Pewter and Gold

Indian Woodblock in Pewter and Gold

Some fresh designs up in the spoonflower shop - I scanned in the Indian woodblock print, made it repeat nicely and added some colour. These two are Pewter and Gold and there’s a Sapphire one too!

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

Red, Turquoise, Indigo

Night Sky with Pines & Cranes (bottom), Evening Sky (top left) and Morning Sky (top right).

I’ve been working on some new colours for the Pines & Cranes pattern. At the bottom in this image is the original - Night Sky with Pines & Cranes - and I've added the red version 'Evening Sky' and turquoise version 'Morning Sky' to the spoonflower shop!

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

Ink!

Hello! To catch up here with some of the projects I've been working on over the last few months, here are some photos from my Instagram page. Just click on the title below each picture and it'll take you straight to the post if you'd like to read more about it :)

Tea Bags | Family Cards

Rubber Stamp | Paisley Linen

Medieval Woodcut INK! | Wash Bag

Handmade Handles | Birds & Bees

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Scandinavian Winter

I've wanted to make some patterns with northern animals or mountains or European wildlife for ages and so when spoonflower suggested winter toiles as a subject, I decided that now was a good time to make a start. I usually work best under a deadline and I've found their prompts to be really productive for me in the past. This is my Winter Toile contest entry:

Scandinavian Winter Toile

Here you can see a Eurasian elk (or moose), rock ptarmigan, hawk owls and foxes - all species that overwinter in Scandinavia. If you'd like to see some lovely winter inspired designs and vote then click here. I hope you have a brilliant festive season and happy new year!

Details of the Scandinavian Winter Toile

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Burlap & Azure

Also proofed and in the shop are the new colours for Arabica Cherry: Burlap and Azure!

This repeat design was made using botanical drawings of the Arabica coffee bush - my favourite bean. So if you're like me and love a strong, aromatic brew to get you going in the morning, then you can find this pattern in my spoonflower shop!

Arabica Cherry - in Burlap and Azure - printed on heavy cotton twill at spoonflower.

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

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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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Waterlight

The Galápagos Sea Lions I sketched from a nature documentary a few years ago have had a bit of work done! I've redrafted the fish and given them all a bit of watery light:

Scatter!

Scatter! details.

The shop has already been updated with this new version here!

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Nilofar

I'm getting better with the sewing machine and it feels really good to learn something new. I thought the panels I printed recently went great with this old denim and so used them to make a toiletries bag:

I was also testing out an idea for some snap wallets this week; the second turned out better than the first but it was very satisfying figuring out a good pattern:

I've made a digital version of this print if you'd like to try it. It's called Nilofar, which means lotus or waterlily and it's available HERE on all sorts of fabric, decal and wallpaper!

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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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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Cinnamon

Palace Garden in Cinnamon

ÝA new pouch made from Palace Garden in Cinnamon (on linen-cotton).
ÞI'm getting a bit of a collection of these; after a bit more practice I think I'll open a shop.

'Evening Snow in Kamubara' by Andō Hiroshige - Palace Garden in Aubergine - Palace Garden in Indigo - Pines & Cranes

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Hiroshige

'Nihonbashi Bridge on Snow Morning' and 'Mt. Fuji Scene from Satta' both by Andō Hiroshige

'Evening Snow in Kamubara' by Andō Hiroshige and 'Mt. Fuji on Fine Day' by Hokusai Katsushika

Hiroshige Pouch from the 'Evening Snow in Kamubara' postcard.

When I was about 12, a family friend returned from a Tokyo business trip with a huge pile of beautifully printed, thick, mat postcards with old Japanese woodblock art on them. Everyone was allowed to keep a few and above are the ones I chose. They were blu-tacked to my bedroom wall for all of my teenage years and are a bit worse for wear, but as you can see the colours haven't faded. A while ago, I digitally cleaned one of them up and had it printed on some linen-cotton from Spoonflower. For textiles, digital printing is perfect for this kind of thing - it couldn't have turned out better. I've finally made something of it (the last image here) and it's great to have something to use, made by hand, from an image that's always been there.

I hope you have a great weekend. Spoil yourself at least once :)

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Here are some of the March pictures from over at Instagram: rearranging vector elements from this journal design - windmill sails at sunset - a print for spring and last but not least.. Pines & Cranes has made the Spoonflower Hot Sellers list :)

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Sundance

Poppyfield and Sundance

Hi, have you had a good start to your weekend? I've been sorting out these new designs. On the left here is a new version of Poppyfield with updated, brighter colours and a smaller repeat. To the right is a new pattern which I've based on it and I'm so happy with how the colours have printed - they're so fresh and bright. It's called Sundance after the flowers I'd never heard of and only happened to come across after designing this pattern - meant to be?! I hope you like them too; if you do, you can find them in my Spoonflower shop!

Have a good Sunday lovely peeps :)

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Nighttime

Pines & Cranes Desktop

A nighttime version of the Pines & Cranes design. Hopefully I can sort this out for the shop next week but for now I've set it as my wallpaper for the holiday season. As you can see, I'm not the tidiest desktop keeper (and this is the sorted out version)!

I hope you had a great thanksgiving if you celebrate it and have a great rest-of-weekend :)

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Surf

Click for details in larger image.

'Surf' in Indigo; tweaked after proofing and in the shop!

Surf in Indigo detail.

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Nasher Museum of Art

This week the Nasher Museum of Art is holding a contest with Spoonflower to celebrate their exhibition of works by Matisse, Picasso and Gauguin among others. Matisse had a huge and varied collection of textiles that he often featured in his paintings and the brief is to design a textile that would be at home in one. The top ten designs will be displayed at their Art for All event on December the 6th! The design is restricted to four colours plus white (see below).

Au Jardin

Au Jardin with specified colours

I'd love it if you'd take a couple of minutes to vote for me and have a look at all the amazing designs people came up with - click here!

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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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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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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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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware

  

Kitchenalia, Retro Stylee

Spoonflower are keeping with the trends for this week's contest by combining a kitchen theme with a retro one.

Everything but the Sink

The palette was limited to these four colours plus white; I really needed to see some blue or green after staring at this for hours but for the retro-vintage theme, they were perfect.

Details - click for larger view!

See what everyone else came up with (and vote for your favourites) here! Have a great weekend :)

May 17th:
This design won 6th place! Thanks so much if you had a chance to vote, you can see all top ten fabrics here :)

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hand drawn nature on fabric, accessories & homeware