For Inspiration - Anna Emilia Laitinen

Doing all of this project work and requiring a little break, I must confess my feet are getting a little itchy and my heart a little sore. The paintings of Anna Emilia Laitinen are sending me crazy for my dreamland, Finland.



In a visual sense, Anna Emilia's paintings embody everything I love about Finland: the forests, lakes, the architecture of houses and how everything is so close to nature. Anna cites that "the weather gives colour to my paintings" and you can see that each piece has a theme that draws on the icy, blustery winds of autumn, blankets of snow from winter and the brighter hues from springs and summer. Her works with florals are nothing short of exquisite and combine technical composition with an immense amount of detail and a well composed colour palette to create wonderful representations of Nordic nature.

Be sure to take a look at Anna Emilia's Weather Diary where she writes beautifully poetic posts of her thoughts, ideas, works in progress, and of course, so many wonderful photographs of her beautiful homeland.

Project Process - Shelves

I'm really very nearly almost there with my final project with this being design 9 out of 10. Lately I've been inspired by a lot of interior blogs, specifically Finnish ones like Weekday Carnival, Varpunen and Neovia House so I've tried to incorporate that somehow into this design! For the most part, the items on the shelves were inspired by suggestions from my Twitter friends. I've placed the design in stages just so you can see how the shelves fill up!








As you can see it's intended for placement print but I think it works just as well as a pattern!

For Inspiration - Marimekko

Marimekko (and Finnish design in general) has always been my biggest inspiration since I began University. No other brand has even come close to being my favourite. Period. My love for it over the years has grown and grown, I've written assignments on it, featured it in almost every project and it was originally my starting inspiration to learn Finnish. So you can imagine my glee when I came across the new book "In Patterns" when I was shopping in the London store.

I already have quite a few Marimekko publications as well as other design and interior books that feature the brand but this is by FAR the best in terms of quality and the amount of information and detail featured. It covers the processes of design and manufacture with each section dedicated to a particular designer, showing you initial sketches, the environments in which they work in and full page prints of designs. One of the reasons Marimekko stands at my favourite brands is that it places the highest priority on promoting their own designers; it's very very rare for a brand to do this.

Here are a selection of my favourite images from the book which I scanned in:

The book is quite expensive at £35, on average most of my own design/pattern books are usually priced around £20. One of the downsides is that you can only get it at a Marimekko store as it's not available online yet, but if you are in London (or if you're really lucky and live in Finland, Marimekko stores are scattered everywhere!) I really suggest you pick a copy up, I promise it's worth every penny. You'll find it so inspirational and resourceful!

Happy reading!

For Inspiration - Suomi Finland

In 25 days I'll be on my way to Finland and I still can't quite believe it! It's been a dream for me for so many years and I still get a bit teary when I think a lot about it. Although it is a such a short trip possibly the main reason I'm going is personal and design research. I'm going to try and see as much as possible and photograph, draw everything I can. I've been rooting some advice as of what to do from native Finns too, so if you have any suggestions on what I must see or if you're in Turku/surrounding areas or Tampere get in contact with me! So far I've planned to see Kurjenrahka national park, Turku archipelago (did you know there is over 20,000 islands!) and in Tampere I want to spend a great amount of time in the cathedral (because of Hugo Simberg) and visit Amuri (for my studies) and the Moomin museum (for the child in me) as well as Näsinneula if it's a clear day.

So it is a while before I go and doubtless as the days go by I'm annoying more and more people by doing nothing but talking about it (especially on Twitter!) but I hope you enjoy the wonderful images, they're keeping my inspiration sky high. 

(Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)