Showing posts with label spoonflower. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spoonflower. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

How to easily design your own fabric on Spoonflower


I should probably say I am not affiliated with Spoonflower and don't make any money by promoting their website. I just really enjoy designing my own fabric there, and want to share how easy it is!

But first I do have a link you can go to which will take you to a sweepstakes at Spoonflower in coordination with Plum Print..... You can win a custom hardcover 13x11 art book with up to 30 pieces of your child's or your artwork plus $100 in spoonflower credit!
Just click here to enter! 

There are so many ways to design fabric using the tools on Spoonflower website but I believe this one is the easiest by far. You don't need photoshop or any special art tools!


Start with a tiny notebook or an index card.
With any type or color pen draw a small figure. Think cute animals, faces, flowers, fruit, bugs or geometric shapes.......
Go over some of your lines to darken them in a little.
You might even be able to use an image you already have in your sketchbook.


Take a photo of it as close up as possible, or scan your image. (If you are using a camera then try to take your photo in bright, even, natural light, so your background appears all white and not gray on one side and lighter on the other, and hold your camera as level as possible.
If you didn't take your photo with your IPad or iPod or iPhone, and it is not already in whatever device you will use to upload it to the Spoonflower website, then download your image now to your computer using the camera card. 
Crop if needed to remove any edges of the card or notebook that show and to have less white space around you image.


Log into spoonflower.com
Upload your image to spoonflower by clicking on 'add a design'
Click on 'change colors' on the left of your uploaded design.
Click on 'advanced changes' then on '2 colors'
Once the site has broken your image down into just two colors you can change the color of the lines and/or the background by clicking on the square box of color you want to change, and then click on the color from the color choices that you want it to be. For example change your white background to a light blue or peach. Leave you lines the color they were drawn in or change them to a darker black or any other color. You could even make the lines white if you made the background color dark enough. You can easily experiment because if you don't like it, just hit cancel.
Once you are satisfied, Click 'save'


You will be directed back to your design page in your design library. There you can alter it further with the tools at the right of your image........
1. by choosing design size (there is a ruler at the top of your design to show you how big it is. Pay attention to this as it is easy to misjudge the size.)
2. by changing the repeat. There are 5 types. I used half drop. Just click on each one to see how they change the look of the image.
3. by changing the fabric type.
4. by changing the fabric size for your order. I like to change this to swatch size to see how the image will look close up at 8x8 inches.
And 5. Below the image are extras.....You can name your design, add tags, make it public (if you want to either sell it once you have previewed it or if you want to have household items created for you from your design etc.)
You are ready to order!


Or ......
You can now go to roostery.com, which is a site that is connected to spoonflower that sells housewares sewn with spoonflower designs, yours or other designers.  You can get there from the "shop" tab in spoonflower, then click on rookery, the sign in using your spoonflower usernames. Once there you automatically have your own "shop" if you have any public designs in spoonflower, to see it click on "my designs".
You can preview your designs on napkins, pillows, linen towels etc. and order them there so that someone else will do the sewing for you!



I didn't include any photos but you can also order your fabric printed on clothes patterns at the site 'Sprout.com' by clicking on sprout under the shop tab. They also have a program where they will sew the pattern up for you as well. So cool!

Of course, if you want my designs on the pillows above instead of creating your own you can get to my roostery account here, or you can go to my spoonflower account from the links on the right of my blog.

Thanks for visiting! 
And last week i said i may stop linking up to paintpartyfriday because i just don't get around to visiting everyone there, and i felt guilty linking and running. I really didn't say it just to get people to tell me not to go, but since some if you did tell me not to go, here I am again this week... Happy PPF!




Friday, April 15, 2016

hello

Another friday has come again so quickly...
I thought we were due for spring, I had some flowers up in my yard, little crocuses and then we got snow...
inches of snow...
days of snow...







But it has all melted again now 
and I have been working on a mandala (still in progress)
 

 for my e-class; 
Falling Into Mandalas 


coming out in July, 2016
You can signup at coursecraft here
 (also still in progress),

and I have been working on little alphabet children
 (I can't decide between detailing in pencil.... or pen. Goldie and Tim are pen, and Annie and Meg are pencil.)  
.





And I have been working on some fabric too, 
for Spoonflower's "Sprout" contest...
they are looking for a fabric that would work well in a Kimono style pattern. 


See you soon,


Friday, February 26, 2016

5 random things

1. I have added so much to my charm quilt pinterest board that I needed to make another one... called english paper piecing. They are my most popular boards. One thing from it I would love to try is making this fabric scrap twine....
Or to make these with scrap fabric instead of scrap paper...
Or buy this book... 

2. I have put no effort into my cafe press shop in over a year but I have had one thing continue to sell regularly....
This peacock mandala on wall clocks, throw blankets and magnets.  
I really don't make much per sale but it is really great knowing people out there in the world have a clock with an image I painted!
3. Another thing that seems to sell with no help from me anymore is the 8x8 swatch of fabric for the Bee Queen doll on my spoonflower account....
I love thinking a little girl (or adult) has a little Bee Queen doll on her shelf or in her pocket!
I keep telling myself to get the picture book done. 
Technically the art is done and it has been all completed in book form on blurb except for the last page. All I have to do is add the artwork to the page and finish the back book cover and click "done". It has been 3-4 months since I finished the art work yet I cannot get myself to click done. What am I waiting for? why am I procrastinating?
Am I afraid of failure once it is out there?
sometimes i think I should redo the art as it's not quite right...
I just don't know.
Maybe saying this "out loud" on here will force me to get with it and finish it.....
we shall see!?!

4. I have been painting daily again!
But i don't have them photographed to show yet, except this little guy...
My latest addition to my etsy shop is here.
I painted this little owl named Worsted a year ago and kept him in the box with the other painted stones but I never photographed him or listed him. He's been biding his time in the dark but now he needs to go out into the world. Maybe he was just a slow learner or maybe he had failure to launch but I think he is finally ready now. 



5. The winter here in the Fingerlakes region of NY has been very mild but we did get a storm recently.
The roads were really bad but it was beautiful.
My photos don't do it justice at all. The best parts of the road are too dangerous to stop for a photograph because there's no place to pull over on the side. These were taken a day after the storm and bad roads...
It was like driving through a glass forest with bright sun shining through it. and then snow on top of that!
so pretty....










Thursday, February 11, 2016

some new fabrics at spoonflower.....

I have been designing fabric again this week. I started as I wanted some specific designs for the quilt I was working on, then got sidetracked and entered a few of their weekly contests...

This one was done for their last weeks contest, "interspecies friendships"with hardly any changes from the small sketchbook page it was on, (i posted the sketchbook page here)


This one was for this week's contest, using just these 4 colors.... you could still vote by going here


but I think I like this color version better...


then I did one for next week's "love is in the air" contest.


then these are just for my quilt....









and here are the little index cards I painted them on, or rather doodled them on using pens and markers....this little mandala one was just a pen doodle on scrap paper.... cropped and
altered right on the spoonflower website. I wanted a design that would have a repeat about every inch and a half so when I cut them for the quilt's hexagons I could get a lot out of a small 8x8 piece of fabric. It doesn't cost anything to design on spoonflower, and you can sell your designs once you have purchased them at least once to see if the size and color is correct. They give you 16- 21 8x8 samples for $20 (or that or thereabout) so I can get all of these pretty reasonable if I want, and if I decide I don't like them enough to buy them I am out nothing but time. Too bad they don't pay me to talk them up, but I really do enjoy their site. It'll be awhile before I can show you the fabric because I want to play around and pick and choose designs first.





Friday, November 6, 2015

a new line of fabrics on spoonflower

 Been designing a whole set of matching fabrics using index cards and markers...






here they are as fabric... 
can't wait to show you whatever i actually create with these....
of course i don't know what that is going to be yet...





 But I have made a bit of progress on my variation of the passacaglia quilt I  mentioned having discovered online a few weeks ago or so...
and did put one of these new fabrics in it so far..

I looked up 'kaleidoscope' in a thesaurus to try to find a name for this quilt and I came up with ...
phantasmagoria
1.a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination.
2.a changing scene made up of many elements.
3.an optical illusion produced by a magic lantern or the like in which figures increase or diminish in size, pass into each other, dissolve, etc.

Hope I can make a quilt worthy of that name!...
unfortunately it is dark this morning so there's not enough light to get a photo that shows the colors properly, but here it is so far, hours in it but many more hours to go....






 here's my one new fabric from spoonflower....about half the fabrics are mine and half are not.



Happy paint party friday and Fabric friday!