Summer Fabric Designs: Crickets and Fireflies

After a few months away from Spoonflower, I finally got back into it this summer.  I've been entering many of the weekly contests, which has been great practice and a lot of fun. 

Two of my summer designs were for the crickets and fireflies contests, and here are my designs.

 

I have to say that I was really happy with how each of these designs turned out; however they didn't do too great in the contests.  Go figure.  I can never predict which designs will make it to the top.  I usually vote for about half of them and the other half is always a complete surprise.  Therefore, I have to remember to design things I am happy with and know that not everyone will love it. 

I tried something a little different with my fireflies design.  I colored in the fireflies freehand using the brush tool.  I like how it looks imperfect, like they are doodles in a child's coloring book, making it a great design to decorate a kid's room with. 

The great thing about Spoonflower now is that you can also buy wallpaper, wall decals, and wrapping paper!  Wouldn't these be fun to wrap a child's birthday gift in? 


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Australian Animals Fabric + Contest

 

This week's Spoonflower contest is all about the amazingly loveable animals of Australia!  I had so much fun designing this fabric and I love the way it turned out.  Today I thought I'd share my design process.

 

I tend to get an immediate picture in my head when I first start a design, whether it be fabric for Spoonflower, a print or card for Etsy, or a project for school.  But once I have an idea to start with, it may change depending on how it looks once I start sketching things out and arranging them on the computer.

 

I'm lucky to be in a graphic design program that is part of what I believe is a solid art program.  My teachers believe in learning traditional art methods as well as the Adobe programs.  Even though it is just a two year program, it includes three semesters of drawing, as well as separate 2-D and 3-D design classes, in addition to many others.  My graphic design teacher also emphasizes sketching several thumbnail ideas before beginning work on the computer, which I love.

 

For this fabric, I knew I wanted to include animal silhouettes, so I began by sketching the animals I chose.  Absolutely nothing fancy.  

 

I scanned in my sketchbook pages, darkened the lines using Levels in Photoshop, and then placed the images in Illustrator so I could trace the outlines, fill in the shapes, and fix up anything that didn't look quite right.

I have to admit, I was sort of impressed with myself at this point.  It was like "ohmygoshthosearesocuteANDYCOMELOOKATMYANIMALS!!"  God bless him for looking every single time I asked him to :)  And I hope I'm not totally immature and annoying for getting excited about making something I think looks good.  But look at the funny kookaburra with the big head!  And the tough little cute ferocious tasmanian devil!

Next up was the fun part- arranging everything!  Here's where I played with colors, created my color palette, mixed up the sizes, duplicated shapes, added the circles and background, and made sure it looked visually balanced and would repeat well as a fabric design. 

At this point, I am sort of thinking about composition and design elements that I've learned in school, but a lot of it is also just my natural instinct, and what looks right to me.  I spend a lot of time making small adjustments, scooching objects a hair this way or that, changing colors, scaling things up or down, looking at the spaces between objects, etc. until I'm satisfied with how it looks to me.

I did some things in this fabric that I think give it depth and interest, such as overlapping the shapes in the foreground and adding the on-purpose unevenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines in the background.  It was amazing how much adding those stripes changed the way the whole design looked!

Here's how the design repeats at the size of a fat quarter for you sewers and quilters out there.

 

I think it's my favorite fabric creation so far!  What do you think? 

 

If you like it, please go vote in the contest!

 

Is your creative process anything like mine, or completely different?



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Snake Scale Chevron Fabric

Hi everyone!

I was so excited to be able to design a new fabric over Christmas break and enter it in the current Spoonflower contest: Year of the Snake.

I knew I wanted it to be abstract, and once I had the scales placed, I played with different color patterns.  I started with vertical wavy stripes, but then switched to a chevron pattern and really loved the way it looked.  I'm also really happy with the fun colors.

Here's the screen shot of the fabric from my shop, a fat quarter size.

What do you think?

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Silly Halloween Fabric

Hi everyone and happy Friday!

I'm so excited to share my newest fabric design with you!  I created it for this week's Spoonflower contest with the theme creepy crawlies.

I started with the spiders as the creepy crawlies and added some other fun and goofy looking Halloween creatures.  I don't like the scary Halloween stuff!  Goofy and silly with googly eyes for me, please.

I love the way it turned out!  The design worked so well with a half drop repeat also.  Here's a screen shot from my Spoonflower shop.

There are so many fun designs in the contest this week; you can go here to check them out and vote for your favorites!

I'm off to spend time with my family!  They are driving 6 hours to visit me, and I have to say that I am one lucky lady!  

What are you up to this weekend?  Hope it's a good one!





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Hands off my Crayons

This week's contest theme is school supplies!  I'm so excited to check out all the fabrics and vote for my favorites.... because, well, I love school supplies!  Especially crayons.  Those were just the best things to buy and use.  I mean, come on...

They're beautiful.  They're colorful.  They're organized.  They come in huge boxes which hold approximately one million of them.  They have cool labels.  They have a distinct smell.  If you get a big enough box, the colors will have amazing names.

How could I NOT choose to create my fabric based on these little guys?

Now, go vote!

And don't forget to... 





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New fabric design: camping

Hi everyone!  Time to share a new design!

This week, the Spoonflower fabric contest theme is camping.  I love me some camping!  We used to go pretty often growing up.  Many of our best family vacations were spent at campgrounds around the U.S.  And we were tent people.  No RVs here.  

My dad also invented the best breakfast ever once while we were camping.  It was put together with a hodge podge of ingredients, because I think it may have been our last morning there, so he was using up all the food we had left.  I think it may have had potatoes, eggs, cheese... and the secret ingredient of pasta sauce maybe?  Who knows.  But it has yet to be recreated!  Every once in a while, we're like oooo dad, try to make the best breakfast ever.  Haha. 

So here's my initial simple sketches, with the colored images I made in Illustrator. 

Then I focused on my sun, which  needed some work.  I wasn't sure if I wanted night time, with a moon and stars, or a sunset.  But I'm glad I decided to switch it to an early morning sun, because that let me use pretty soft colors that remind me of peaceful mornings while camping.  I still can perfectly remember what it feels like to climb out of the tent and sit at the picnic table with my parents and sister.  We would usually read or play card games.  The best.

I also fixed up my trees a bit, and decided on their arrangement.  Then I added in my new sun, and finally added the wind wisps in the sky.  

And here's my final design!  I think I love it.  You can see the whole fabric design, titled peaceful mornings, at my Spoonflower shop. 

 

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