Vicky Yorke Designs

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...

  The 'Partridge & Pear' designs are continued across a number of festive porcelain platters, which are ideal for serving your Christmas feasts! I think that the heart-shaped platters below would also work well as a trinkets tray - I'm going to get one to put my jewellery in! However, perhaps the more traditional use for the bowls is for figs and nuts! My favourite product in the range is the cake stand, where the heart and dove motifs are combined to very decorative effect. (I love combining patterns together for a pattern overload!) I'm looking forward to using this for my Christmas cupcakes and mince pies! Images copyright Kitchen Craft 2012

As we move through the first week of August I have been extremely busy designing my THIRD Christmas range for 2013. This is the sixth Christmas range I have designed in twelve months ( - it's lucky I love Christmas so much!) and all of the ranges are completely different, focusing on very contrasting styles and themes. Among my favourite ranges is ' Partridge & Pear , ' which was launched by Kitchen Craft at Exclusively Housewares . I am a big fan of Scandinavian / folk style prints and I hope that these designs capture this essence. Inspired by the trend for paper cut-outs and following the range name of 'Partridge & Pear', I designed a series of motifs, (heart, turtle dove, pear and partridge) and applied these boldly across the product range. I used a limited colour pallet of red, white and silver to create a dramatic effect. These work as a design for Christmas, but because of the current trend for folk designs, I personally think they could be used...

As mentioned in previous posts, designing the 'Christmas Fayre' range presented many challenges! I hadn't worked a lot with metal before, so creating these cake tins was a real joy! Once I had worked out where the graphics should be placed for best effect, working with the flat sides of the tins was relatively easy and I have been delighted with how beautifully my illustrations and colours have reproduced. Perhaps more of a challenge was creating metal cookie cutters from my drawings, as it was necessary to simplify my drawings to their most basic form, while still keeping a shape that is distinctly recognisable as one of my motifs when the cookie is created. As well as being used in the baking set featured in my last post, the cookie cutters will be available to buy on a metal ring. I was given the challenge of creating a Christmas tree that will be displayed in stores for point of sale and that the cutters can hang from like decorations! With some help from Kitch...

Christmas is a time when everyone seems to love baking - even I have been known to put on an apron and attempt a batch of mince pies during the festive period! The 'Christmas Fayre' range has everything needed to make baking with the kids ( or on your own!) really easy and fun! There is a baking kit containing a red mixing bowl, (which has my design embossed all the way round), cookie cutters and a spatula. Separate sets of fun Christmas spatulas featuring my design motifs are also available. The apron is one of my favourite products in the range. You can't quite see in the photo but the pockets have super-cute button detailing, which is combined with a fuller than normal apron skirt to create a quirky 1950's style. The matching oven mitt completes the designer look!!! And when all the baking is finished there are even tea towels to help you finish the washing up - Or, you could just put everything in the dishwasher and use the tea towels to add a dash of fe...