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. 

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!