Final Placemat Design

This is my chosen idea for the placemats, iv chose to stick with my coaster idea but extended the leaves out across the printing surface more, as i have more room to fill. iv also enlarged it slightly. It will have all the same colours and be laser cut all the same as the coaster but will measure to 19.7cm X 19.7cm and the design, as iv already mentioned, is slightly more exaggerated.

Final Coaster Design

This is my final idea/design for my coaster, portrayed as basic as possible so that it was quick to draw and easy to understand.
The top layer shows what would be the laser cut area of leaves onto the lino printed crow (cross hatched trace beneath it) although this of course will all be merged into the same layer of my design. Made from cotton either dark brown or cream printed with either dark blue or black ink, possibly even both...

The second picture here is basically a non-slip material which i will use as the base of my coaster. Depending on the width of the entire thing when it's placed together will determine weather i put a light weight card between the layers to make it slighly more rigid.
The size will be 8.5cm X 8.5cm, and my design will fit quite central onto this small area.

I also came across this wooden framed coaster base which i thought my design would look quite nice mounted inside. Its alot smaller than what i want my final design to be, but i also found a larger one like this which i could use for the placemat.

Thoughts So Far...

For lino Printing; Linen and Velvet seemed to print best. Cotton was ok but maybe needed more work to get the perfect print. Colour wise I liked both black onto the cream colour of the linen and the blue onto the dark brown velvet, the effect could perhaps appear different when printed onto cotton so as of yet the colour is undecided.
For laser cutting; cotton definitely gave the best result, but I do think the tile was effective.
As for Dry Point; the lighter weight papers appeared to work better, and the orange was most visually appealing but I don’t think I will use this technique.
To conclude, if I can get a well working Lino Print onto cotton it would definitely be the best working material as of yet. I decided earlier that laser cutting then lino printing would make it easier to line the two processes up.

Thumbnail 4

This is basically my current design multiplied on the placemat to create a tiled effect. I think it would be far too over crowded and the laser cut leaves would all merge together.

Thumbnail 3

This thumbnail is quite basic, its my current design being used on both the coaster and placemat, only the design on the placemat has been enlarged to fill more of the area. I like it because it fits with any time constraints as i purley have to stretch the design on photoshop and its done and it would never be identified as not matching the coaster or being a set.

Thumbnail 2

This second thumbnail is a developement of my first idea, the ability to change how the crow is positioned but use the same techniques and have the placemats and coasters stil be clear and appear to match. I enlarged the crow variation and moved it to the bottom right corner, so the it both fits wel and covers a wider area of the placemat. This would basically be the brow in flight, like the image.

Thumbnail 1

Although i have my idea for my coasters i was unsure how to arrange my design onto a placemat, as the area is alot bigger. I considered shrinking my coaster design and arranging it into the bottom corner then producing a second crow with the same technique and putting it into the opposite corner at the top.
I like that i could produce a whole collection of kitchen utensils and settings using the same leaf idea but with the crow in a slightly different arrangement, each time. Thinking quite literally though i have to consider time constraints and my current chosen design took me a while to produce originally by hand for use on the laser cutter.