Springtime Sea Monsters!

Soon it will be spring and the water will warm up. Yes it will. And so it occurred to me that my snowflake / Swimflakes swimming hat will be right out of season. With this in mind I thought I would design a more spring-like hat. Something green, with growing things. That was the plan… but it’s funny how things come out sometimes. Somehow what the design turned into was Sea Monsters, frolicking with an overabundance of springlike joy, no doubt. I am going to get these hats printed, and, like the ‘Swimflakes’ ones (which are now sold out but…

The Big Chill Swim

10th & 11th December 2016 I shall have a stand with artwork in the marquee this year! The Big Chill Swim is Chillswim’s fantastic winter swimming gala, held at Low Wood Bay, on Windermere, Cumbria. This year I shall have a stand with artwork – prints, cards, ‘Swimflakes’ wrapping paper – and I have also designed the event image that is printed on the t-shirts and event goody bags. If you’re attending the event, I shall also have commemorative postcards, free to everyone who comes and finds me to claim them. I’ll be in the marquee. I shall also be…

‘Swimflakes’ swimming hats

I do love it when a piece of work turns out to be multi-purpose! And I also love it when ideas come together that never would have, had it not been for a complex journey of other ideas. Devils drinking tea in Hell is one of those examples, and another one is my new ‘Swimflakes’ swimming hats. Sprung from ponderings on what sort of wrapping paper would appeal to swimmers at Christmas because, frankly, I know a lot of swimmers and that in itself comes from my love of swimming outside, even when it is freezing. The hats, when I…

Synchro Snowflakes

Welcome to this year’s edition of “Quick & Simple Christmas Product Ideas Which Actually Take At Least 10 Times Longer Than I Anticipated” I am not complaining, I am having fun, and I am also finding Adobe Illustrator indispensable for this project (and getting to grips with limited parts of it), and that makes me happy, because some weeks ago I paid for the annual licence for the whole of the Adobe creative suite, which, while it doesn’t actually require you to sign away your soul and your firstborn child baby cats, it does at least come closer to that…

Vobster Quay’s new swimming hats

Hot (or at least quite warm) off the press, another swimming hat that I was asked to design. Actually a collaborative effort: the concept was Richard Smith’s who runs the swimming at the awesome Vobster Quay Diving Centre, which is fabulous for swimming, I’m afraid I don’t know who did the text. I took the concept and made it into an actual picture. **Update** now available from the shop at Vobster.com – doing a search for ‘love 2 swim’ brings up all the items, but the hoodies at the moment are only available in the blue colours.