Meet Maxine! In the early oughts she worked on our team at Longina Phillips Designs, producing prints for the collection and graphics for various projects. Now she's a children's book illustrator and we thought you might like to see her beautiful work.

Read Maxine's story in her own words, below.

Book illustration was something I always wanted to do but...

I knew it was not the most profitable of career choices. So I put my dream on the back burner for many years so I could afford to travel overseas and buy a house.

The passing of two close friends prompted me to finally take the leap.

After losing my friends I felt like life was too short to not do what I love so I went about making my children's book illustrating dreams a reality.

My favorite part of illustrating is when...

I am painting up the final illustrations for a book.

My process involves...

When illustrating children’s books I mainly use watercolor, colored pencil, and aquarelle crayons. For my...

 Introducing yet another Print School Student we're proud of. Chavon Livey has taken the skills she learned in our Photoshop for Fabric Design: Illustration course, and turned them into an inspiring slow fashion start-up. Read about her work below! 

I have always been drawn to print fabric. I just think it is so beautiful, and can be so unique

and really make a piece of clothing shine. I have my own slow fashion brand, Simply Mayd, and the pieces themselves have very simple shapes so I really wanted the fabric to stand out. To be 'compliment-stopping' to a stranger in the street. 

I loved learning textiles at school as the design process is so intricate, and I think it just makes designing clothes feel more complete when the fabric is your own too.

I played around a bit at the start of this print design

trying water colors, gouache paints and digital. In the end I found what worked best for me was to sketch my elements in black and white – not worrying about...

I'm a freelance surface pattern designer based in Brisbane.

Before, I was in clinical research and my background is biology. I primarily work in home interiors, designing wallpaper, soft furnishings and cushions. 

I don't think homewares were a conscious choice.  

I developed a style over the years and it seemed to naturally fit more for home textiles than it did for fashion or greeting cards. I remember trying my hand at lettering and I was just terrible! It took a few years of doing different courses and trying things out [to] hone my style and it naturally fit into interiors. I have a general interest in interiors too, so it probably went hand in hand.

It all started seven years ago...

I was an Australian expat in the US after I had my first child. It's a little cliche, but when you're on maternity leave you have time to reassess what will work with your new lifestyle. I came across surface pattern design and I thought, “Of course, it makes sense.” For...