Design-A-Day SpoonChallenge: Day 9

Today's #SFDesignADay comes to you from 2015 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Winner, Eloisa Docton, better known as Natitys in the Spoonflower Marketplace. Eloisa is proof that expensive design software is not needed to create beautiful, bold surface patterns. Eloisa stops by today to talk about her favorite open source tools for creating fun, playful designs that won't break the bank!  Eloisa: Before learning Photoshop and Illustrator, I would search online for countless hours online for easy tools that would allow me to create my designs. To this day, I still recommend using these over expensive programs to start off, because they help you make fun creations without the large investment and the big learning curve. These online programs are also easily accessible, and very user-friendly, people of all ages can play with them! One of my favorite online tools is Canva. On this website, you can specify the size of your image, select from hundreds of free design elements, and, you don't even need to sign up! You can just visit the website and run with it!    Looking for some inspiration? How about these: Another Open Source platform I love is Picmonkey. The great thing about this program is that you can use PicMonkey's connection with Spoonflower to save designs directly to your design library. Check out this tutorial (and these from our Help center!) to help you get started, and be sure to share your creations with me using the hashtag #SFDesignADay! We want to see what you create! Be sure to tag your designs influenced by today's SpoonChallenge technique with #SFDesignADay on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Eloisa works as Spoonflower's Chief Fabric Procurement Specialist. She is a Fashion Design Graduate, and she started her online business, Natitys Design in 2001. When Eloisa's first child was born, Natalie, she started making custom boutique baby bedding. In 2007, she moved away from baby bedding to Infant Car Seat Covers and extended to other gear; Natitys Design products have been offered in the USA, Canada and Japan since then with celebrity clients the likes of Tori Spelling, Jennifer Garner and Julia Roberts. Keep up with Eloisa here on her website and pick up some of her adorable designs in the Spoonflower Marketplace!

This may have been the easiest challenge the folks at Spoonflower have issued in this series. I constantly use Gimp in my patterns and artwork. (It's free and works just as well as high priced image programs out there.) I also used a cute little online drawing tool, Scribbler Too, for good measure :)

Like most of my designs, it was sketched out and photographed before making it's way onto my computer. Then I opened the file as an underdrawing in Scribbler Too. After drawing the flower motif on there, I downloaded it back onto my computer for final work in Gimp. 

Golden Flowers on Black Linen