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. 

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. 

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.

Make It In Design Summer School

A few weeks ago I started the online course offered by Make It In Design called Summer School. It's a trend and inspiration brief sent out every two weeks, there are three different tracks and since I'm a very green beginner in the world of surface design I'm taking the beginner track. Our first week was Tropical Paradise.  I was digging pineapples and zeroed in on them. I worked in mixed media using pencil, watercolor pencils and gouache. 

My goal in making the art for this course is creating designs that I would want to wear, have in my home or give as a gift.  I'm not a whiz at mocking things up so I have these in my Society 6 shop and borrowed the photos from there! 

The fun part of the brief is that it's all trendy items and that has inspired me in my day job - making beads and jewelry.  So here is a pineapple bracelet that I made for myself! I had never really thought of myself as a pattern designer, but I realized I make patterns all the time - they are just in clay rather than on paper.  So working in clay first for each assignment has been a fun a way to find inspiration. 

Tiny pineapple charms.

The second brief was on tribal patterns and I wanted to work with color and texture for this design. The feather pattern was inspired by African prints. I wanted to create more of a collection that would work together so I worked up three patterns in the same color palette and graphic line quality. These were created with Copic markers and oil pastels. 

Here are the three designs and products from my Society 6 shop.  You can also get prints of each of these designs there too. I really think I need to order that big on the top for myself!

And to start this assignment I started with the clay and made beads. This design actually inspired the drawings in both color and pattern. I've wanted to create beads that had that a tribal vibe for a while because it's super trendy in the jewelry world right now, so bonus result of the class!

You can see the galleries and read more about the Make It In Design programs on their website here.