pond_ripple's Fabric Blog

Today's #SFDesignADay is  pen and ink ! Lucie Duclos (known as  Snowflower  in the Spoonflower Marketplace ) will show you all you need to know to delve into this rewarding design process. Be sure to follow along on the  blog  and in your inbox until March 15 as we feature a new Design-A-Day technique, presented to you by members of our talented community of designers! Lucie:  Pen and ink drawing is a line based method of creating images. Subtle variations in style and line quality can range from whimsical and clever illustrations to super realistic drawings. There is an endless amount of pen and ink techniques, but I prefer the basic black and white line drawings because you can create strong graphics with a clean, modern look. And you can always add color at the end and still keep the black outline for definition! Lucie:  Let’s start by picking a theme, let’s say “leaves” for example. First, I li...

We are beyond excited to announce the first technique in March's Design-A-Day SpoonChallenge:  Pencil drawings!  Today, Esther Fallon Lau (known by many as  nouveau_bohemian  in the Spoonflower Marketplace) gives us a closer look at how she incorporates pencil drawings into her design process. Be sure to follow along (on the blog , too!) for the next 15 days as we feature a new Design-A-Day technique, presented to you by one of our many talented  Spoonflower Marketplace  designers! Esther:  As it’s sometimes said, your weakness can become your greatest strength. When I first discovered the joy of  Spoonflower  I was forced to hand-draw all my designs in pencil because I had no technical graphic design skills. Now, this hand drawn technique has evolved into the real ‘hero’ of my work. In contrast to digital drawing, the unpolished look of pencil sketches lends a rawer, more organic quality to illustra...

So I've been busy lately designing fabrics, and yesterday I did did something that I never thought I would. I deleted designs. Not a great many went under the axe, just a few that I had to be honest with myself about. I thought I'd share the ideas behind a few of my designs that have lived to see another day: Jesters Jesters is for the jokers and fools contest on Spoonflower. I wanted to do something colorful and fun, but I had serious doubts that I could do this contest. It took awhile for me to stumble across the right thing on my sketch pad, but once it happened I was really glad that I stuck with it. Primavera Primavera is a beautiful mural in Pompeii that I came across while doing a research paper on Roman paintings. For that project I painted a smaller reproduction of it. To make the fabric design, I took a photograph using my digital camera. I then used Pixlr to edit out the background which had too much texture due to the canvas and the reflection of the flash on the ...