Laughing Queen

I thought it might be fun to share my design process for the latest Laughing Queen mini handbag creation – the Carnevale Rosa.

I begin with an overall fanciful aesthetic that I’m trying to achieve. Since most everything I design is an assemblage of new and old, I start out by looking through my stash of fabrics, trims, and baubles. I do get LOTS of ideas in my head, but it’s nearly impossible to exactly recreate them – I could spend hours trying to find the exact materials, and, usually, they don’t exist. So, it’s better to use what I’ve already collected on my treasure hunts. Most often, I’ll alter the materials in some way in order to get a desired effect – like tea staining fabric. In this case, I started out tea staining this pink striped fabric with this fancy dragon pearl jasmine herbal tea. Full disclosure – this did not make enough of a noticeable stain so I ended up using Irish black tea instead. The original color is on the lower left and the stained color is on the upper right. Very subtle, but it makes a difference since I was going for a vintage feel.

I like to put characters into my pieces so I hand paint each one to match the color scheme.

The final product is always a surprise to me. Most often, I’m pleased with the outcome. However, sometimes I just put it in my bag of “fails.” Not really fails because every project is a learning process. Better to try and fail than never to try at all.