Vicky Yorke Designs

I am thrilled that 'Pattern People' have chosen my peacock feathers pattern (above) to feature in their new Ebook, Repeat After Me . It's a great resource for pattern designers with loads of hints and tips for creating repeats and features some of the industry's best pattern designers, so I am truly honoured to be included!

On 12th August I got married and have changed my surname from Croydon to Yorke ( - there have been lots of jokes about switching from the South to the North!) We had a wonderful day with friends and family - and I think we scrubbed up quite well! 

The kids may only just be breaking up for summer holidays, but as promised the shops are now full of goodies ready for them to go back to school! I was delighted to see many of my designs (new and old!) filling up a huge bay in Ryman's, with two on the top shelf, all four on the second shelf and another three on the third shelf! As well as the general fashion designs developed for Helix above, there were also three of the cases from the 'Rawsharc' lifestyle range that I designed. This range was created to take on some of the big lifestyle licenses for stationery and this is the second range I have designed for the 'Rawsharc' brand - I am particularly proud of it as I designed everything from the surface patterns to the branding and zip pulls. It's been really well received by retailers and children alike so I'm extremely pleased! More pencil cases were on show in Staple's, where my best selling 'Controller', 'Doodle' and ...

I have several projects on the go at the moment involving bird designs, so I've decided to set myself the challenge of at least one bird drawing every day until I've got all I need. The above is a bit of a sneaky-peek at what I've done so far...

I've had a couple of very busy weeks ( - sorry to my neglected blog!) as I'm working on a number of top secret (but very lovely!) projects for 2012. It's great fun working 12 - 18 months in advance and looking at all the trends for the coming seasons, as I get a sneaky idea of what we will all be buying in the future! The only problem is that I can't share all of my projects with you all the time... However, I can share with you some of the projects I was working on around this time last year which are just filtering into the shops now! For example, while wandering around W H Smith's I came across a couple more of my 2011 pencil case designs for Helix, which include the Brit Rock design I previously found in Tesco and my very popular 'Controller' case. The design for this came about when I was experimenting with designing new wavy case shapes - When the sample arrived I just knew it had to have a game's controller print added - It's very simple, bu...

I thought for this post I would share a little bit about one source of inspiration for my artwork... Until two years ago I was a little suspicious of birds, but then my boyfriend convinced me that we should get some chickens for our garden. We were only supposed to have two, but within a very short space of time we had gathered four beautiful birds - three hens and a cockerel. I have been completely converted - they are so much fun to watch and each has their own very individual personality. I have found that not only do I now love chickens, but I actually love all birds and bird motifs seem to have become a very common feature of my artwork. I have a personal project coming up over the next few weeks, which involves some actual chicken designs so watch this space for plenty more chicken posts! By the way - the beautiful birds in the photo are Posie the cockerel and Penelope-Helen! They don't like keeping still so it is a little blurry!

Ok... well not really, but that hasn't stopped me designing some Christmas themed images for my Advocate licensing portfolio. I've added a few above, or you can see more by going to the Advocate Art site. It may only be June, but Santa will be on his way (again) before you know it! 

I've finally ventured onto Twitter and am enjoying finding my way around! There are lots of lovely designers on there to discover as well as amazing and useful information that I would never otherwise have found! - I'm wondering why I haven't signed up before! Follow me @vcroydon

One of the great things about being a designer is getting to design your own wedding stationery! With only a few months to go to our big day the invitations have arrived from the printers and feature our wedding colours of white with a flash of red! I have hand finished each of the cards with a diamante and am really pleased with how they look!

I thought I would spend a bit of time telling you about my brilliant art agents, Advocate Art , who represent me in licensing my artwork for products, greetings and well, anything really! I have been working with Advocate to create imagery for less than two months and they have already taken my artwork to Surtex in New York and the Progressive Greetings show in London! Although it's very early days, I found out yesterday that they have already licensed some of my designs to a company in the USA, which is hugely exciting! See my Advocate licensing folio here , or you can contact Advocate to commission me! I've put a few new examples from my folio above.

While wandering around Tesco recently I came across the first of my 2011 pencil cases, which I have designed for Helix. It's always great to see products in store as it's the end of over a 12 month process. Designs include 'Skulls', 'Brit Rock' and 'Superstar Doodle' , which has a space on one side for kids to add their own designs.

As I mentioned in my last post, some craft cards and boxes that I made were used to decorate the demonstration area of a craft hour on QVC on Monday. I think it's fair to say that you needed to look quite carefully to spot them among all the lovely cards by other designers that were also on display, but it was still exciting to see my designs on the TV! You can (just about!) see my boxes in this shot:

I recently made a number of craft cards using some embossing boards and craft papers I have previously designed - I'm very excited as they will be shown as part of a craft feature on QVC tomorrow at 4pm! They are a bit fragile though so I just hope they don't fall apart on TV!