Herb Garden

This weeks Spoonflower contest is all about the herb garden.  I have always loved growing herbs since i picked up a book on traditional herb gardens when I was in high school.Chives, basil, sage and rosemary have always featured in my garden and my front garden is full of lavender.

  But more recently I have been interested in herbal teas. Camomile and Honey being one of my favourites.  It is with this in mind that I produced the pattern below. If you like it you can vote for it here.  It will also be made for sale soon and in two other colour ways - chic yellow and grey and a serene blue and green

Also - Summer School starts this week.  There are three different levels from beginner , intermediate and advanced .  Each will have a new brief every two weeks.  It going to be lots of fun.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone interprets the themes.  Summer school lasts for 6 weeks and is completely free.  If you haven't signed up yet follow this link and I will see you there.

Exciting times

Firstly a big thank you to you.

Thank you for all the encouraging comments and support I have been receiving.  If you want to you can also contact me through Facebook.  (I will have my social media buttons up and running soon.)  In the meantime, follow the link and say hello.  If you like my page you will the first to hear about further instalments from the blog along with other news.

Why not Rhino's?

Spoonflower last week was all about fishing lures - well not feeling too inspired I gave that one a miss.  Others however came up with some stunning designs. Which can still be seen on the front page. This week it is all about rhinos.  Safari themed prints commonly have elephants and lions but its not that often that you see a rhino.  However, there are herds of them at Spoonflower this week including my own design. I wanted to create a design which had scenes, was fun and vibrant and could be used for the quilting market.

A bit of coordination

I wanted to show some fabric samples of this design.  I am UK based so my Spoonflower samples will take a while to travel from USA but I have had some made up at the UK fabric printers, Print me Pretty and what's really great is that because the samples came out so well, they have now been made available to buy. If you are based in the UK, this is brilliant as it is much faster and there is no chance of the customs import charges. They are currently available in two types of cotton . I also created two coordinates and all three are now available.  I hope to have two further colour ways available soon both on Spoonflower and Print me Pretty.

Voting
There is still a little time to vote. So I advise you head over there and share some love to these beautiful creatures.  If you are not into crafting but still would like this design head over to Society6 where I have made it available on some different products.  My favourite is the bag.

Fabric8

On Friday the 8 finalists of the Spoonflower/Kaufman Fabric8 competition unveil their coordinating designs and we get to vote this year winner.  I would definitely recommend checking them out as these are some very talented designers and I'm personally looking forward to see how they develop their designs.

20 ways to doodle- mini book review

During my course I was very lucky to win a copy of 20 ways to draw a doodle.  Well last week it arrive in the post, attractively packaged in one of  Rachaels gift wrap designs.

  Rachael has chosen 45 themes as a launch point  to doodling.  You could ask why would you need a book to teach you how to doodle but then your missing the point.  It a beautiful reference guide to many different styles of doodling. I know that when I'm just doodling I always fall into similar themes and styles.

The book also encourages the use of different media to get different effects and most importantly to keep your work and refer back to it for inspiration.  I have found it useful to flick through until something catches my eye and then use this as a place to start. Thank you Rachael for the book I know I will be referring to this a lot in my designing.