Seedlings

Sketchbook seedlings:

on a sugar paper background for this contest!

Those sketches needed quite a bit of editing from my ancient flatbed scanner's image! Time for a new one soon; does anyone have any recommendations?

You can see all the Herb Garden entries and vote for your favourites over here.

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Colouring Book Wallpaper

When I was a kid, colouring in was one of my favourite things to do. At one time, I even had it in my head that I would be a professional cartoon colourer-inner (!) and so I had to enter the contest over at Spoonflower this week. Their idea is to print black and white wallpaper designs to use as a colouring book once in place and I've made a black and white version of the Palace Garden repeat pattern for it. Have a look at everyone else's designs and vote over here!

Palace Garden | Black & White

I had to print off a version to try out!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Sunshine

It's been a long time coming but we've had some lovely weather this week and lots of sunshine! It's great to have the windows open, everything smells so great. We're finally getting plenty of leaves on the trees and I've been working on this this week..

Black Bird, Silver Birch

Black Bird, Silver Birch details; click for larger view.

I thought it would be good on a small scale for lots of uses so I've uploaded it as a swatch to the Spoonflower shop where you can order it on linen, silk, cotton or wall decal!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Buy one get one freeee!

New in the shop:

Surf in Indigo, Pines & Cranes, Palace Garden Repeat, Butterflies, Lagoon and last but not least Honey Bees!

If you'd like to order one of these prints or any others at Spoonflower, they're having a fat quarter sale from today until Wednesday the 31st - buy one get one free!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Forest Garden

I ordered some proof swatches from spoonflower a while ago - for some reason it takes weeks and weeks for the post to get to Europe from North Carolina but they're finally here. First up in the shop, as requested, Forest Garden!

Forest Garden

This one's based loosely on the deciduous forests of Asia and I've decided to donate 10% of all commission earned on this design to BirdLife International. They work with local charities all over the world preserving bird habitats and thereby improving global biodiversity. Forest Garden is available on 10 different fabrics here!

I hope everyone's enjoying their last little bit of summer in the northern hemisphere. Wouldn't it be great to have a house in both hemispheres so you could have summer all year round?

Forest Garden sample on cotton.

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Palace Garden Repeat

Hi all, hope you had a good weekend! We had a relaxed one with a bit of shopping, a bit of wine and plenty of reading and sleeping!

I've been meaning to make a repeat pattern partner to this design for quite a while now and last week I had the perfect opportunity to concentrate my efforts with the hand drawn design contest. There were over 500 entries this week, the competition over at spoonflower is growing fast!

Palace Garden Repeat

Details of Palace Garden Repeat - click to view larger!

I'm planning on reworking the original too, as soon as I have enough time; so if any of you have had your eye on the colours currently available, now's the time to grab some!

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Update 2014: You can read about the new colours for this pattern here; they're available to order here!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Semifinals!

You may have already heard that the lovely peeps over at Spoonflower have teamed up with Robert Kaufman Fabrics on their latest contest with a pen & ink / watercolour theme. The judges have been working hard this week on narrowing down over 750 entries to just 100 semifinalists and I was so happy to find out that my design got through!

I would really, really appreciate your vote if you have a minute or two :) Click here!

Forest Garden

11th May:
Thanks to everyone who voted and congratulations to the finalists, whose beautiful winning designs you can see here!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Celandine

Celandine

A member of the buttercup family, apparently these sunny flowers are named from the Greek for Swallow (chelidon), blooming as the swallows return for the summer. If you feel like making something sunny, this design is up in my spoonflower shop and available in 9 different kinds of cloth!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Jhali..

.. is a set of four designs for this week's spoonflower contest: coordinates. I originally meant to call it Jhari (which, according to my Google search, means river in Sanskrit) because of the Indian feel to it and also because it is based on water gardens and fountains. Uploading the design last minute I mistyped and I think I prefer the typo - so Jhali it is! Does anyone know what that means (in any language)? I'd love to know; hope it's not rude :)


Jhali

Jhali details - click for larger view.

You can have a look at all the other coordinating patterns that the talented members of Spoonflower have uploaded here.. and vote of course!

I really hope you had a fantastic new year's eve and that 2012 will be good to you!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Winter Sleep

Winter Sleep

A screen print / Gocco style version of Winter Sleep. I've never used a Print Gocco but I liked vectorizing the squidgy ink edges of the elements.

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Illustration Friday - Hibernate

Winter Sleep

Click for larger view.

I think I'll feel like giving this a go when this amazing Indian Summer is over and the cold weather arrives.

While reading up for this illustration, I read that a bonfire pile is heaven to a hedgehog looking for a place to hibernate. If you're celebrating Bonfire Night at home next month there are some good tips to avoid a grisly end for them and the other wildlife in your garden here.

You can have a look at all the other Hibernate illustrations here!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Forest & Sea @ Spoonflower

Now available at Forest & Sea on Spoonflower:

Palace Garden in Peacock Blue, Lime and Jaipur Pink

Palace Garden in Indigo and Pomegranate

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

For Sale...

... never-ending yards of Palace Garden in Peacock Blue! Available at Forest&Sea on Spoonflower.

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

Love your weeds!

Butterflies is the subject for the new Spoonflower contest with a palette limited to just these six colours (I missed yellow!):



It did show me though how habitual my colour use has become and that's the whole idea right? I quite like that it's a pattern that would never have come about if left entirely to me! If you have a spare second, please click through and vote for it :)

Tree-hugger's Lawn

Tree-hugger's Lawn Details - click for larger view.

This weedy design was inspired by the idea of leaving a bit of your garden for wild, native plants to grow.If you're not a lover of weeds but would like to attract more butterflies to your outside space, there are loads of websites about which flowers butterflies will be attracted to - either for nectar or as a food source for their caterpillars. These small, natural areas add up fast to increase the available habitat for local wildlife!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

Folk Tales of India

A new Spoonflower contest entry based on the palace gardens and jungles of India:


Palace Garden in Peacock Blue

Clockwise: Palace Garden in Indigo, Lime, Jaipur Pink and Pomegranate.

Palace Garden Details (click for larger view).

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NEW: See the new colours for this pattern here and the repeat version here!

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

Waterlily

The wildlife garden of someone I know. The pond isn’t this big but artistic license is a good thing :)

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Forest & Sea ▪ www.etsy.com/shop/ForestAndSea

hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware