Peppermint Candy Patterned Paper

I'm not too happy with this year's commercially produced holiday patterned paper...too vintagey, too dark. Too much RED. Plus, I need smaller repeating pattens for collage work and I'm seeing too many large patterns or "scenes."

So, I'm making my own!! Have fun!

Today's Freebie: Rainbow Polka Dotted Polka Dots

Yay for using patterns in Inkscape!

Freebie Stickers

I am still in the digital phase of designing my own patterned paper. Once I move on to more of a collage look, I will share resources like I promised in an earlier post.

For digital drawings, I use Inkscape. It's free and works on both Windows and PC. Once you complete a drawing, you choose "export bitmap" which saves the document as a .png file. Then you can open it up in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (like I have) and fiddle with it a bit. The result is something like this - today's freebie:


When making patterns from objects, I find it easier to think in terms of a "sticker sheet" type format, then expand it into a repeating pattern. There are some good Inkscape tutorials out there. For now, I'll just say that you should "group" your images and drag one of the corners to make them smaller. When they are tiny enough to please you, use the "tiled clone" feature to create a repeating pattern.

Here is a smaller repeating pattern:

And here is an even smaller repeating pattern:

Another variation: stripes!

Pirate Owl

AARRRGGGHHHH.

Digitized Cupcake Coloring Book Characters

Here we have the cast of characters for the Cupcake and Friends coloring book (in progress). Like the human race, the cupcake race has a diverse population representing the spectrum of cupcake experience. Included in this family are the Happy/Sad Conjoined Twins, Legless Cupcake on Wheels, Pirate One Eyed Pegleg Cupcake, X-Cupcake, and assorted other eatables.

Note: the call for coloring book illustration scenarios is still on! Today, I was offered: skiing accident, how cupcakes are born, and cupcake gangster initiation. Keep em' coming. If your is selected, you will be provided your own copy of the finished book! Yay CAKE!

Back to School Doodle

Thinking of 2nd grade...

Coloring Book Characters

A coloring book of just cupcakes seems incomplete. So I'm working on developing some characters to use in my work. I'm just calling them "Gerbil Friends" for now. I have no explanation for that other than it just popped into my head. Perhaps they are friends because they are united by a dislike for gerbils, prefer to eat gerbils, or are part-gerbil. This is yet to be determined.

Coffee + No Sleep = Cupcakes!

It's our last day in Oregon. In fact, our plane leaves in a few hours. We are staying in a luxurious corner sweet of a lovely hotel in downtown Portland. I spent most of the night working on this luscious cupcake fabric. This bed is so delicious, I'm rolling around in it with both glee (because, hey, cupcakes!) and sadness that I didn't spend more time in it.

So, what we have here is the blackline from my sketches, the color tile, and a prototype of what the fabric will look like, although lots of color matching work remains to be done. This is style 1, "rainbow cupcakes on white" and a number of variations are in the works. Spoonflower, here I come! Look for cupcake goodies in the shop in September.

Cupcakes, Damn it.

I've looked all over the place, and I cannot find satisfying cupcake fabric. So, it falls upon me to create this item, and boy-howdy am I trying to do it in a little way I like to call, "the right way." Except I'm not sure what the right way is so away I go.

First, I drew sketches in my Rhodia notebook, comme ca (note: I drew these while riding in the car from Yachats to Portland, so they are a bit rougher than usual due to car turbulence):





Next, I begin to digitize and form some kind of a pattern in Inkscape:

I want the fabric to be "multi-directional" so there's no way for it to be upside-down. This makes it easier to cut. So I fiddle around with rotating the shapes and tiling the original design to get an idea of what it would look like on a larger scale.


Now, I'm working on adding color and patterns before submitting it to Spoonflower for a swatch to see if the colors are true to my vision.

Note polka-dot and stripe-y patterns on these 2 'cakes.

Any suggestions are welcome!!! Nation, we are in need of a kick-ass cupcake fabric. So let your voice be heard. These babies will find their way into vinyl covered zip pouches at some point soon. xxxooo melissa

Button flowers

I like the idea of merging fabric and sewing elements with digital drawings,
so I'm doing some experimenting...