Vicky Yorke Designs

As I have mentioned before I absolutely love Christmas, so I am always very happy when asked to design a Christmas product range! My new design for Kitchen Craft is called 'Let it Snow' and was inspired by snowflakes and beautiful Christmas poinsettia flowers. The main designs are below ( - although the blue pattern is uploading in the wrong colour for some reason! - See the photos for a more accurate colour match!) In addition to the three patterns above there is also a more uniform tiny snowflake pattern and a stripe motif. I am a big fan of mix and match patterns within product ranges, so had great fun placing all the different variants together. I think it has worked particularly well on the 3 nibble bowl set below, where the patterns combine with the wooden tray for a delightfully warm Christmassy feel! The range has a two tier cake stand with matching cupcake cases, and a selection of different sized cake plates for all manner of Christmas tre...

As well as the partyware shown in my previous post, I had to design characters that would work across a variety of baking products and gift bags for the 'Spookily Does It!' brief. My background is in creating designs for children and the trick when designing characters of this type is that they mustn't be too scary. By giving them all slightly smily faces or rounder features than would normally be expected it stops even the most sinister of characters from being too alarming and adds an almost cute feel to the design. This was important for me as well as the children as I am not a fan of spiders, so by giving the spider character a happy face it made him much easier for me to work with!!! I was asked to use the characters to design some chocolate moulds. I think they work perfectly for this and as I also designed a variety of treat bags, once you have made them there is a choice of cellophane or paper treat bags in which to present them to your friends! ...

On the 28 September Macmillan cancer support is holding it’s annual fundraising event – ‘The world’s biggest coffee morning.’ Support for cancer sufferers is a cause very close to my heart. Like so many people I have lost family members to cancer – and thankfully, I have family members who have survived cancer. I also have first hand experience of the disease as around 20 months ago I was diagnosed with a form of Leukaemia known as CML. Since diagnosis I have been on a clinical trial and am extremely lucky, because due to medication and the support I receive from family and friends I am predominantly able to get on with my life without major disruption at the moment. However it’s a long haul and I understand that for cancer sufferers the future is often uncertain…I spend a lot of time in the cancer care unit at my local hospital and see the impact that cancer has on people’s lives    – Thankfully Macmillan is there to provide practical, medical and financial support when c...

It's been a while since my last post, as I've had a very busy month! This is greatly due to the fact that at the beginning of the month I entered my third decade, so the last few weeks have been full of fun and frolics with lots of celebrations! It all began at the end of August with an amazing holiday with my family where we travelled on the Costa Neo Romantica cruise ship stopping at Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Oslo and Le Harvre. We had an amazing time and I have completely fallen in love with Denmark and Norway, so more trips will hopefully be planned soon! Back at home I have been lucky enough to have had a number of birthday parties and a trip to the Peak District where I cycled with some of my oldest friends along the Tissington Trail. It was a beautiful sunny day and I can't think of a better way to celebrate being 30! (The photo of me below was taken by one of my friends as she rode along - great job!) It's not just been play though, as I have also b...

Following on from my last post where I showed you the 'Partridge and Pear' cake stand, I am continuing today by posting about the matching cake tins and cupcake cases / cupcake picks. As with the cake stand I had great fun playing around with pattern. There's lots going on, but I think it works! Finally, I come to the last set of products for 'Partridge & Pear', which is a collection of felt tabletop items... ...including, place mats with matching coasters... ...napkin rings, place card holders... ... and a matching table runner. It was tricky work converting my drawings into files for the felt factory as I had to work out all the spacings for the cut-outs. When you look at a cut-out you don't realise how tricky the technique is... it's very easy to accidentally lose a whole section of your design because it isn't correctly 'attached' to the rest of the piece. I loved working on this range and hopefu...