Happy Leap Day!

I couldn't let the day pass without posting something on my blog, so here's a quick drawing from my sketchbook - Happy Leap Day!

Spoonflower Contest - Love Is In The Air

This week's Spoonflower contest theme is 'Love is in the Air' and the brief was to create a love-inspired, weather-centric design.  I had an idea to create something with silhouettes of swallows, with clouds and hearts.  I have to say though, I found this one a bit frustrating to work on.  I kept changing bits around but it still didn't turn out quite how I imagined.  But then sometimes designs I really like don't end up being as popular as designs I like less!  I will have to see how it looks printed on fabric.

You can see all of the other entries, and vote for your favourite 'Love is in the Air' designs on Spoonflower: http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/341

Spoonflower don't have any new contest themes up at the moment, there will be an announcement about what they have been working on instead in their newsletter this Thursday - very intriguing!

PS. Thank you if you voted for my design in the Limited Colour Palette contest, it came 61st of out of 516 entries, with 154 votes.  The winning entry was a lovely design incorporating sleeping foxes, flowers and birds by Ewa Brzozowska - you can see it on Spoonflower, along with the rest of the results.

Colour Palette Inspiration #25: Pink Primulas

The pale yellow primulas in our garden seem to self sow easily and are far more abundant than any other colour.  So it was lovely to spot this bright pink one - it's now living in a tub on our doorstep. With the sun shining yesterday I took the opportunity to take a quick photo for this colour palette inspiration.  I love spring colours! :)

Spoonflower Contest - Limited Colour Palette Grey, Cream, Cucumber and Peach

It's National Wedding Month, so the colours for this week's Spoonflower Limited Colour Palette contest were inspired by popular wedding colours; grey, cream, cucumber and peach (white and black were also allowed).  Designs for the contest didn't have to be wedding themed, but I decided to create something based on hearts.  I sketched ideas with patterned hearts and floral and leaf motifs before coming up with the design above.  Although I started with pen line drawings for all of the shapes, I didn't want to have outlines for everything in the finished design so played around with changing the colours of the lines / filled in colour.  I like the way the lighter colours of the flowers and leaves contrast against the darker grey background.

As always, you can see all of the other entries and vote for your favourites over on Spoonflower - this appears to have been a popular contest with over 500 entries! http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/340

PS You can also see the results of the Interspecies Animal Friends contest on Spoonflower's blog - I love the cute winning design by Innamoreva!  My Cats and Birds - Friends Forever design came 68th with 145 votes - thank you if you voted for it!

'I think you're purr-fect' Valentine's Card

Only 2 more days until Valentine's Day, so I'm just in time to show you this Valentine's card project! It's made with my new 'I think you're purr-fect!' set of digital stamps and Watercolour hearts scrapbooking papers (see more about these below), both of which are available as Instant Download from Etsy. Printables are great for last minute projects because you can download and print them straight away, so if you've not got your Valentine a card yet you still have time to make one!

Materials used:

• Hearts patterned printable scrapbooking paper
• 'I think you're purr-fect!' digital stamps set
• Card blank (I used one which was approx. 10 x 15cm when folded)
• White paper / card stock
• Scissors / craft knife
• Round corner punch
• Double sided sticky tape / glue
• Double sided sticky foam pads
• Watercolour paints / coloured pencils

1.  Print the scrapbooking paper background and the cats digital stamp onto white paper or card.

To do this, I first set up a document the size of my card in my photo editing program (I use Photoplus).  I copied and pasted in the scrapbooking paper background.

I then copied and pasted in the 'I think you're purr-fect' text digital stamp (.png format with transparent background) as a new layer.  The stamp is larger than my card, so I reduced it in size and positioned it to where I wanted it to print on the background.

I then pasted the cat image stamp and also resized this to fit my card.

Next, I opened a new document the size of the paper I would be printing on (A4) and copied in the background with the text stamp as one image and the cats separately, so it looked like this... 

2.  Cut out the scrapbooking paper background and glue to your card blank.

3.  Cut out the cats image as a square, round the corners with a corner punch.

4.  Colour the cats image - I used watercolour pencils and paints.

5.  Attach the cats image to the front of your card with double-sided sticky foam pads.


About the papers used in this project...
I used the green and white hearts patterned paper from my 'Watercolour Hearts Blue & Green' set of scrapbooking papers and my 'I think you're purr-fect' set of digital stamps.  Both of these are available to buy from my Etsy shop - I also have more heart themed scrapbooking papers in other colours and other Valentine themed digital stamps.

Spoonflower Contest - Interspecies Animal Friendships

This week's Spoonflower contest is 'Interspecies Animal Friendships'; a theme which could have so many combinations of animals!  I decided to create a design focused on cats and birds, just because I like cats and birds really. :)  You can see below some of my work in progress, where I started with pencil drawings in my sketchbook, which became pen line drawings.  These were then turned into vector art and I finished the design digitally.  I wanted to experiment with flatter colour this time as well as changing the colours of my line drawings.

There are lots of cute designs entered in this week's contest; you can see them all here (and vote for your favourites too!)... http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/339

PS. Thank you if you voted for my Year of the Monkey design a couple of weeks ago - it came 43rd out of 252 entries with 141 votes.  I received a test swatch of it last week on Spoonflower's new Cotton Spandex Jersey, which means you can now buy my Year of the Monkey design on fabric, gift wrap and wallpaper.  I was impressed with the new Cotton Spandex Jersey fabric too.  It's a lovely soft and stretchy fabric, I think it would be great for making t-shirts and comfy clothing!

Find What Feels Good

Yoga With Adriene and 'Find What Feels Good' are the inspiration for this post, which is part of my new series on positive thinking.  I love these words as they not only encourage you to do things that make you feel good, but also to look for the good in a situation that maybe doesn't seem good at first.  Not that I am able to do this all the time, but it is something to aspire to.  I had fun playing with watercolours writing these words in my sketchbook too. :)

This week I completed Yoga Camp with Yoga With Adriene (an online series of yoga videos).  I managed to keep up with it everyday for 30 days and even completed the longer 40-50 minute sessions!  I say this with a sense of achievement because although I did her 30 days of yoga last year it took me longer than 30 days and I have struggled to keep up with some of the longer sessions before.  I'm not a sporty person, but after discovering Yoga With Adriene I have found a form of exercise that I actually enjoy and want to do!  I can follow the online videos at my own pace, in the comfort of my home.

Adriene encourages you to 'Find What Feels Good' and this is what I love about her videos!  I enjoy her humour and positive approach to teaching.  She guides you through the yoga poses and suggests alternatives if you're finding something difficult, encourages you to keep trying and it's not about being able to make the perfect pose - it's all about the process, how you feel.  Since doing yoga I have noticed that I am getting more flexible and stronger, I notice that certain poses are not so hard as they used to be, and it does feel good!  I still have plenty to practise and work on (which is good too); pigeon, side plank, seated forward fold and crow are some of the things I would like to improve.

30 days of Yoga Camp was also about using positive mantras, each day had a different mantra and I found these to be really beneficial too.  Yoga isn't just about getting yourself physically fit, but taking care of your mind too.  I do find that yoga can help with anxiety; the exercise, moving with my breath, practising the different breathing techniques and positive mantras - these are all things I can take and use off the yoga mat as well.

I liked how setting myself the challenge of Yoga Camp kept me motivated with doing yoga everyday and I want to keep that up.  I've been doing some of the videos from Adriene's Post Yoga Camp Playlist and I think I will do the original 30 Days of Yoga (from last year) again.

Do you do yoga?  What are your experiences of it?  If you're interested in having a go I can definitely recommend Yoga With Adriene! 

Namaste!

Colour Inspiration #24: Pink Threads

I wanted to do a colour inspiration post today; something bright and happy!  I thought as it is now February, and almost Valentine's Day, I would go for a pink theme so started hunting for pink objects around the room... I then remembered by lovely drawers filled with threads and thought they would be perfect for this post.  In the top corner of this photo you can just see a peek of the purples that live next to the pinks in this drawer.  There's something wonderful about seeing colours organised, they look so pretty together.  It reminds me of when I used to have a Saturday job working in a craft shop - it was one of my favourite jobs restocking the pretty threads and yarns, seeing the huge range of colours they came in! :)