I call myself a Scottish designer, and yet I’m just getting started on designing plaids/tartan! As we approach the annual celebration of Burns Night on 25th January for the Scottish Bard ‘Rabbie Burns’, it seems like an apt time to share my first forays into the warp and weft of it all - and my ‘cheat’. Through my amazing design group on Spoonflower, I discovered there are loads of tartan/plaid ‘makers’, which allow you to specify colours and pixels, then keep adding layers/lines to the design to create your own unique twill plaid. (Yes we mainly call it ‘tartan’ here in Scotland, but ‘plai ..read more

As one of three commissioned artists, I have spent the last weeks working on artistic window displays for an illuminated art trail in Paisley, focusing on environmental and climate change themes, coinciding with COP26 in Glasgow. The art trail has been running since Friday 5th November - 5pm-8pm each night - with a downloadable map showing a possible route around Paisley town centre to see all the participating retailers and shop windows. There’s TWO NIGHTS left to see it, if you’re local to Paisley in Renfrewshire! The first window I started working on was for the Rainbow Turtle shop on Gauz ..read more

It’s 1st August and Autumn is go! (or Fall for my friends across the pond!) I’m delighted to share a 1000-strong collection of surface pattern designs ideal for any number of autumn/winter sewing projects for all the sewists out there, by 40 designers working independently across 11 countries - including me! We’ve all used the same *gorgeous* palette featuring 6 season-specific colours, exact to the hex codes so you can be sure everything will coordinate perfectly. The colours are: Chili Powder, Terracotta, Vanilla, Turmeric, Teal and Sea Glass - lush! I personally designed 16 patterns for ..read more

My 100% organic beeswax wraps have been a big hit in the last year, and I’m delighted to be featured in this article featuring expert tips and secrets for keeping a sustainable kitchen, over on the Redfin blog. I hate waste of any kind - food waste, over-packaged products, fast-fashion worn once and then discarded to landfill, so contributing my tip for using beeswax wraps was a pleasure. Currently in my shop I have lots of fresh and fruity beeswax wrap designs featuring orange segments, zesty lemons, palm trees, poisons(!), African blooms and multiple bee prints in various colourways - check ..read more

Last month I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, and so my attention since then has been on her and family and self care. That said, it’s lovely to celebrate the month of love - also my birthday month! - so here’s 10 love-themed ideas, prints and treats for Valentines/Galantines/Palantines <3 LOVE window - one of my favourite prints (above, available via my Society6 shop) This Scatter Hearts Pillow - just happy and fun! Try baking this Swedish Kladdkaka cake - I made it last week (following the recipe from The Simple Things magazine), and it was the easiest, best cake I’ve ever ma ..read more

I’ve just heard that it probably won’t be a white Christmas here in the UK this year… While that might not be any surprise as the weather has been unseasonably mild of late, a sprinkling of snow would have made everything seem a little…prettier perhaps, than the usual wet and wild. Especially with the news at the moment so unfortunately bleak. Instead, I thought I’d share some of my recent snowflake-inspired designs, created using both analogue and digital techniques. I started off using that tried and true Primary school classic of drawing around a small plate to make a circle, cutting it ou ..read more

Vinyl is where it’s at for me right now and I’ve been experimenting with some of my designs on cotton canvas tote bags recently, using my take on the Glasgow Crest, telling the story of St Mungo’s Miracles: the bird that never flew, the tree that never grew, the bell that never rang and the fish that never swam. The original design is actually quite intricate (hello leaves!), so to ‘weed’ away the unwanted elements is taking up a LOT of time with each bag… I’ve now simplified the design so there are around 20 leaves to weed in total, and so it creates more of a ‘block effect’ for the tree fo ..read more

I’m still pinching myself and extremely delighted to share my collection of La Belle Epoch-era art nouveau wallpaper and wall murals, available now from Wallsauce.com! The Butterfly Goddess Remember back in September I was asking for votes as I was a finalist in their Designer Wallpaper competition this year? Well, I wasn’t the overall winner unfortunately (congrats to Julia Fonnereau!), but they loved my collection and wanted to license my designs too! I created many designs focused on the same La Belle Epoch themes of butterflies, dragonflies, curlicues, ovals, tendrils, florals… and then o ..read more

I’m not Catholic but All Souls’ Day feels especially important this year, because not only would it have been my Great Grandmother’s birthday, but because my mum passed away earlier this year and I’m thinking about her a lot and hope her soul is in a safe and beautiful place. She would remind me each year that it was my Great Grandmother, Elizabeth’s, birthday: 2nd November. This formidable yet shadowy figure who inspired my middle name. Alas, I never got to meet her. She was a dancer in the chorus line in one of Glasgow’s many dance hall theatres, and I’ve inherited some of her possessions f ..read more

Autumn has long been my favourite season, and everyone who knows me well will attest to this fact. It’s the colours, leaves, the hybrid days, the promise of pumpkins and magic and Mabon and more. Mabon is today in fact, the Wiccan way to mark the Autumn Equinox! I can’t stop collecting leaves like a child who has never seen them fall before. Each year I vow to press and preserve them, but instead end up with my windowsills festooned until they’re dry and brittle and crack and I have to discard them like nature did. They make wonderful temporary decorations however! Autumn offers prime insp ..read more