Category Archives: Art

Spoonflower and Art Print Shops Update- May 2017

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Hi everyone! I know it’s been a few weeks since I posted on my blog, but I had a lot of things I had to do offline. While I was gone, I was able to update and work on my Spoonflower and my art print shops.

On Spoonflower, I was able to edit and release for sale new fabric designs I didn’t have the time to work on. These designs are based off a tiara doodle I did for Inktober 2016. I’m very pleased with the way they turned out.

The designs have different colored jewels in the tiara, but I decided to only feature one for now. You can see the rest in the Crown Designs collection on my Spoonflower here. (I’ll eventually add more crown themed designs in the future, but right now the tiaras are the only ones available for sale.)

In other Spoonflower news, last year I received an email from Spoonflower saying that they edited my description for a few of my fabric designs so it wouldn’t interfere with copyright infringement phrases. The designs are the ones for my Doctor Who inspired fabrics and the phrase that was removed was “Doctor Who”. When I realized this, I decided to remove all my Doctor Who inspired designs, no matter if they were meant for cosplay/costumes or not, from public view.

Although removing the designs from public view seemed like an overreaction, I was taking care of an ill family member at that time and I didn’t have the time to sit down and actually think about anything besides my family member. After my family member passed away, I began to work on what I wanted to say in the descriptions of the designs. Since I wrote the descriptions of the Doctor Who costume fabrics, Spoonflower discontinued fabrics I favored for costume making and added new fabrics I liked much better than my old favorite fabrics. It took a while to change the descriptions, but I was able to do it. I also created a new collection for all my Doctor Who inspired designs along with any other fabrics I created for future costumes. This collection is now called Geek and Cosplay/Costume Inspired and can be seen here.

As of this post, the only designs available in the collection are Doctor Who inspired ones, but I hope to add a few non Doctor Who designs in the future.

And finally, I created a new Society6 shop! I didn’t like the URL address for my first Society6 shop, so I made a new one. The new one is located here. I hope to eventually add more of my art to this new account, but right now I’m too busy working on other things so I must keep it a little sparse for now.

So, that’s all I have to talk about for now! I hope to keep everyone updated about any changes to my Spoonflower and Society6 shops.

Thank you for reading!

2017 Chinese New Year Rooster Sketch

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I wanted to draw a sketch to celebrate Chinese New Year for a while now, but I never had the opportunity until this year. I drew the sketch late for Chinese New Year, but I’m very pleased with the way it turned out so I decided to write a post about it!

2017 is the year of the rooster, so I naturally had to draw a rooster. I never drew a rooster before and nearly all my other attempts at drawing or sketching birds never worked well, so I didn’t know how my sketch would turn out.

Fortunately, I really like the way it turned out!

year-of-the-rooster-sketch

I drew the rooster on printer/copy paper with a .7 mechanical pencil. I used a google search for reference photos of a rooster to help me in my drawing. I over exaggerated the length of some of the feathers, but it looks pretty good to me. Especially since I have a poor track record with drawing birds. :)

I’m not sure if I’ll try sketching more bids in the future, but this sketch does give me a boost in bird drawing confidence.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

How I Create My Spoonflower Fabric Designs- Part 2

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For this week’s post, I will continue discussing how I created my Spoonflower fabric designs. In my last post, I mentioned there are two way I create my designs, the first is by creating a full drawing while the second is creating a half a drawing. The difference between the two is a full drawing is the whole drawing is drawn while half a drawing is only half a drawing’s lines are drawn, then I edit the drawing in Photoshop to make it a whole, complete drawing. My last post was dedicated to how I create designs using a whole, complete drawing. This post is dedicated to how I create designs using the more complex half drawing.

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How I Create My Spoonflower Fabric Designs- Part 1

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For over a year, I wanted to make a post about how I create my fabric designs for Spoonflower, but I never had the opportunity to sit down and write about it. There are other ways to learn how to create fabric designs on Spoonflower, including reading The Spoonflower Handbook (Which I never read, thus I cannot vouch for how helpful it is, but thought I’d mention anyway), but I thought I’d talk about how I do it.

My way is, I think, different than other ways I know of because I taught myself how to use Photoshop and I’m not as advanced in using it as people sometimes think. I also favor drawing on paper instead of painting in Photoshop only because I have better control over my drawings using paper and pencil than I do digitally. Because of this, I create my designs by combining my basic knowledge of Photoshop and drawing on paper with a pencil.

Side note: I do not receive any financial compensation for anything I linked to in this post for the exception of my fabric designs on Spoonflower.

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2016 Sewing, Photography, and Art Roundup

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Excuse the reflective beginning of this post, but to put it bluntly, 2016 was not a fun year for me. Also, please excuse the amount of photos in this post. I wanted I worked on this year that I’m pleased with to get mentioned in my post.

2016 is almost over and I’m happy to see it over. This year, like many people I talked to, I didn’t really have a great year. My year wasn’t good mostly because I took care of an ill family member and that family member eventually passed away. When it sunk in that my family member wasn’t going to live as long as I believed they could, I had a very hard time talking care of my family member knowing that there was nothing I could do to help them. But, with the assistance of my immediate family, friends, and faith, I got through it. I feel a lot better than I did a few months ago, but when I decided to go through 2016’s post to see what I can talk about in this end of year post, I felt sad because I didn’t get to do nearly as much as I planned to this year.

If I learned anything from 2017, it is that life is unpredictable in both good and bad ways and no amount of planning can save you from the unpredictable. Although I am sad my family member is no longer with me, I know they are in a better place and that I did my best taking care of them. I also learned how important family and friends are in a person’s life, how much grit and strength I truly have, and what loyalty really looks and feels like. I am a different person now and, although what I went through was very painful, I am glad I went through it. I may be a different person than I was in the beginning of the year, but I am a better person now. And I’m thankful for it.

Since I had a hard time with my personal life, I didn’t have the time or energy to work on anything “artistic”. I would draw, sew, and take photos, but everything would fall to the waist side because I was more worried about other, more important things. Still, I tried to work the last half of the year so I could start blogging again. :) Continue reading →

Coloring Book Inspired Fabric Designs

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Last week I talked about the pastel colored version of my fabric design Heart Damask that is now for sale on Spoonflower. When I ordered the swatches for the fabric, I also ordered swatches for some coloring book inspired fabric designs I created.

I’m not sure how well these designs will go, mostly because they are black and white thus not as colorful as my other designs, but if they are popular, I’ll try to make some more. In other words, these designs are just an experiment. :)

Here are the designs…

All of these designs were created to be colored, and they will be in the future, but for now the line art is available as fabric, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. These designs are available for sale on Spoonflower here.

That’s all for now and thank you for reading!

New Fabric Designs- Heart Damask Part 2

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I’d like to apologize for the short length of this post. I thought that this post would be longer, but to be honest, I don’t have much to say about it these fabric designs.

Everyone remember the Heart Damask fabric design I made a while ago? Well, I ordered the swatches and now the pastel version of the design is now available for sale! Yippie!

Here they are…

You can purchase these designs here.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

#Inktober 2016 Last Sketches

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It’s the last full week of November and I realized I didn’t make a post about the last sketches I did for Inktober! (In my defense, I was very busy this past month) For the previous posts about my Inktober sketches, you can find week one here and week two here.

I mentioned in my previous Inkober posts that I caught a cold and didn’t feel like keeping up drawing every day. Near the end of October, I became tired of drawing everyday and stopped drawing all the Inktober sketches. I did draw a few more sketches before I quit, but I don’t have 31 sketches drawn in October.

Here are the last remaining drawings I did for Inktober 2016….

Yes, BB8 is one of my sketches. I debated if I should draw him, but I was running out of ideas at that time so I did. Plus, I have a coin bank of BB8 so sketching a still life was easier than I thought. XD

That’s all I have for my 2016 Inktober sketches! I wish I did a sketch each day of the 31 days of October, but life happens. Thank you for reading!

#Inktober 2016 Sketches- Week 1

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I originally planned this week’s post to be about sewing, but thanks to a cold, I was unable to finish any post about sewing or finish any current sewing projects. Instead, this week’s post will be dedicated to my Inktober sketches!

I heard from an artist friend about Inktober on Instagram and I always wanted to participate. If nobody has heard of Inktober or knows what it is, Inktober is when an artist draws a drawing or sketch every day through the month of October using ink. I’ve seen artists use ink makers while others use a ball point pen.

Although I always wanted to participate in Inktober, I never had the time to do it. This year, I had the time and I wanted to end my many months long break from drawing, I thought it would be a great time to participate!

Anyway, here are the first week’s 6 drawings! I’m currently having phone problems so I cannot get the drawings off my phone yet, so the photos of my sketches in this post are not that great. Still, they’re not terrible so they get posted anyway! :)

I did all the drawings with a ballpoint pen on copy/printer paper. The variation of color and clarity depended on how my phone photographed the drawings.

That’s all for now and thank you for reading!

New Fabric Designs For Sale- Heart Damask Part 1

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Sorry about the lack of posts… well… anywhere! I’ve mentioned this before, but I the am currently the caretaker of an ill family member. Because of this, I don’t have the time and energy to update social networking sites frequently. I’m still active on them, but so far I am unable to finish anything enough to photograph and blog/post about. Despite this, I’m still working on new drawings and I’m still sewing things for my Etsy store. I’m very slow, but I’m still working!

Earlier this year, when my care taking duties became more time and energy consuming, I started to work on some new fabric designs for Spoonflower. Although I only intended on creating one design for a dress I want to make in the future, I ended up creating over ten new designs. I was able to finish one design so far, but there are many others I plan on working on and finishing by the end of this year. I think the reason why I have so many new fabric designs is because I’ve been so bad about drawing every week that I had a massive amount of ideas in my head without any way of getting them out of my head. XD

The first design I finished from this collection of designs is what I call Heart Damask…

heart damask fabric design 1

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