Vicky Yorke Designs

...to everyone who took part in my 'virtual coffee morning' for Macmillan ! I am very pleased to announce that it has raised £240, which is a huge £300 including gift aid! Considering I only came up with the idea a couple of days before the event was launched I think it has been a huge success and I am so grateful to everyone who bought 'cakes' and posted the links on their social networking pages! This money will go towards helping Macmillan help to improve the lives of people with cancer.

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...

  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...