Exciting News & a little update on my art life.

Hi friends!

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here on my blog. I am committing to try harder to keep it updated. This year has gone by SO quickly and I can't believe it's already October. So I'll just do a quick update for you. Last December I started working at American Crafts as a marketing designer. I helped with the packaging, instagram graphics, and ads/marketing material. It was fun, I made some new friends and learned some important design skills. Now I'm going to skip a few months ahead to May... and tell you about my travels.

One of my life long goals (for the sake of my wanderlust and love of art) was to travel to Europe. Well, Scott & I finally made it to Europe in May! We started saving when we got married last year in May of 2013 and we made our savings goal this spring. Europe was an adventure. We started in London, and worked our way to Paris, Zurich, Venice & Rome. It was two and half weeks of art, architecture, cultural experiences and endless walking. Now I'm wishing I could travel to Europe again, but for now I have other goals... like making beautiful art.

After about 6 months of basically doing packaging every day of my life at AC, I decided that I really needed a more creative job. I really would have liked to stay at AC and work on their product design team... but that wasn't an option, so I decided to move on. I applied at Die Cuts With a View (DCWV) and was offered a position on their design team. I took the job and have been there since. I'm on their home decor team and occasionally get to design scrapbook products. It's been fun and I have quite enjoyed working at DCWV. There is just something about being creative and using my illustrations skills that makes me SO happy.

NOW my exciting news. I've been doing a little bit of designing on the side after work and I have some good news that comes with that. I entered minted.com's fabric design challenge a few weeks ago and two of my designs were picked to actually be made into fabrics! I created a few different color varieties for each fabric and I'll let you know when they're for sale on minted. I'm so excited to finally have some of my patterns made into fabric.

So that's my update. My art life is starting to come together (I think.) It has been great to work full time doing creative things every day.



*So here are the designs that were picked my minted to be made into fabric. The first one of each bunch is the original coloring and the following designs are color variations. I hope you like them.

Day 10- A little folk influence

I've always loved the simple yet complex design of Nordic Folk Art and so I decided to base a pattern off that influence. I used some simple colors, shapes and patterning to make something that I think is beautiful.

Star Painting, A US Map & A Shower Invite.

So I had the opportunity to work with Utah artist,  Michael Phipps on the Christus Statue mural for the Mexico City Temple Visitors Center. I helped paint the dark blue background and all of the teeny, tiny stars. The mural was about 20" High by 60" long. It was craziness! It took a lot of time and I got to ride on and drive a scissor lift... which was kind of scary but fun. Here are some pictures I took with my phone of the job. If you make it to the Mexico City Temple Visitors Center's you'll have to check out the stars on the mural and think to yourself, "wow... Kelsey Carlson painted a lot of tiny little stars." :)

I took a job about a month ago doing some wall paintings in a home in West Orem. The family wanted a U.S. map painted on the wall along with a Dr. Seuss trees (I'll post this later). The mom picked out the colors and I started painting away. Luckily, I was able to borrow a projector to trace the map onto the wall which was very helpful. This job was exciting and I'm happy with how the map turned out.

So one of my childhood best friends is getting married! My mom and I were in charge of the ward shower invites... so I whipped something up. Her colors are mint and grey. I was quite pleased with the final product and wanted to share it here. :)

My Calling & The Ward Party

Hello Everyone,

This last month has been busy and exciting! I graduated in August and I'm trying to discover how to become a freelance artist. It's been pretty great. :) Scott and I received a calling in our married student ward. We are the ward newsletter specialists (specialists sounds pretty awesome huh?) and we handed out our first newsletter today at church. It turned out pretty cool if I do say so myself, you can look and see what you think. It's been fun to be able to apply my graphic design skills to my calling. I also had the opportunity to design the poster for the upcoming ward party! And my current job has been that of a star painter (like actual little dotted "glowing stars"... which I will tell you more about in an upcoming post.) But anyways look at my ward stuff and see what you think! (and maybe get to know Scott and I a little better with our little feature in the newsletter. haha)