Weekend Foodie: Pregnancy Superfoods (Part 1)

Yup, it's official. I am, as they used to say, "in the family way". I just reached the halfway mark (20 weeks) and am feeling great. I'm a big believer in the power of food to affect our well-being and health and this is no more important than during pregnancy. So here's a list of the superfoods that I've been tucking into with some suggested recipes for including them in your daily meals and snacks. Delicious and nutritious whether you're pregnant or not!

1. Eggs

Why the poor egg yolk has been so maligned during the past 20 years I don't know (I was astounded to watch someone in America order an egg white omlette with bacon, erm?). Yes, eggs contain cholesterol, but so do all animal products. As long as you eat them (and meat and dairy) in moderation, they are a fantastic complete food source. Eggs contain protein (more than chicken), iron (to help avoid fatigue and anaemia as your blood supply increases), vitamin B12 and phosphorus (both needed to produce DNA and also for development of the brain and nervous system, so very important in pregnancy). And that's just a few of their many properties.

Here's one of my favourite, and quick, ways with eggs that I often make for lunch. It combines all the goodness of eggs, with tomatoes for vitamin C, cheese for extra protein and calcium and basil, which can help ward off nausea and anxiety.


Tomato, Basil and Cheese Omelette (serves 1)

2 eggs, beaten
4 cherry tomatoes, chopped
very small handful of chopped basil
1/2 handful of grated hard cheese
wholegrain toast and olive oil, to serve

Gently cook the chopped tomatoes in a frying pan with a little sunflower oil, after a couple of minutes, add the eggs, scramble lightly then form into a round shape in the middle of the pan. Sprinkle the basil and cheese on top. When the bottom of the eggs is starting to cook and hold together, flip half of the omelette over the other half, cook for another minute and then turn over and cook a little longer to make sure both sides are lightly browned. Serve with wholegrain toast drizzled with a little olive oil.

2. Avocados


I'm a little obsessed with avocados. I can't get enough of them. They make a great and easy spread on toast (with a little olive oil and seasoning), as a salsa or dip (mix in some chopped tomatoes, chilli and a squeeze of lime or lemon), or simply chopped and added to a salad. And they are another great complete food source, being rich in calcium, omega 3 and vitamin B6 (both involved in baby's brain development), and folate (crucial in the first trimester). You may have been told they are high in fat, but not all fats are equal (neither are all calories) and the fat in avocado is the good kind - the kind that makes your skin lovely and soft and your brain function better, not the artery clogging kind.

* Tip: To avoid bruised or hard avocados, buy them when they are reasonably firm and store them right next to your bananas which will help ripen them after a few days (keep bananas away from other fruit that you don't want to ripen so quickly).


3. Bananas & Berries

Bananas are such a great food source and a handy snack, so I always make sure I have some at home.  We've all heard that they are good source of potassium, but they are also a good source of iodine, zinc and iron. As well as just eating them straight from their own packaging, there are so many things you can do with bananas: Mash them and add them to porridge (instead of sugar for sweetness) or spread on toast (see below), chop and add to muesli, make my Guilt-free Banana Loaf, or use them to make this dairy-free ice-cream:

Guilt-free chocolate ice-cream (serves 1)

1 banana
1/2 cup milk/oat milk/rice milk (whatever your preference)
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Chop the banana and freeze in a plastic food bag for at least 3 hours. Using a hand blender, blend with the milk and cocoa powder. Eat straight away before it melts. If you want to be fancy you can grate some dark chocolate on top and serve with some fresh rasberries. I was amazed how good this tasted when I first tried it. It's also a great way to use up bananas that are ripe.

I particularly love the combination of bananas with vitamin and antioxidant rich berries, for example in my Creative Juice Smoothie or as in this recipe for Mashed Bananas & Blueberries on Toast which I confess I have had on occasion for lunch although breakfast would probably be more appropriate (I simply added a little agave nectar, cinnamon to the mashed bananas and topped with blueberries):

* Tip: Cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar levels so is a great addition to anything containing sugar (even natural sugars in fruit can impact on your blood sugar levels).

4. Chickpeas

Cheap, convenient (if you buy canned) and full of goodness! Chickpeas are a great source of protein (especially when mixed with other plant protein sources), fibre and are a low GI (slow energy releasing) carbohydrate (so you don't feel hungry again so quickly).

I add them to stews or make a Hummous Spread, which is dead easy: I simply drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and whizz them up using a hand blender with a good glug of olive oil, some lemon juice and whatever herbs and spices I have to hand.

5. Canned fish

I don't know where I'd be without canned fish, like tuna, mackerel and sardines to throw into a quick dinner. They are another thing always on my weekly shopping list. When you're pregnant, you have to be a bit careful with eating large fish at the top of the food chain (like marlin, swordfish and fresh tuna) as it may contain levels of mercury which can be harmful to the baby. However, canned tuna, because it comes from smaller fish, is considered to be safe enough to eat daily. Mackerel and sardines are also smaller fish and, as well as being great value, are a great source of omega 3 and calcium, both vital in pregnancy.

I flake mackerel into salads, or use it in Kedgeree (fish and eggs are a great combo).

I have a fantastic sardine recipe to share with you in Part 2 of Pregnancy Superfoods. And of course, canned tuna is endlessly useful, again in salads, like the classic tuna nicoise or my Italian style Tuna, Bread and Tomato Salad:

or in tuna pasta bakes, such the one below, which has to be the easiest, laziest recipe ever. It takes about 3 minutes to prepare followed by 40 minutes in the oven.

Easy-peasy Tuna Pasta Bake (serves 4-5)

350g wholegrain pasta (I use spelt, but wheat is fine too)
2 cans chopped tomatoes
handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
(optional) pitted olives, chopped
2 cans tuna, drained
splash of balsamic or red wine vinegar
some sprigs of basil, spinach (or dried mixed herbs if you don't have any basil or spinach to hand)
a large handful of grated hard cheese, such as cheddar or parmesan

Preheat the oven to 200C/350F. Put all of the ingredients except for the grated cheese into a large baking dish, together with two canfuls of water, mix well and bake for 20 minutes. Stir, then top with the grated cheese and bake for another 20 minutes until the pasta has cooked and the cheese is turning brown. Serve with a lovely green salad, steamed broccoli or even some mashed avocado with chopped fresh tomatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice.

In search of my style...

The Surface Pattern Design course I have recently undertaken has really got me thinking about what my design style is, or rather, what it will be, since I don't really feel like I've found my style yet. So how do you work out your style?

I think there are three main elements to this:

1. Working out what you like

The first step is to figure out what you like and don't like. This goes for any aesthetic or creative thing that you do, whether it's photography, painting, drawing, house-decorating or writing. I found PinInterest a really good tool for creating a visual moodboard of designs that appealed to me (although I must admit, it's a little addictive!).

I also think it's useful to put down in words what you like about certain styles.  Here are the key words that I would use to describe styles I like and that I would eventually like my own designs to be described as:

BEAUTIFUL - MODERN - COLOURFUL - HAPPY

2. Evaluating your own techniques

This is the harder part. There might be other's styles who you want to emulate, but they work in different media. You can have a go at that medium and see if it suits you, but maybe you'll realise it's not your thing or that you have other skills and techniques that you love that you want to utilise in your designs. When you're starting out on a creative path, I think it's important to have a go at lots of things and see what you like.

Over the past year, you'll have seen on my blog that I have experimented with painting, collage, printing, pencils, pens, pastels, lino-cutting, printing techniques and digital illustration to name just a few things.  The irony is that through all this experimentation (and equipping my studio with various tools and media), I have now discovered that what I like best (alongside photography which is a long-held passion for me) is simply working with either a black pen or black ink with a fine brush.

This revelation came to me recently on holiday in Italy where I spent a LOT of time with my sketchbook and pen drawing all the beautiful plants surrounding the property we were staying in. I had a go with some coloured paints too, but really didn't feel that comfortable with them and didn't like what I was producing with them.

As to my actual drawing style - two key styles emerged from my sketches in Italy:

Simple outline drawings in fine pen:

Silhouettes in ink:

I started to be able to visualise how these drawings could work well layered with photography of similar subject matter.

3. Experimenting

The final step is to take the techniques and themes that you enjoy working with and start experimenting with making designs from them, all the while keeping in mind the key words that you want your work to reflect.

Here's a couple of designs I made from my photographs and sketches taken while in Italy.

"Bird & Trees - Mist" - I like the idea of this printed on a silk cushion

"Purple Flowers" - I think this could look good as a journal cover

Hmm,  I quite like these. Is this my style emerging? I could also develop some of the drawn motifs separately from the photographic backgrounds, for example for co-ordinating designs.

This process makes me think about the type of products that my designs might suit. Because I love the idea of using abstract photography as a backdrop to my work, it may be the case that I'm better off focusing on placement designs, for example cushions, scarfs and clothing such as silk dresses, where the design fills the whole space and doesn't need to be in a technical repeat. This is an interesting discovery for me, because many of the designs I am drawn to are very bold, simple repeats. But this isn't to say that I won't also experiment with repeats. I'll just have to see what works best with the designs I create.

This is just the beginning of my journey to find my style. I'm hoping with more practice and experimentation, my signature style will start to emerge. But I guess it's a journey that never ends!

Surface Design - Week 4 (Pattern - Part 1)

Week 4 of the Surface Pattern Design Course with Rachael Taylor was all about the exciting world of pattern. Pattern is one of those things - you know a good one when you see it, but it's tricky to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes it work (and even harder to create one that works!).

Orla Kiely - brilliant at pattern!

First, Rachael gave us a breakdown of the different genres and categories of patterns (for example by style, and how they are described). She also went through the key areas of surface pattern design being:
* illustration (i.e. a stand alone drawing or artwork used on its own, for example on a greetings card or T-shirt)
* placement prints (i.e. a design that doesn't need to be in repeat, for example on a tote bag or stationery)
* surface pattern concepts (i.e. a design which suggests a pattern that fills the entire area of the design and contains some repetition but isn't in a technical repeat, for example that might be used on a teatowel or duvet cover)
* technical repeats (i.e. where a pattern is put into a repeat so that it can be used for rolls of wallpaper or fabric)

Rachael emphasised that surface pattern design is about so much more than being able to produce a technical repeat and, in fact, she rarely gets asked to produce her patterns in a technical repeat. Her clients are paying for her skills as a designer, not as a mathematician. The design should always come first and shouldn't be constrained about thinking how the design will repeat. Nevertheless, understanding how to set up technical repeats is a necessary skill for a pattern designer and can save you incurring artwork fees from printers and so this was covered during the week.

This week I decided to try and use some of my photographic images in the exercises, as I'd like to experiment with combining photographic images with drawn and mixed media motifs in my designs.

4.1. Box Repeat Concept

The first exercise this week involved understanding how a box repeat works. Box repeats can be repeated by placing the box pattern either side by side or in drop/step pattern.  To get a feel for this concept, we were asked to make a physical box repeat by drawing a square and then placing elements in the box and around the edges that would result in the pattern being repeatable once multiple boxes are placed side by side and top to bottom.

Rachael used buttons in her example, but, lacking in any interesting colour buttons, I took two photographs that I had taken in the winter, one of snow on a tree the other of snow which had landed on the decking of my balcony creating a striped pattern. In Photoshop I cut circles out of these images, and placed them in a new blank document and copied them in various sizes. I printed these out, cut out the circles and used these for this exercise instead of buttons:

Of course, this wouldn't result in a precise technical repeat and the photographic images would have retained better resolution had I created this all digitally, but the idea was to give a sense of how a box repeat works by creating it manually.

4.2. The Layered Look

The next exercise was another physical (as opposed to digital) one. The idea was to create a "surface pattern concept" (not a technical repeat) by taking a couple of motifs, scanning and copying them in different scales, then printing them out and creating a collage with coloured paper to create a complex, layered look.

I decided to use the same photographic motifs as in exercise 4.1, to see how I could develop this theme further into a surface design concept. As a background, I used one of the cross-hatching patterns I painted in Week 2, scanned this into Photoshop and changed the colours to make the cross-hatching a pale blue on a dark blue background (it was originally black on white). I then set about assembling my collage using the photographic motifs and some circles and strips of different coloured paper and transparent tissue paper.

I didn't think I would be very impressed with this collage technique, but I actually quite like the result. It's a little busy for my taste, but I like the different textures and layers and how it feels uniquely mine because of the photographic images. I think it has a little of the Scandinavian aesthetic which is something I really admire. It has definitely opened my eyes as to the possibilities for using photographic images in a pattern and providing depth with layering.

4.3. Interview with Marie Perkins of Print & Pattern

On Wednesday we were treated to a rare interview with the founder of the hugely popular blog Print & Pattern, Marie Perkins.

Marie showcases new patterns and designs from designers all over the world and her blog has not only become a daily read for those in the design industry (both designers and licensing companies) but has also been turned into two books (with a third on the way). Marie talked about her love of pattern (her fear is of living in drab surroundings!) and what, in her view, makes a strong pattern design (colour first, then a strong motif and then the subject matter). She particularly emphasised the importance of staying true to your own design aesthetic to keep your work unique and original (and less copyable).

4.4. Developing your signature style - Pattern Love moodboard

We were then encouraged to home in on our own signature style by (1) considering the patterns and colours that we are drawn to (looking outward), (2) understanding our own sketching style and subject preferences (looking inward) and (3) experimenting!

Looking around me at home, I guess I am drawn to prints and patterns which are fun, often simplistic (as found in mid-century Scandinavian patterns) and with limited but bold colour palettes (often 2-3 colours).  I also find a lot of inspiration from fashion - I love seeing what textiles, patterns and colours the designers use each season.

Some of my pattern inspirations

As for my own sketching style, it's varied. I have learnt that I can draw in a detailed way, and I have a good understanding of light and shade from my photographic background, but to be honest, what I really love is experimenting with simple line drawings and doodling abstract patterns.

Doodles from my sketchbook

I've also enjoyed experimenting with textures in printing techniques such as monoprinting, linocutting and collage printing. And, of course, photography is a huge passion for me, especially photographing nature and in particular trees! So it will be interesting to see how I combine all of these in my designs.

To get a better feel for the style I like, I created a pinboard on my Pininterest page. Here are a few screen shots:

This exercise really helped me focus on the type of design that I like best - I'm clearly drawn to simple, playful, Scandinanvian-inspired designs, while circles, trees, flowers and photography of nature are common motifs among my favourite images and in my own work. Understanding my design likes will in turn influence how I develop my own signature style.

4.5. Technical Workshop: How to turn mixed-media artwork into a pattern using Photoshop

This week the technical workshop for Photoshop was all about how to take an element of a painting, drawing or mixed-media artwork and use this in a pattern. Again, I decided to use one of my photographs for this exercise. I chose this image of a bird taking off, which I took in North Wales last year.

Working through the workshop, I isolated the bird (using a layer mask and wishing I had chosen a subject with a smoother outline), then copied it onto a few blank document, resized and duplicated it to make a pattern (as the top bit of the wing was missing, I had to overlap the motifs). Then I added a background and texture and played around with the colours to produce this pattern:

I wasn't very keen on this. It looks far too regimented to me. So I decided to go with the design of a single bird motif on a stone coloured textured background instead and did a mock up of how it would look as a cushion.

OK, that's much better! I think I don't really like how a repeated photographic image looks and I've realised that my photographs may work better as placement patterns than repeats. But I could definitely try the repeat technique with drawn images or perhaps silhouettes of photographic images. I'll have to keep experimenting!

4.6. Developing your Design Vocabulary

The next exercise was aimed at teaching us to be able to describe pattern. The task was to pick our favourite surface pattern designer and, using a few of their patterns as examples, describe the rhythm, pace, feel and subject matter of the design.

I didn't hesitate in choosing Lotta Jansdotter as my favourite surface pattern designer. It was after a friend gave me one of her books to browse through that I fell in love with her work and decided to pursue surface design as a career.

Here are some of her designs:

Lotta's designs are playful, uncomplicated and are usually inspired by organic forms or sometimes quite abstract. They are tranquil but a little quirky. They reference the Scandinavian design heritage (Lotta is Swedish, now living in Brooklyn, New York) but are most definitely contemporary, rather than retro. As a result of the screen-printing method she uses, the colour palettes are limited frequently to just 2 colours and the designs often appear pops of colour on a white or neutral background or white on a coloured background. I like Lotta's designs because they make me smile when I look at them. In my opinion, that is the sign of a good surface pattern.

4.7. Design Brief

The final exercise for the week was a design brief with the following specifications:

OBJECT: A high end scarf (square shape, any size)

THEME: ’Celebration’

TARGET CUSTOMER: Professional women aged 30-45

DETAILS: Use only four colours for a placement print (including black and white if you choose. You may use tints of colours without them counting as a separate colour)

I've been wanting to use my photographic images in scarf designs, so I really relished this brief, although the theme and the restrictions on colour would make it tricky.

Inspired by the "celebration" theme, I started off with a photograph from the New Year's Eve fireworks in Sydney. I cropped to just one firework explosion, deleted the black night sky background and converted it to greyscale so that I could use it as a motif. I then dragged it across to a new document with a white background and copied the motif a number of times, each time changing the scale and the rotation. It struck me that the fireworks looked like allium flowers (in celebration of spring), so with this in mind I used some bright colours and added stems. Finally I added an faint backdrop of doodles using my wacom pen and a bright pink border (using the stroke tool).

I quite liked how this looked, but I thought maybe the colours should be altered a bit to help its appeal to the target customer base of a professional woman (the colours I used in the first version might be better suited to a kaftan or other beachwear). So I changed to a palette of navy, lime green and sky blue. As the border would be more of a feature when worn around the neck or rolled, in the revised design I made it thicker and added a lime green doodle pattern around the edge (which deliberatly spills into the rest of the design to connect the two).

I felt this version reflected the brief much better and I liked the addition of the loosely patterned border.

It was interesting to use a photograph in this way and to experiment with different colour combinations. I'm still amazed at the new ways I have learnt to use Photoshop in the last month on this course.

Summing up:

Wowzers, what a week! So much was covered and we still have the final week to delve further into the world of pattern. I'm off on hols next week, so I'll be catching up on that final week when I get back. Ciao for now!

Surface Design - Week 3 (Colour)

"Life without colour is not merely cooking without seasoning, it's cooking without half the ingredients" - Orla Kiely

3.1. Living in Colour

I've been really excited about this week's topic on the Surface Pattern Design Course: colour.  It got me thinking about my own relationship with colour and the colours I am naturally drawn to. Back in the 90s, along with everyone else, I jumped on the beige/brown/neutrals bandwagon when decorating my first home. Over the years, I have got more confident with having splashes of colour around me and I now can't imagine a life without colour.

The colours I am drawn to have also changed over time. In my first home, I couldn't stand the inspid yellow walls, which presumably someone thought would make the London basement flat appear sunny and bright. It didn't. It did the opposite, making it look faded and pathetic. So I went through a process of de-yellowfying the whole flat, which put me off all shades of the colour yellow for years. Recently though I have discovered a whole new appreciation for yellow, in particular, bold confident bright shades and mustards. I even have a bright yellow sofa now (who would have thought?!).  I love how it adds warmth and an element of fun to my living room. There is something very positive about the colour.

Possibly my favourite colours to wear are the "jewel" tones of deep purples, jade greens, royal blues and deep bluey pinks reminiscent of saris.  These are to be found in some of my favourite clothes:

3.2. Colour Swatches

After considering how we view and use colour in our own lives, the next task was to look for colour palettes in our travel photography and out and about in the street. I created the following colour palettes from some of my travel photographs using Adobe's Kuler tool:

This tool is really cool! Particularly as my ultimate aim is to create designs combining colour photography and drawn images, so this tool will really help me tie the colour palette together.

3.3 Colour Meditation

On Wednesday, we were introduced to Louise Gale, artist and life coach, who gave her her thoughts on how different colours impart different energies and responses in us and talked about the importance of colour in our lives. She also gave us a 10 minute audio "colour mediation" to use to help stimulate creativity. After doing the colour meditation, I felt really calm and grounded and seemed to be much more aware of all of the colours around me. I've done meditation before, but I love this idea of just spending a few minutes focussing on each of the different colours of the rainbow and how they produce different emotions and energy in you as you go through each colour.

3.4. Making Colour Choices

The next creative exercise was to collect a few items from around the home to create some 3 dimensional colour palettes. Each time I started with a couple of things the same shades, then added in a splash of colour. Here are 4 "3D colour palettes" that I came up with from thing around my home:

This exercise really made me focus a lot more on some of the colourful things I have around the home and how those colours look when put next to other colours. I also love the idea of a 3D colour palette to have in front of me for inspiration when I am designing.

3.5. Photoshop Workshop - How to create a Colour Palette from a Photograph


For this week's technical workshop, Rachael gave us a step-by-step guide to how to create a colour palette from a photography in Photoshop. We learnt how to place an image on a background, pick colours from it to create colour swatches and use type and paint brush on the document to create a professional-looking colour palette.  Here's my first attempt, using one of the photographs from above.

It was fun to add a bit of my own personality with the hand-drawn flowers. I love the overall look of the hand-drawn elements and the type, alongside the photograph.

I then had a go at another one, but this time using the colour picker tool and then the Pantone library to get the closest Pantone shade, as these are what are used as industry standard colours. I also played with a different format, which was fun.

I think I would definitely create these kind of colour palettes before starting work on a design project. They provide a great reference for the feel of the palette and the concept. I like how you can make it individual by playing with the layout and adding doodles. I can see how these would be a great way to convey a colour palette to a client as well.


3.6. Making a Physical Colour Mood Board


The final task for the week was to make a colour mood board. Inspired by the two colour palettes I created in Photoshop, I went through  some old copies of Vogue and cut out images or parts of images that felt in keeping with each of these two colour palettes. I composed the images into a temporary mood board on the floor, photographed them and then stuck the images in my Pattern Love Book that I created for Week 2. Since pattern, design and colour go hand in hand, it makes sense to me to keep all this inspiration together.

Here are the two mood boards:

* Cool Vineyard:

* Tropical Seas

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...and some other colour inspired pages I added to my Pattern Love Book:

Summing up

Colour week has been fantastic. It's really made me think more about the colours around me and the colours we see in nature and in every day life and how different colours work with each other. I loved making the colour palettes in Photoshop from my travel photos and going through magazines and pulling together different images to create other interesting colour palettes to add to my inspiration book. I'm looking forward to using these colour combinations in some designs soon!

Next week: Pattern!

Surface Design - Week 2 (Sketching)

The second week of the surface design course with Rachael Taylor was all about sketching and mark-making.

The main exercise this week was to "loosen up" by exploring different ways of making marks:

* using brushes of different sizes, both wet and dry - I loved this exercise. I got particularly carried away with using black ink in a variety of different ways with different brushes: splodging, dripping, using an eye-dropper, blowing, splatting, using a fanned out dry-ish brush to get lines, cross-hatching etc. I'm going to keep these and use them as backdrops to provide texture in future designs.

* drawing with the left hand (makes you feel like a child again, but definitely provide looseness to your mark-making):

* drawing with two pencils or pens held together (I used a pen and a charcoal pencil):

* drawing really fast to fill a page with lines and marks in 60 seconds:

* repeating this exercise to fill the page with lines and marks, but drawing much slower and more detailed:

We were then given a technical workshop on using colour to create a basic surface pattern design in Photoshop, which I used to make this design, from the motif I created in Week 1.

I then toyed with different colour combinations, changing the background only, then changing both the background and the motifs:

It's incredible how different a feel you can achieve just with a change of colour palette.

Finally, we were given the task of going out, looking for patterns that appeal to us in homeware and fashion shops and on the internet, collating these into a "pattern love book" which we can then use these as inspiration to sketch our own patterns, in our own style.  I decided to get creative with the front cover of the my book (that grey textured paper is actually the inside of one of those envelopes that you get security numbers/PINs in):

Here's a couple of pages I've started on, but I'm sure it won't be long before I've filled it up.  It'll become like a physical version of pininterest that I can flip through as and when I need inspiration.

Throughout the week, we also were also treated to interviews and insider tips on sketching and the importance of keeping sketchbooks. I have a few different sized sketch books, mainly A5 for carrying around with me and for making notes and sketches on exhibitions I have visited, but when I'm working in my home studio I like the freedom of working on bigger sheets of loose paper. Rachael gave us a good tip about filing loose drawings in photo albums or plastic sleeves and categorising them, so that you build up your own reference library of sketches and they can easily be pulled out for scanning. I think this is a fantastic idea. Particularly as my various sketchbooks and loose sheets of paper have no order to them and I'd probably struggle to find a particular sketch that I might be looking for.  So Rachael has definitely inspired me to get organised!

Next up: Week 3 - Colour!