Hello January Wallpapers

I wanted to create a wallpaper for my iPhone and participate in the Instagram #WeDrawtheYear challenge, so I combined the two. One of my goals for this year is to create a wallpaper for each month.

I haven't done this before so hopefully it works this way!

Click on the images to download them in their full size.

iPhone 5 wallpaper

iPhone 6

iPad

Thanks for stopping by!

New Year Wishes

2015 was a whirlwind of writing books, traveling to teach and making beads. I am now the author of 3 jewelry/bead books. That feels pretty awesome!

I've worked on a plan for the new year to focus more on illustrating and cultivating daily habits of sketching and painting. I've given my website an update and will be signing up for Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells class later this month. I wish I could have taken the live class, but the timing never worked with my travel schedule. 

Here's to a very creative and productive 2016 - cheers! 

Christmas Gift Tag Printables

Merry Christmas! Decided it was time to make a new set of gift tags for the season for my last minute gift wrapping.

They were all inspired by holiday beads that I create.

I'm offering these as a free printable for your personal use. 

Download them here. 

Allegory Gallery Exhibit

My friend Andrew Thornton and owner of the bead shop/gallery space Allegory Gallery in Ligonier, PA invited me to have a solo show in September.

Can't tell you what a thrill it was to see my illustrations framed and hanging on the wall. I really need to get things set up so I can sell my prints online.

I spent the weekend teaching a jewelry workshop inspired by the waterfalls of Pennsylvania and we were fortune enough to take a field trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water House. Wow, what an amazing place! 

I returned home to fall slowly creeping around my home. Milkweed, monarchs and Queen Anne's lace were spotted around the fields and in my sketchbook.

Embrace Change

It's the only constant in life.

Make It In Design Summer School - Lesson 3

So this is our final assignment for the Make It In Design Summer School. I have really enjoyed the creative briefs, playing with materials and experimenting during this time of stretching out of my comfort zone. Our inspiration this week was jewels. 

Uh, hello bead world colliding with my illustrating world - my dream come true! If you are new to my blog, I make my living making beads, so this assignment had my attention. 

During the sketching phase I came up with a very formal floral and gem design, and I will paint it up during the weekend but for the assignment I wanted to stay in the playful and slightly abstract vein that I had explored with the last challenge. With school supply season in full swing I picked up some Sharpie markers in fashionable colors last week and played with them with oil pastels and then lots of doctoring in Photoshop. It was fun to just to let go and I think I came up with a quirky design that would work well for the tween market. 

I must explore this more and come up with an entire collection of bead inspired designs, because that just brings me all sorts of joy!

And thanks to my shop at Society 6 for the cute mock-ups of the design on various products. 

Jewel Skirt Set by Humblebeads

And then I whipped up a mock-up of the pattern to see what it would look like as a skirt and paired it up with some cute items from Hanna Anderson and Old Navy. It was fun to see the design come together as an outfit. I could totally see my little nieces rocking this skirt.

With each online course I grow a little more and learn all sorts of new tricks. I'm feeling more confident in the world of pattern design. I've gone from a complete beginner to 'dang I've got a lot of learn' - you know that point when you realize how complex and interesting the design world is and you are just scratching the surface with your pencil? Yeah that's where I'm at now.

Some things I've learned this summer:

1. I love creating patterns and designs, more than I thought I would and I see that as the sweet spot where my beadmaking and illustration skills come together.  

2. I've been asking myself the wrong question as an artist for way too long. What is the wrong question? 

Am I good enough? 

Good enough for what? 

Good enough to make it as an artist, to find success, to make money creating art? I will always have room to grow but all of us are worthy because we have a voice and something to share that is always good enough.  

The real question I should have been asking all along is: 

"What do I love to make?" 

And now I need to stop questioning and just get to the business of making and sharing. 

3. Now I need to explore the trends and class assignments in depth and find more of a marriage between the class projects and my style/brand as an artist. I really went out of the box and explored different media and styles over the summer now I need to focus on creating a brand and look to move forward and grow as an illustrator.  

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.