making cushions!

So this week is vacation week! YAY

I have spent the best part of this week hanging out with my sister and my daughter Rosie or helping my mom in her new place (I will post photos!)

My sister is also redecorating and that gave me the idea of making her some custom throw pillow covers.

Here is the process:

I started with blank IKEA Gurli pillow covers...  At 4.99 a pop, it is certainly worth not making them myself (i.e never get it done...)

These are my scribbled sketches!

I cut up a piece of foam with a plastic liner used for installing laminate flooring and placed it inside the pillow to avoid bleeding through to the other side.

I also taped the edges to get a clean look.  I used regular latex paint and some tri-art acrylic paint for the red.

These are the looks so far.  This was super fun to do and quick, all done during Rosie's nap time!!

xox Manuela

a midsummer night's dream

 Sometimes I find creating with no boundaries to be very difficult...  Which is why having weekly design challenges on Spoonflower is a great idea!  I am sure many designers find the direction and restrictions actually quite pleasing to work in.  Last week's Challenge was a design based on Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (which I read in high school, btw!  ... well it was mandatory!) Not only was there a theme, but this week there was also a restricted palette imposed on all designs:

I was like...  Easy shmeezy!!  But as I started working on it, I found the colors to be difficult to proportion correctly.  Anyway, this is what I ended up with, using all the four colors, plus white:

Midsummer flowers by MAJA Studio

Overall pretty satisfied, and I was pleasantly surprised by how many people took the time to comment and favorite my piece!!  What a great community Spoonflower is!  The other entries are quite impressive...  I think voting ends tomorrow, and the next round theme is CITRUS.  I'll post soon about how my citrus design adventure has ended  :o  Turns out citrus was a fun starting point, but ended up totally elsewhere!

Society6

All this surface design has inevitably led to me spending countless hours online searching for places to share and mingle with other designers.  I have been busy uploading work onto my new Society6 shop.  To me, there is nothing more exciting than seeing something I made on a product or in somebody's home.  I like STUFF, which I think is a good thing when you create for consumers!

Anyway, I was pretty happy to see a sale after just 2 days of my store opening!  How exciting!  Hopefully more will come...  I know this is a brand new venture for me, and I need to be making MORE and MORE designs if I want a chance to make it in the business, but I feel like this is for me.  

CHEERS to a new adventure!

new concepts

I'm developing new concepts in the style of Moroccan textiles and patterns... some working concepts so far:

v o t e s !

Well the time has come to vote!  I am seeing for the first time my collection printed on actual fabric.  While I must say I am very pleased with the colour, I am not so sure about the scale of my patterns...  I wish I had scaled down the design of the bottom-middle design, I feel that everything is a bit large for this kind of close-up photography.  I imagined my designs on upholstered pieces more than on quilts, thus the scale, but for the purpose of this contest, I wish I had forseen they way they would be presented...  Alas, what is done is done! Who knows... I might be pleasantly surprised by winning!  One can dream... ;)

Vote here

My collection Fabric8 Genius

the eight final collections

Congratulations to the seven other designers, your collections are looking gooooood!

The Spoonflower blog is posting designer profiles for the 8 finalists in the Fabric8 contest.  Mine is up now, check it out!

Spoonflower

I am having a splendid adventure on the website Spoonflower these days...  A few weeks back I entered their weekly design contest on the theme GEEK CHIC and presented this design.  I made it to the semi-finals (top 100) and after the voting round, I was in the top 8 finalists!!

mathematical tension, my original design for the competition

I have been creating new coordinating designs for the final round for a little over two weeks now.  I am pretty happy with my overall collection, considering I am rather new at this!  My background as a commercial artist is really coming in handy in terms of colouration and scale and overall composition.  Turns out I can manage pretty good with this digital stuff!!  These were all done using Photoshop CS6 and my Wacom tablet.  The voting round begins June 6th (this thursday!!)  

dots & numbers coordinating fabric, Fabric8 Geek Chic collection

problems to solve coordinating fabric, Fabric8 Geek Chic collection

know your angles coordinating fabric, Fabric8 Geek Chic collection

Here are some of the other designs I made:  Some of them will be available for purchase at Spoonflower once the contest is over:

The winner of this contest will score a licensing contract with Robert Kaufman fabrics, a 1000$ advance on royalties and a huge Wacom tablet.  NOT BAD ;)  Last year's winner Andie Hanna seems to be doing pretty well, her collection launched this spring and looks fantastic!

My fingers are crossed xxxxx