Holiday Gift Tags - Free Printable

I created a series of gift tags to match my new vintage inspired Christmas decorations. I needed new tags to match our decorations this year. Yes, my gift wrapping has to match the tree! I painted these earlier this year and decided they were perfect for my gifts.

Loving this color palette for the holiday season! Download the printable here.

The start of my vintage ornament collection and a few bottle brush trees. We picked all these up at our local antique mall. They are so sweet and paired with lots of snowflakes and white putz houses. Those will be my hunt for next year, vintage putz houses. My current collection are new ones.

Make Art That Sells Bootcamp: Magazine Assignment

This is my entry for this month's bootcamp assignment. We are to create an illustration suitable for a magazine based on 5 brave things we've done. I distilled that down to the brave things it takes to run a successful creative business.

I had so much fun making this image an combining my love of beads and nature in this illustration.

I tucked little symbols through the crown on my head: the boat for my sailing my own ship and for the Bead Cruise facet of my business. The moth to symbolize that most of my success is due to always transforming into something new and a nod to my late night creative pursuits. The nest for nurturing my hopes and dreams and my balance of motherhood and business. The fruit at the top is of course, the fruit of my labor and how it provides for our family.

Hmm, I need to make that necklace happen in real life!

Folio Focus: Maps

For this week's Folio Focus assignment we were challenged to make maps. Eek, not my thing! I did an illustration of a map of Michigan with my beloved hometown highlighted and a list of my favorite highlights my town offers.

We are a tiny tourist town on Lake Michigan. We are the blueberry capital of the world and in what's known as Michigan's fruit belt. So lots of farms everywhere. We are also the home to Red Haven peaches, a special hybrid. So I created a repeat pattern with peaches and blueberries. I see these in a kitchen on enamelware and printed on tea towels.

My map I envision it as a wall piece on a wooden base because most the homes in this area of summer homes that have a nautical vibe and I could see this working in that decor.

Beach Bags - Make Art that Sells Bootcamp

I created these two patterns based on a brief from Lilla Rogers' in her 2017 Make Art that Sells Bootcamp. This month's assignment was abstract designs for backpacks. 

One of my guiding principals when I create a design is to make something I would love to own. I think about how I would use a backpack and really, the only time I pull out anything that looks like a backpack is when we are heading to the beach in the summer. 

I pulled a color palette of pink, purple, periwinkle, navy blue, peach and olive green. I wanted something fun and playful but had a vintage nod. My designs were painted in gouache inspired by stones collected from the beach. 

This is the first time I transformed my paintings in vectors in Adobe Illustrator and then created them into patterns. It was a huge learning curve but once it clicked working in Illustrator did make creating patterns much easier. I will be exploring Illustrator much more in my patterns since I'd love to work with fabric companies. 

Hexagon Garden Patterns

A new abstract floral pattern that I've worked up into two patterns. The first one will be entered in Spoonflower's Hexagon Design Challenge. I'm going to start selling fabric on Spoonflower, trying to decide what to offer first and then I will order my test swatches. Super excited about seeing my prints on real fabric! 

My next step is take a Skillshare class that will teach me how to make my watercolors into a pattern in Illustrator. I'm excited to jump into this and add Illustrator skills to my bag of tricks! 

Forest Magic

I could paint moths and butterflies all day long. They are just amazing little works of art flying around. I created two coordinating patterns but thought they needed a little more tweaking.

I had the pleasure of touring a butterfly farm last year in the Caribbean and it was completely magically. There were moths as big as my head. The chrysalis were fascinating too. Do you know each butterfly or moth as a specific plant that is their nursery and they will only breed near those plants. 

In Michigan we plant milkweed to encourage monarch butterflies to stick around. I love walking through the forests here and running across one of these beauties. I don't see many moths now that we live in town, but when we lived the country the summer nights were thick with moths flocking to the glow of the porch light. 

Belize Market Mock Ups

I worked up one more pattern for last week's Folio Focus geometric assignment. This one probably fit more with the mosaic tile theme that was our inspiration.

And who doesn't love a nifty mock up? I thought these patterns would be adorable as little make-up bags. 

Folio Focus: Geometric Patterns

This week I'm back to working on the Folio Focus Portfolio Challenge. They post a fun design assignment each week with tons of inspiration. This week was Geometric Patterns.

Not the easiest for me, but I jumped with sketches of plants and fruits inspired by a recent visit to Belize. We went to the Mayan ruin of Al-tun Ha. It was my second time there and this time I have to say I saw quite smitten by the little stalls of fresh fruits near the trinket shops.

They were full of color and pattern and even the hand-lettered signs were inspiring. So that's were I ended up with my patterns this week, dissecting those fruits, pods, leaves and seeds. I mixed in some patterns from the island fabrics.

I wish I had taken more photos while I traveling but most of the best images are in my memory and slowly making their way into my sketchbook.

New Holiday Card Collection

I've been enjoying the portfolio building challenge called Folio Focus from Rise & Design. It's a great weekly brief to help expand our surface design portfolios. This week was Sweet Greeting and focused on greeting cards. I went with painting white on black backgrounds.

This is a 10 week challenge and we are on week 2 - can't wait to see what's next. I'm loving the challenge and inspiration.

Woodland Mum Collection

I've been working hard on a new collection that to submit to Uppercase Magazine's + Windham Fabrics New Designer Competition. I would love to include fabric designer to resume! With each collection I create I know I'm one step closer. 

I wanted to have a collection that would look awesome in a wide variety of sewing projects so I worked on adding lots of range for scale, including geometric and smaller prints. And color is everything isn't it? So lots of pop there with value and a fun autumn inspired palette.  

You can see the original inspiration for this pattern below started out as one of my beads in polymer clay. I had fun translating the design into paint. I'd love this design on a thank you card too, think I'll have to make that happen! 

Autumn Inspirations for Surface Design

I've been working on adding new work to my portfolio this week from work I painted earlier this summer. Feeling inspired by all things autumn. Trying to decide if I should work up some patterns or leave these as random icons. Kinda digging the field guide vibe of them. 

New Christmas Designs

I've been having fun working on new surface design pieces. Country Christmas features rustic holiday decor and homemade cookies, bakers twine, evergreens, dried orange slices and cinnamon sticks. Oh how I love an unplugged holiday! 

I worked up my cabin inspired ornaments into a portfolio ready piece. These were done for the Make Art that Sells Bootcamp. I'd love to have these on my tree. 

Global Talent Search Entry

A few weeks ago I won a spot in Lilla Rogers' Global Talent Search. I've been sketching and planning ever since and here is my entry. I was able to create 5 patterns from my paintings, so that's definitely the start of a new collection. 

I've wanted to do something with moths all summer, I couldn't wait to jump in and use them for my submission. I dug in deep to my roots of nature inspired themes and went to straight to the source for a tea-themed creation - camellia sinsesis, the plant were tea leaves come from! They have a lovely flower that I abstracted and dismantled for my elements. 

I finished the entry on my birthday, so maybe my wish will come true and I'll place in the top 50 and be able to go on to the next assignment. Oh, maybe I should go out and wish on a few 100 falling stars since the Perseids meteor shower is also happening. 

Good luck to everyone that entered. Entering is a win all on it's own, it's not easy putting your work out there for a competition. No matter what, we can all celebrate knowing we created new, exciting and portfolio-worthy work to send out into the world. 

Make Art that Sells Bootcamp Review

I finally finished all my Make Art That Sells Bootcamp assignments. A few weeks into the Bootcamp we had an unexpected opportunity to buy a house and move, along with lots of traveling and teaching in April and May. So not every assignment was submitted to the gallery, but I feel pretty accomplished having new pieces for my portfolio and loved the 5 months of inspiration from my favorite artsy fairy godmother, Lilla Rogers. 

I was watching Lilla's Periscope this afternoon, as I do every Tuesday while I'm working away in the studio, and won an entry into the Global Talent Search! Of course, I am already signed up so I will happily take the refund and put it toward my future art class fund, which I'm hoping is the Children's Book Class. I really did need the encouragement to enter though, now there is no way I will not submit an entry while I may very well have talked myself out of it if I hadn't just won a spot! Oh self-doubt - why do you always want to arm wrestle?

Any way, back to my Bootcamp review. I can't recommend it enough for 5 months of portfolio building and market insights. I'm going to go backward through the assignments. The first one here was for July and was an assigned flower based on our locale and to create a journal cover.

June's assignment was a children's book character study and Vicuna's were our subject matter. This inspired some pretty stinking cute beads!

You just never know what will be inspired by MATS bootcamp!

May's assignment, is actually the last piece I finished. I decided I couldn't leave one undone and really dug deep to finish this project. Wall art inspired by tarot card imagery was our assignment with our subject matter based on our birthday. So Leo and Strength were easy enough to wrap my mind around. I love the idea of quite strength and depicted my maiden in a plus-size body because strength comes in all shapes and sizes.

April was so much fun! Christmas ornaments with a lumberjack theme. I'm not much of a lumberjack kinda girl so I went with woodland and plaid inspirations - things a lumberjack would see! Ha, sometimes you have to let the assignment inspire you in ways that are outside the box. I did these in June, after my move and life was settling back to normal! But I could paint Christmas themes any day of the year. Next, I need to clean these up in Photoshop and get them laid out properly.

And our first assignment, way back in March was a coloring book cover inspired by 1920's flappers. Of course I had to tie it into beads! I'd love to make this project a reality. I should really add this to my my to-do list and send in a submission to my publisher. 

Along with the assignments, there is an awesome Facebook group for participants that is always filled with the most encouraging and helpful artists. And seeing how differently everyone approaches each project is an education in itself!

So that's the last 5 months and my bootcamp round up. Stop by Make Art That Sells to get the scoop on their current classes. 

Snowflake Pattern Design

Another holiday collection completed! I wanted to play around with snowflakes and more geometric designs.

And thanks to the magic of the Photoshop, I really dig them in a non-traditional hue like these violets. 

Wouldn't these make adorable pajama bottoms? I think I need to whip up a polar bear to match this collection. Yep, that's what I need to do next! 

Holiday Surface Designs

I've been working away on my surface design portfolio. Being a Christmas nut and learning that half your portfolio should holiday made my inner elf quite giddy. So I've been taking some bead designs from the last few years and translating them into surface design patterns. 

I want to add a few more collections, but this is a good start!
http://www.heatherpowersart.com - my portfolio just had a facelift. Stop by to see what's new.

Children's Decorative Plates and Dinnerware

Just wanted to share my two finished boards from the MATS home decor assignment.  I decided to make two boards since there were two styles that emerged from my explorations. We started out looking at antique Staffordshire pottery and that lead me pearlware dishes for children that had the most delightful floral motifs and lettering.

I may revisit these and offer them as wall art later on, I could totally see these in a kids room. That cheetah though, he needs a story! I'm going to use him a series of illustrations with my cat that I shared yesterday. Should be fun. Our next assignment is children's books. so he will cross over.

And that's the bonus from taking Make Art That Sells - you start off with the inspiration from the assignment but that leads to many more ideas and avenues to explore.

Make Art That Sells Progress

Working on my next Make Art That Sells course. I'm enrolled in the self-paced MATS A which covers fabric, home decor, children's books, wall art and the gift market. I finished the fabric assignment, I'll share that soon. But first I wanted to show these plates that I'm working on inspired by Staffordshire pottery. I liked the kookiness of the pastoral outfits and the silly and aloof cat figurines, so in my brain a mashup was needed. 

I decided to work on some portfolio pieces that would fit in with my children's illustration and made plates with kids in mind.

These are in progress, I'm still tweaking and thinking. I also need two more designs for a set of four plates. I had a few others started by they weren't exactly in the same style and ended up going in different directions like this adorable monkey below that I transformed into a little pirate.

I imagine a little tropical island with all these creatures. Do you remember the island on Bed Knobs and Broomsticks? I don't know why that stuck with me as kid but a place like that popped into my head while making these.

Not sure if this guy goes with the set. But I certainly love him! I definitely giggled out loud a few times painting these over the weekend.