In the years that followed I would while away many hours making models from salt dough, dried pasta or empty boxes and tins. In my teens I began making jewellery from polymer clay and I started selling it at a local craft market. 

Since those days, I must have tried my hand at almost every craft! And I'm still always dabbling (with varying degrees of success) in all manner of art and craft projects. One thing I'm particularly keen to get back to is bear-making, something I took up while suffering a horrible time of grief following the loss of my dad. It was a slow, gentle craft that helped to soothe my soul. I think creating, crafting and even just coming up with ideas for designs you may never make is incredibly therapeutic!

I think it’s safe to say that I absolutely love both designing and crafting. I also have a huge passion for vintage and I am an avid collector of all manner of vintage and antique bits and pieces! Again, this has been a lifelong enthusiasm of mine.

So, it will be of no surprise that my creations and designs are heavily influenced by my love of vintage style. I am a nostalgia addict and I love to create a warm sense of nostalgia and a flurry of happy memories in all that I create.

The result of my obsession for crafting, my love of all things cute, my passion for vintage and my desire to recreate a sense of comforting, fuzzy nostalgia was Ava Loves Rosie - a happy little online place encompassing all of the above!

A little bit about my design process…

When it comes to the designs featured on my range of gifts and homeware, I use a variety of different resources:Typically, I work with licensed graphic packs from artists and illustrators - I love discovering new illustrators, font creators and pattern makers and I almost always combine the work of several different artists within one design. I have amassed a library of hundreds of thousands of individual watercolour images and I hugely enjoy creating new designs.Last year I started working with the Mary Evans Picture Library to license work from artists popular in days gone by, such as Molly Brett and Rene Cloke. 
I am also thrilled to work with some modern artists - Sarah Summers and Natacha Chora. It has been a delight to work with their illustrations and showcase their work and I hope to expand on this further, working with more artists.I work with Stegmann Licensing to create designs featuring Brian Paterson’s Foxwood Tales and Cloudco Entertainment to produce products featuring Holly Hobbie.I have also sometimes tried blending traditional creativity with modern technology to create completely new designs. This process would typically begin with sourcing vintage imagery that inspires me or creating my own illustration and then using AI software to rework or improve elements of the image -  I prefer to use it as a tool rather than in a generative way. I want to be completely transparent about how this is sometimes used in some of my graphics because I know not everyone likes the notion of AI. 
I then add details like text (in old book style fonts), rust effects, worn edges, textures, fading and so on to all of my designs. This creates a sense of age and further builds on that vintage 'feel'. Other digital design software I use includes Procreate (using digital brushes), PicMonkey design (when adding textures and fonts) and Indesign (our printer uses this to set up our little book). I acknowledge that all of this is a very high tech/futuristic method to create designs that look old/timeworn! My aim is to design products that add a little cuteness to your home, bringing the faded charm of old, vintage imagery back to life in the 21st century and into everyday homeware and gifts. With all the different artwork I work with - from licensed vintage illustrations to illustrator graphic packs - the resulting designs are scaled proportionately to fit a range of mugs, signs, tote bags etc which are all printed and heat pressed here in our little garden workshop at home.

I do hope you enjoy your visit to my little online shop. Thanks so much for stopping by and reading a little more about my process and what inspires me!