Floral Butterflies Surface Pattern Design

This week's Spoonflower design challenge has a limited colour palette theme - the brief allowed us to create a design on any theme we liked so long as we used at least 3 of the colours specified by Spoonflower (black or white accents were also allowed).
I decided to create a floral and butterfly themed design...

Christmas Gingerbread and Candy on teal - my entry to Spoonflower's Challenge

With such a fun theme I couldn't miss out on designing for Spoonflower's Gingerbread contest!  This colourful design is created from my pen, watercolour, coloured pencil and felt tip pen illustrations of gingerbread houses, gingerbread men, Christmas trees, candy canes and lollipops.  This was a really fun design to make and I loved working with these colours!

Inktober 2017 Roundup

I took part in Inktober again this year - a month long drawing challenge where thousands of artists (both amateur and professional) from around the world make a drawing in ink every day of October and post their pictures online.  Last year I joined in but didn't quite manage to do a drawing every day, so this year my aim was to just do something, even if it was small, every day - and I did it!
I kept my drawings small this year, so it was more realistic to be able to finish them. Mostly I was drawing in the evening and I have to admit there were a few nights when I was feeling tired and not particularly wanting to pick up my sketchbook, but I didn't want to miss a day.
I think it's a great challenge to take part in and I'm sure my drawing has benefited, it's also nice to draw just for fun on a variety of subjects.  If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you will have already seen my drawings, but I wanted to share just a few of my favourites here too.  Which ones are your favourites?

My entry to Spoonflower's Black and White Colouring Book Contest

This week's Spoonflower contest is being held in conjunction with Lake, a colouring app, and we could create a design on any subject we liked, so long as it was in black and white.  Such open ended contests like this can be the hardest - how do you choose what theme to draw!? They also produce an amazing, diverse mix of entries, it's wonderful to see how creative everyone else has been!

Spoonflower's Annual Tea Towel Calendar Contest

It's time for Spoonflower's annual tea towel calendar contest again! It's hard to believe how quickly this time of year comes around and this is the 4th year I have taken part in the contest!  I sketched a few ideas out for the calendar and chose to work up this feathers and flowers design for my entry.  My feathers and arrows fabric design has been popular on Spoonflower, so I thought I would like to add some new feathers designs - starting with this calendar!

More Circus Designs for Spoonflower

Continuing with the Circus theme, here is my entry to this week's Spoonflower design challenge; Circus Performers.  My design features girls (inspired by 1920s fashion) performing acrobatics,  gynastics (rhythmic ribbons!) and on the flying trapeze!  This week's theme was the one I was most looking forward to designing for and I enjoyed drawing the girls - first in pencil then pen line drawing, which I scanned then coloured digitally.  I added the stars, swirls and dots to give a sense of movement to the design.  As with all of this month's circus challenges, there was a limited colour palette to use.  The colours are probably not ones I would have chosen myself (yellow isn't a colour I usually use a lot of) but I actually like the yellow as a background for this and how the other colours work with it.



* UPDATE*
Thank you if you voted for my Circus Performers design - it came 32nd (with 86 votes) out of 135 entries!
You can see all the winners on Spoonflower here.

This design is now available to buy from Spoonflower - you can find it in my shop here.

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Below is my entry to last week's challenge; Animal Alphabet Limited Colour Palette.  It features some of the animals I used in my first circus design, plus some new ones; a zebra, giraffe and bear on a unicycle!!  The colour palette for this one was probably the most challenging for me - most of the animals were fine but I struggled to like any of the colours for the elephant.  I'm looking forward to playing around with these a bit more after the challenges with some different colour combinations.


Thank you if you voted for my design in the contest! The results are now in and my Animal Alphabet design came 65th out of 146 entries.  I definitely recommend you visit Spoonflower's blog to see the other entries, there were lots of great designs and Elena Naylor's winning Cat Circus Alphabet is a particularly fun and creative design! :)

My Entry to Spoonflower's 'Retro Circus' Design Contest

Roll up, roll up! The Circus is in town!
For the next 4 weeks Spoonflower's design challenges each have a theme based around the circus; Retro Circus, Animal Alphabet, Circus Performers, and Big Top Treats.

I'm having lots of fun working on these designs, although they are challenging too.  All the contests are limited colour palette and the colours aren't necessarily ones I would have chosen myself. However, the restricted choice of colours has forced me to think carefully about my designs and I actually really like the colours in this one now!


I gave myself plenty of time to start work on my circus designs and I've enjoyed having more time and less pressure to complete the first one (which amazingly I entered into the contest early, not on the last day like usual!).

My Design for Spoonflower's 'Whimsical Watercolour Insects' Challenge

This week's Spoonflower challenge theme is 'Whimsical Watercolour Insects'.  I remembered that I had drawn some pen and watercolour beetles in my sketchbook a while ago so decided it was a good opportunity to return to that theme and create a finished design!  Also, I'm not that keen on real creepy crawlies but I thought beetles would be something I could make into a fun and colourful pattern.

My Design for Spoonflower's 'Rainforest Animals' Challenge

This week's Spoonflower challenge theme was 'Rainforest Animals' so I got out my watercolour paints, pencils and pens to create a tropical rainforest inspired design! I knew I wanted my design to be quite a busy pattern, filled with leaves and initially I researched lots of different animals to include too. For the final design though I decided to narrow it down to just toucans, macaws and blue butterflies.

#BeInspired Cass Art Challenge Part 2 - My Artwork

Yesterday I shared a review of the materials I received from Cass Art for taking part in their #BeInspired campaign.  Today I can share with you some of the art work which I made using my new materials!
Some of the materials are similar to things I already use and some have been completely new to me but I have really enjoyed trying all of them out.  It has been great just to play around and see what happens and not to worry so much about what the finished piece will be like.  I definitely want to do this more and am planning to get some new sketchbooks and spend more time in 2017 experimenting with different materials in them!

Spoonflower Contest - Ditsy Mistletoe

This week I had fun creating a festive, mistletoe inspired design for Spoonflower's 'Ditsy Mistletoe' contest.  I was also more than a little excited to have learnt a different way of designing patterns (more on that below!).
Of course one of the first things to come to mind when you think of mistletoe is the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe, but Spoonflower's brief for the contest also talked about the plant being a symbol of peace in Scandinavia, under which enemies would declare a truce.  So my design is inspired by love and peace and incorporates mistletoe with doves and hearts.

Inktober 2016 Round-up of my Drawings

This year I decided to join in with Inktober for the first time - Inktober is a drawing challenge started by Jake Parker to make one ink drawing a day for the whole month of October. (You can find out more about Inktober and see Jake's fantastic artwork on his website).
I wanted to join in with the challenge to practise my own ink drawing and to have some fun drawing different subjects. It was also great to see what other people were drawing each day.  I started the challenge with good intentions to draw every day, however, I did fall behind and ended up continuing the challenge into November. I have been posting pictures of my drawings onto my facebook and instagram pages but thought it would also be good to share a round-up of them all here...

(Days 1 - 9)

My Entry to Spoonflower's 'Lace Gift Wrap' Design Contest

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you will already have seen a peek at my design for this week's Spoonflower contest: Lace Gift Wrap. Inspired by images of vintage lace, which I found on Pinterest, I created a detailed, floral and leaf pattern.  Everything in this design was hand drawn in black pen (I like to use Faber Castell PITT artist pens), before being scanned and assembled into the finished pattern digitally.  As the design was too large to fit on 1 sheet of A4 I had to draw it on several sheets of paper...

My Entry to Spoonflower's Annual Tea Towel Calendar Contest - 2017 Tropical Toucan

It's that time of year again - time for Spoonflower's annual tea towel calendar contest!  This year I decided to go for a tropical theme and created a design featuring a colourful toucan surrounded by leaves (I love to draw birds!).  Here's what the finished design looks like...

Thortful - A New Place to Buy My Greeting Cards!

I'm always on the look out for new opportunities to sell my artwork and I recently came across Thortful - a UK based company which produces high quality greeting cards designed by their community of designers, illustrators and  photographers.  You can now find a small selection of my designs on Thortful and I will be adding more soon!
All cards from Thortful are printed in the UK on premium quality A5 paper and sent 1st class - if you order by 2pm they are posted the same day!  You can also personalise cards with a message, which is printed inside the card.
If you are super organised you can even start buying your Christmas cards now - I've added these 4 Christmas card designs so far...
Get 50% off your first card with this code: MMXQFF9S

This week Thortful are also offering a 20% discount off every card - so it's a great time to try out one of my designs (or anyone elses!).  Just use code AUGUST20 at checkout.  The offer ends Friday 26th August.

Spoonflower Contest - Japanese Garden

This month Spoonflower have partnered with Sprout Patterns for their design contest.  The theme is Japanese Garden and the winning design will be featured in the release of a new kimono sewing pattern!

I enjoyed having longer to work on this contest, which gave me the opportunity to spend time researching ideas, sketching and finally pulling my ideas together into a finished pattern.  I collected some of my inspiration on this board on Pinterest - like beautiful flowers and kimonos.  

I sketched ideas which included different flowers, birds and butterflies, but in the end decided to keep the design a little simpler, by creating a repeat made from intertwined cherry blossom and anemones, with a butterfly.

I'm happy with how this design turned out - as well as making it available to buy on fabric, giftwrap and wallpaper on Spoonflower, I plan to use it on products in my Society6 shop.  For the contest, I chose a turquoise shade for the background colour but I also plan to have some test swatches printed in other colours - I tried grey for the background and think this looked nice too.

Voting is now open (until 27th April) on Spoonflower http://www.spoonflower.com/sprout-design-challenge. I noticed that there are 705 entries - so lots of people were inspired by this theme!  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with.

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!

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!

Spoonflower Year of the Monkey contest and Free Swatch Day!

It's been a while since I last entered one of Spoonflower's contests, but this week's theme caught my eye and I decided I had to have a go!  The theme is Year of the Monkey, in honour of the Chinese new year, and I quite quickly had the idea of creating a design with monkeys in a forest of trees.  The challenge of creating this piece was to make sure the repeat worked with the trunk of the trees not having an obvious join and fitting the branches around each other.

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with for this contest!  You can see all of the other entries to the Year of the Monkey contest (and vote for your favourites!) over on Spoonflower... http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/336

I also wanted to let you know about Spoonflower's Free Swatch Day.  They recently introduced a new fabric - cotton spandex jersey.  I think this sounds like a great fabric for sewing comfortable clothing and can't wait to see a sample of this myself!  The free swatch day starts at 10am EST on Thursday 21st January (that's 3pm UK time).  The offer runs worldwide and includes free shipping, so it's a great time to try out a design you've been admiring in the Spoonflower marketplace!  You can see my designs in my Spoonflower shop.

Spoonflower Contest - Tea Towel Calendar 2016

It's that time of year again for Spoonflower's annual Tea Towel Calendar contest!  As there is no set theme, there is always a wonderful range of subjects for the entries.  Last year I entered my Budgie design and I thought that I would continue with a pets theme for this year, so created this design with cats and kittens...


The cats design also goes with my existing Kittens with Mittens design in my Spoonflower shop.

If you would like to see the other entries to the Tea Towel Calendar contest (and vote for your favourites!) you can see them here: http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/3710342

In other Spoonflower news...
My Microorganisms design from a few weeks ago came 59th out of 326 entries (with 179 votes) - thank you if you voted for my design!  There were some interesting and colourful designs in the top ten - you can see them on Spoonflower's blog post.
This week I also received the swatch sampler I ordered with some new designs on.  I haven't had chance to photograph the swatches yet, but I'll be sharing them soon and making them available to buy from my Spoonflower shop.