SpoonChallenge – 30 days of drawing, days 3 - 8

I’ve been keeping up with Spoonflower’s SpoonChallenge – 30 days of drawing and enjoying drawing something on a different theme everyday.  It’s been nice doing a little sketch each day just for fun and not thinking it has to be perfect, or finished for a product to sell.  Here are some pictures of my sketchbook for the last 6 days…

Week 1’s theme was Open Spaces; the prompt for day 3 was Tree and for day 4 it was Landscape…

Day 5’s prompt was River.  Day 6 had no prompt, but I kept to the open spaces theme and drew a desert with some cactuses (which was the prompt for day 1 which I missed)…

Day 7 also had no prompt so I decided to draw something in contrast with the desert and drew a woodland / forest scene…  Week 2’s theme is Text + Type and started with the prompt Lemon…

It’s still not too late to join in – you can sign up for the daily prompts from Spoonflower here.  You can also see what everyone else is drawing  by searching for #SpoonChallenge on social media.  I’ve never used hashtags before - as well as being an easy way of finding other people taking part in the challenge I have noticed it has brought new people to my facebook page.  So I have learnt something new too! :)

Spoonflower Fabric and New Designs

Spoonflower had a free shipping day a few weeks ago and I decided to take advantage of their offer by ordering a swatch sampler with some of my new designs and a couple of fat quarters.  It takes a few weeks for orders to be printed and shipped from Spoonflower, then around 10 days to arrive in the UK.  I didn’t want to risk being caught by customs duties so kept the value of my orders down by ordering the fat quarters separately to the swatch sampler.

I had my butterflies design printed on Linen-Cotton Canvas and am planning on using this to make a cushion cover…

I also had a fat quarter of my rabbits design printed onto Kona Cotton – I’ve not completely decided what I’m making with this fabric yet, but am thinking of starting with a little zipped pouch…

I almost didn't receive this swatch sampler – the postman had delivered it to a street on the other side of my village!  Luckily the lady who received it kindly delivered the parcel to me. It contains 15 new designs, some of them are my entries to recent Spoonflower contests.  Now that I have tested them out on fabric I will be making them available for you to buy from my Spoonflower shop.

As well as the designs made from my illustrations I created these star patterns.  I loved playing with different colour combinations to make these and could have made so many different variations!  The stars are fairly small and would work well on lots of different projects, initially I thought they would be good for zip purses or as a fun lining fabric...

There are a couple of Christmas themed designs added to the shop too – it seems early to be thinking of Christmas, but remember if you want to do some Christmas sewing or buy these designs on gift wrap it could take a few weeks for them to be delivered!

The sewing notion themed designs I created a few weeks ago are now available as separate fabrics…

The rhinos and farm animals from my entries to weekly contests are also available to buy as well as a brightly coloured chevron pattern, which coordinates with my hot air balloon design, and a new floral pattern…

If you buy any fabric with my designs on I would love to see what you make, so please feel free to send me your photos! :)

Spoonflower Tennis weekly contest and SpoonChallenge a month of drawing

I’ve had a couple of weeks off from entering contests on Spoonflower – my last entry to the rhinoceroses themed contest came 65th (with 102 votes) out of 251 entries.  Thank you to everyone who voted!

This week the contest has a Tennis theme so I created this design with tennis balls, rackets and strawberries, inspired by Wimbledon.  It was a fairly quick design to make as I used elements which I had already drawn to create a repeat pattern.  You can see all the other entries (and vote for your favourites!) here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=260 

I’ve also just started Spoonflower’s SpoonChallenge: A Month of Drawing – each day has a different theme to inspire you to draw.  Today’s prompt was mountains and this is what I drew…
Even though my work involves a lot of drawing, some days I can be caught up in other things like sorting supplies, packing orders, paper work and keeping up with things online, so don’t always draw everyday.  Just doing a quick sketch shouldn’t be too hard though, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the challenge for the month! :)  Are you taking part?  What have you drawn so far?

August 2014 free printable calendar

It’s August already!  I almost had this month’s calendar up early (which would have been a very rare achievement for me!) – it was all designed but my internet connection has been so slow over the past few days I’ve barely been able to do anything online.  Still, getting it up for the 1st of August is better than the 2nd :)

August means it’s summer here in the UK, schools are on their long summer break and the weather’s been hot, so ice creams seemed the perfect theme to choose   While designing this calendar I also found a fun way of creating a rainbow hundreds and thousands sprinkles inspired background.  I hope you like it! :)

 

You can download the PDF here and you can view and print the calendar with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The calendar is A4 in size, but you can scale it to fit different sized paper if you prefer.  You can print onto any type of paper you like, for best results I recommend using your printer's highest quality setting and a good quality paper.

Please note this calendar is for personal use only!  You can print it as many times as you like for your own use but you may not redistribute it in any form (digitally or printed).  You may not modify the calendar or claim it as your own.  If you would like to share the calendar on your blog, Pinterest, facebook etc please include a link back to this page (not the download link).  Thank you!  I hope you enjoy using it :)