Karolful Karolful

Winter Evergreens

This intricate Nordic inspired Christmas design invites you to bring the outside in in true Scandi style. A lush tapestry of festive flora is interlaced with twine and spiced with the warming scent of sweet star anise, evoking all the senses in the spirit of the season.

This sur­face pat­tern design series is an inde­pen­dent ‘Karolful.Designs’ col­lec­tion. 

All visu­al­i­sa­tions pre­sent­ed here are pro­vid­ed by Red­bub­ble plat­form and are of prod­ucts avail­able to pur­chase HERE. 

These designs are also avail­able for licens­ing. Please get in touch to dis­cuss cus­tom arrange­ments that suit your project’s needs.

Collection Overview

This win­ter col­lec­tion runs across mul­ti­ple pat­terns, illus­tra­tions and a hand­writ­ten typog­ra­phy. All these match­ing designs work togeth­er as a set and can be used across a pletho­ra of poten­tial prod­ucts. With a hero, sup­port­ing and coor­di­nat­ing print each placed on a dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds they vary in grad­ed complexity.

Uni­fied by its colour palette, and the usage of the same ele­ments in a mir­rored arrange­ment they offer a sur­face pat­tern col­lec­tion, which cel­e­brates the splen­dour of the win­ter foliage. Gar­lands of fes­tive foliage are inter­laced with swirling twine with mistle­toe wink­ing come-hith­er and frost-white berries, hol­ly agleam amidst the fra­grant fir. 

Sketchbook

In search of inspi­ra­tion for the ini­tial con­cept draw­ings, I turned to icon­ic win­ter botan­i­cals used as nat­ur­al sea­son­al dec­o­ra­tions. Below you can browse through the hand-drawn ele­ments, which end­ed up fea­tur­ing promi­nent­ly in the final designs. It was a delight to explore the splen­dour of the win­ter foliage through my stud­ies of sprigs, twigs, pine cones and mistle­toe. 

⁠Whilst I chose to most­ly depict ever­greens I also con­scious­ly want­ed to step away from using a tra­di­tion­al palette of green and red. Soak­ing the designs in a refresh­ing, frosty blue palette is meant to kin­dle a sen­ti­ment of wend­ing one’s way through a snowy wood­land, with the crunch of pine cones under­foot and the low win­ter sun blush­ing the cool sky. 

If you’d like to see how this col­lec­tion came to be, then please view the high­light­ed “Fes­tive” sto­ries on my insta­gram pro­file HERE. ⁠ 

Festive Cards

This win­ter col­lec­tion start­ed sim­ply as an idea for a sea­son­al greet­ings card. I designed the out­side and inside print that fea­tured a hand writ­ten typog­ra­phy. I got these print­ed as a small run and sold local­ly. If you’d like to order some for this year (or next) then please just email me for details. They’re made with recy­cled paper and come with an enve­lope (size: 15x15cm). You can order these indi­vid­u­al­ly (1.50GBP) or in a pack of 3 (4.50GBP) or 5 (5GBP). The pack­ag­ing foil is made with recy­clable bio-based film. 

Festive Wreath

In cre­at­ing these stand­alone illus­tra­tions I took inspi­ra­tion from the ever pop­u­lar art of wreath mak­ing and min­i­mal gift-wrap­ping, which both use more nat­ur­al decorations.

This first one is based on a more of a tra­di­tion­al­ly cir­cu­lar com­po­si­tion. The idea here was to incor­po­rate the twine bow in such a way that it is wrapped around the botan­i­cal ele­ments in swirling loops.

These are exam­ples of print­ed items avail­able to BUY through a print-on-demand plat­form called Redbubble.

Christmas Star

In con­trast, the sec­ond arrange­ment is more tri­an­gu­lar and resem­bles a star shape. Plac­ing it on a white back­ground adds a touch of crisp­ness and ele­gance to it. Both images revolve around the use of mir­ror effect, which offers sym­met­ri­cal, high­ly dec­o­ra­tive mul­ti-pur­pose imagery.

Both of these illus­tra­tion are a great com­ple­ment and an exten­sion to the rest of the collection.

These are exam­ples of print­ed items avail­able to BUY HERE through a print-on-demand plat­form called Redbubble.

Winter Foliage

Inspired by sea­son­al ever­greens this hero pat­tern is a cel­e­bra­tion of the chilly win­ter sea­son. It is filled with berried sprigs of hol­ly and fra­grant pine, embell­ished by pinecones and topped with mistle­toe for an extra fes­tive touch.

This rich print orig­i­nat­ed on the front image of the square christ­mas card that I’d designed. I lat­er repeat­ed this orig­i­nal tile, expand­ing the scope of it seam­less­ly, which result­ed in this very full and lush sur­face pat­tern print. 

These exam­ples of print­ed items are avail­able to BUY HERE through a print-on-demand plat­form called Red­bub­ble. 

Mistletoe and Twine

This sup­port­ing pat­tern makes a fea­ture of the wreath-like ele­ment that was print­ed on the back of my Christ­mas card. Repeat­ed seam­less­ly, it forms a kalei­do­scop­ic mosa­ic, com­plet­ed with a back­ground of swirling twine against a blush shade from the palette. Last­ly, this dec­o­ra­tive arrange­ment is com­plet­ed with a spot­ting of pol­ka dots of snow. This print sits in between the pre­vi­ous elab­o­rate hero pat­tern design and fol­low­ing sim­pli­fied coor­di­nat­ing one.

These exam­ples of print­ed items are avail­able to BUY HERE through a print-on-demand plat­form called Red­bub­ble. 

Coordinates

Last­ly, this is a sim­pli­fied sur­face pat­tern that was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a back­ground that was print­ed on the inside of the christ­mas card. I stan­dard­ised the colour of each ele­ment and scat­tered them in an even and bal­anced way to cre­ate a design of its own. I feel it nice­ly ties this Win­ter Col­lec­tion set togeth­er. It is avail­able on a dark navy and on a white back­ground, which com­pletes the full scope of the colour palette. 

These exam­ples of print­ed items are avail­able to BUY through a print-on-demand plat­form called Red­bub­ble. Click HERE for the WHITE back­ground and HERE for the NAVY. 

Merry Christmas

As a bonus, I took the hand let­ter­ing print­ed on the inside of the christ­mas card and used it to arrange this sim­ple type pat­tern. I then uploaded my fes­tive wish­es onto the above men­tioned Red­Bub­ble and explored var­i­ous place­ments prints and arrange­ments. These exam­ples of prod­ucts are avail­able to BUY HERE.