Coy Blooms and an Exciting Oppurtunity

As well as Lilla Rogers' Make Art that Sells e-course, there is also the Make It In Design The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design e-course that I've been considering taking on in the new year to really launch this new career path.  Both come with excellent testimonials and success rates for their graduates.  Make It In Design are currently running a competition for a scholarship to their e-course for next year!  Deadline for entries is December 12, 2014, with the course starting in January 2015.  Entries need to of a few words on why Surface Pattern Design is interesting to me as a career path, as well as why I think the course would be valuable.  It also needs to include two patterns I've designed.  Here are the two I'm currently considering:

The first pattern is from Coy Blooms, the collection I shared in my last post.  The second is the first from a collection with the working title Oriental Paisley.  It features traditional Japanese repeating pattern and peonies, with paisleys and the Liliflora roses. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and can't wait to get stuck into developing the designs for the rest of this collection.

Speaking of collections, Coy Blooms (thanks Mum!) is now available to view online at my Spoonflower shop!  It's not yet being offered for sale, as I've just ordered some sample swatches to check that the colours are as true as possible to the computer images.  Once I'm happy with it, it will be available for purchase!

I mentioned on my Facebook page a little while ago that I was going to do a quick walkthrough of how I create a repeat pattern from scratch.  It's not really a tutorial, just an indication of my process, however if you have any technical questions about my methods or the tools I use, feel free to ask in the comments!

Here's how I made the repeating polka dots and rosebuds from the Coy Blooms collection:

 I started with a simple pencil sketch and then coloured it in.  I then scanned it into Photoshop, adjusting contrast and brightness and smudging some of the colours to make them look a bit less grainy.  Then I used the magic wand tool to select the white background and delete it to make the rosebuds float on a transparent background.

 I made a new image which was square, and applied the warm grey and cream polkadot background, then copied and pasted the rosebud onto it.  I then used the eraser to remove some of the polka dots (I wasn't planning on the diamond shape, it just turned out that way).  To test the repeat, I made a much bigger new image and used the paint bucket tool to apply the image as a repeating pattern.  This way, I can be sure that the pattern will work without there being mismatched polka dot halves or lines through the pattern where the edges of two repeats meet.

 Now, wasn't that just fascinating?  If you're a fabric geek like I'm becoming, it probably was!

I'm currently working on a proper About Me page for this blog and hope to have it up and running in the next few days.  Until then, let me know what you think of Coy Blooms and what sort of projects you think it might be useful for!

Take care,
Emma