Delicatessen

We recently attended one of our favourite markets of the year, the Wellington Polish Christmas Market. As we started ramping up to prepare for our end-of-year markets, I got inspired to do some designs focused around the delights of European food. 
I had just finished my fungi of the Pacific Northwest design, and I had also just joined “Show me your charcuterie” on Facebook, so the stars aligned for me to create one of my favourite designs this quarter.

Charcuterie (pronounced “CHAR-coo-t’ree” or “CHAR-coo-te-ree”, click here to listen), is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, ballotines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork.
Source:
​Wikipedia

For this design, I worked from my own photos, experience, imagination, and a lot of research online.  ​I started with the sketch, which represents the pencil stage, then I overlay that sketch, changed to green, with plain black lines, which represent the ink stage.

​In the first image, below, I have created a diagonal grid texture (in green), which I then use in several of the different meats. 

That worked really well, so I created several more textured and used them to add variety to several of my other shapes.

Next, I used some basic colours to represent the different shades of brown, so that I can be sure to get a good dispersal across the different types of cured meats.

I use lime green to help me identify the areas that still need to be coloured. 

Right, all coloured – time to build a repeat! I made one that was just meat, and one that’s more of a charcuterie platter – it includes designs from my cheese design, and some extra fruit, olives, a couple of gherkins. 

What are the most important accompaniments to a good cured meat? BREADS, that’s what. 
The word “boulangerie” means a bakery in French, so it’s a good word to use for the accompanying design to charcuterie. Again, many of these are breads that I have seen, baked, and eaten myself. 

Same process here – “pencil” in green, then “pen” in black. 

Here’s an example of a tile layout before and after turning it into a proper repeat.

These two gorgeous scarves are still unsold at the time of posting – pop us a message through the page if you’re keen to grab one! Every one is unique, handmade, and only $50NZD plus p&p.