 

(Gold foil replaces the black in the designs below)

            

and they SOLD!!!

So the day finally came - My first sale!

These designs were sold to Berwick in the US of A - they supply designs to places like Walmart, Target and other big chains - so keep your eyes peeled stateside people, you may even see these in a store near you next Christmas!

Thanking the Sovereign Lord for his grace, today as ever.

Something a bit new

I've been locked away (not quite that literally) working on a number design collections over the past few weeks. Here's a sneak peak starting with my first go at some traditionals - MAN do these ones take a long time!! Excuse the 'liney' photographs.. there was a slight iPhone injury this week. Poor little thing..

                                                     

                     and some fun ones (the first time I've drawn a living thing in about 3 years.. be gentle)...

and to finish, something else I thought I'd have a go at, some general everyday geometric ones ...

Happy Thanksgiving

Our friend Nicole is very a very lovely american lady and threw us the most glorious Thanksgiving dinner yesterday - I'd without a doubt be a lot heavier than I am now if I lived over there. This one was just something for her. Wooden pegs, painted, and clipped onto a homemade wire wreath - 52 stars and 13 stripes all in. Happy Holidays to all in the US!

Lines for the Lord

I'm not going to lie, I love being a young creative in my church - I get all the best jobs! On the first Tuesday of every month people from our church come together to pray for people around the world - and I got the fun job of designing this slide to publicise it. 'Global Prayer' changed it's name to 'Network Prayer' after I'd completed the design, but the event remains the same - a group of people who  love Jesus coming together in prayer for those taking his story to the ends of the earth.

Back to the blog

Those who know me will know that 2012 has brought with it many new things in the life of Laura Jonas. 

A new home, a new Nephew, a new job and even a new last name, So after a long and eventful summer and in the theme of all things new of course I had to re-jig my blog to fit in with my new life!

After landing, pretty much, my dream job in October as a freelancer in the greetings world, I felt it only necessary to give the blog a spring (or Autumn) clean and get back to showcasing what I do best - making things! Be it designs from work, or the crafty fun I get up to in what spare time I manage to savour - you'll see it all here first.

So to begin here are some sneak peeks of some designs I've done so far for Inspire by Design LTD.

Until next time ;) ...

                     

Elisa Phoebe Dennis

Commission by proud mummy for the second time, Jane, these are some pictures for baby Elisa's nursery. They will of course be in the comfort of their frames and up in their home before long :)

365 days of goddaughter happiness

3 weeks ago was my goddaughters 1st birthday - how time flies! There was LOTS of sunshine, lots of party food (always favourable) and lots of fun. Here's a picture of the card I made for her, and the head of the seriously impressive sheep birthday cake courtesy of mummy and Auntie Bubs (I think)!

A brand new baby nephew

I've not posted on here for a while - but 4 weeks ago I was blessed with a beautiful nephew. His mummy and daddy (my big brother and sister in law) decided to name him Theodore - which means 'gift from god', and that he is indeed! Below is a photo of him and his daddy and an image of the card I made for him.

The difference a professional photograph makes

I've just come back from the photography studio with these fab quality photos of my beer bottle branding project done earlier in the year.. Amazing what a few expensive lights and white paper can do hey!?

The Cache 2012 logo in use

Today was a very exciting day - I got to see the Cache 2012 logo in it's context! A very proud moment for me! Hope you enjoy too..

Something for Beth..

My first canvas! Covered in papers to match Beth's bedroom. I was quite pleased with the result. I might even make one for myself one day..

A work in progress

Something else I've been working on recently is Illustrating type from the relatively well known poem 'Half-Caste' written by John Agard. The poem is part of the current GCSE curriculum and found in the 'poems from other cultures' section of the AQA anthology. Poetry is becoming less popular in its traditional form (I'd argue that songs are a form of poetry that many still hold passion for), so I thought creating a project around making traditional poetry more visually stimulating might be an interesting path to trial, while challenging myself by attempting to make the poem more memorable for the 15 and 16 year old's trying to learn it for their exams.

Anyway.. here's a sneak peak of a couple of the preliminary spreads...

Cache 2012

So I can finally show you something else I've been up to in the past few weeks - The Loughborough University Textiles Degree Show logo. I really enjoyed this project because it allowed me to explore working in a more designed and geometric way (if you know my work well then something very different to my usual style)! The first few sketches were what we started with, so as you can see, the end result turned out slightly differently, but I'm really pleased with it - and so were they (well I'm assuming being as they chose to use it)!

 

 and the finals..