Ready, Set, Sew: Race Day Tank Top

I have to admit that I'm not always the most enthusiastic runner. My motivation has a lot more to do with the clothes than the many other benefits of running. So I decided, after my first tank top turned out pretty well, I needed to try out Spoonflower's Performance Pique fabric to make a running tank for the Pikes Peek 10K race this past weekend.

I again used an existing tank top (with a racer back) as the pattern, which worked out pretty well, but I tried another method for the binding and ended up with straps that were slightly different sizes (oops!). I also wish I had made it a little bit longer, but overall it fit pretty well.

I really loved the fabric. It was light and surprisingly great quality. I think it will hold up really well over time. I picked my Block Print Blossom pattern in Hydrangea for the task. 

Here's a pic at the finish line! I'm always the happiest when its all over. Photobombed by the Geico Gecko of course. 

It was really cold at the start so I wore my jacket through the first few miles, but was delighted when the sun came out! Good thing I remembered my sunscreen ;o)

Anyways, after all my crazy fabric design projects of late, I decided to try something a little different. Here's a sneak peek... more to come!

It's Almost Here! Spring Block Print Patterns

Despite getting about seven inches of snow this past week, today's 50+ degree temperatures are making me feel like I can finally be hopeful that winter is almost over! Woohoo! In light of this general elation, I'm excited to share these new patterns:

 I really enjoyed the tactile experience of block printing the past few weeks (and sewing some sweet projects)... but I was ready for some instant gratification. So I scanned my favorite flower block prints and created some new repeating patterns in my favorite Spring, flower-inspired colors!

This isn't the first time I've digitized block prints, but I think we all can agree... I've come a long way baby! I love progress :)

Anyways, fingers crossed I won't be back here next week posting more snow pics on Instagram... that is unless they are like this amazing beagle snow video... We'll see!

Where's the snow?

It seems like this year we haven't gotten as much snow as last year (knock on wood). In fact I think it's supposed to get up in the 50s this weekend! The one thing I love about snow are the shapes. Having grown up in Florida, I still love to look at snowflakes really close up.

Anyways, snow was clearly the inspiration for these patterns. I kept meaning to create more patterns for the set, but instead I just focused on two patterns and practiced putting them in to different color ways. Last year, I did this doodle with chalk so I just adapted the shapes a little.

Not to turn all 3-year-old girl on you, but I also have a deep love for the movie Frozen. I KNOW! The Frozen craze has been going on way to long, but I really love the colors and interiors... so I picked out the colors from some of the screenshots :) I will not apologize for my nerdiness!

Anyways, probably back to block printing this weekend, but I wanted to share these since I was working on them this month! One more...

Get a Move On!

I love the idea of those little postcards that announce that you've moved and inform people of your new address... I've just never had my stuff together enough to actually send something out.

So when one of my friends was looking up potential moving-card designs, I was like, "Psh, I can do that!" I'm so glad to have a friend who let's me design random things for her.

And here's the back of the postcard. Names and the address of their new house have been changed of course :)

I also made this alternate front:

She plans to print them through Zazzle, similar to how we did our Save the Dates back in the day. I really can't wait to see how they turn out and, of course, I'm thrilled to have another friend in the home owner's club! Congrats my friend!

Hello Spring Wallpaper

Whenever my birthday comes around I know that Spring is soooo close. I can taste it. Last weekend was 60 degrees (it's 14 degrees right now but whatever).

Spring is by far my most productive time so I kicked it off with making myself some sweet new desktop wallpapers from some recent hand lettering doodles. 

 (download "Bonjour" here)

 (download "Howdy" here)

(download "Hey" here)

Right now I have all three rotating on my desk every 15 minutes. It's pretty much like a fun-Spring-wake-me-up-from-Winter-kick-in-the-pants thing. Anyways, feel free to download and enjoy if you are also feeling Spring-tastic!

In other news, I FINALLY installed the Adobe Creative Suite I've has packed away for 2.5 years which I bought at the end of grad school with my student discount. It has Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. I have a pretty good working knowledge of Photoshop (I've been using PSE for a few years), but am thinking about signing up for a membership for lynda.com to learn the other two. Anyone else have experience with it? Any other recommendations for learning?

Yay Spring!

V-V-Vroooooom

Today I was promised 70 degrees... its was a lie. I mean, I can't complain too much because it was up in the 50s but I had really been hoping for some warmth. It felt like this.

Anyways, the rainy/misty morning did give me an opportunity to do some doodling. Instead of Sharpies I used my Staedler skinnies. They bleed a little less and give a nice sharp line. My name is Liz and I'm a fan and a marker/pen addict.

Sunshine and Sun Prints

I really love the first few days of March when the sun actually makes it around the edge of our building into our "yard" and bright sunshine starts coming through the windows. Because of where our apartment is situated, we only get direct sunlight mid-March through September so the first bit of sunlight really feels glorious.

So we took the opportunity to break out our Sunprint paper that we picked up at the Seattle Art Museum a while back. Sunprint paper reacts to direct sunlight, except for in the areas you block with an object.

I think my favorite part is that everything comes out blue and white which, as you can see from this blog, are my favorite color combo. Here's how it starts:

Then after waiting five minutes in the sun, you quickly rinse it in cold water and let it dry. The weird thing is that in the middle, it's actually a negative of what you see below. The exposed area is white and the string is blue.

Next, Kevin used a daffodil to make this one:

Then he made a bike out of matchsticks and bottle caps. It reminded me of this block print he did a few months ago.

Last, I used some river rocks that I collected from the Columbia River in Richland, Wa. to make polka dots. They might be radioactive, but I loved that the shadows came out a slightly different color.

So that was our fun project of the day. In wedding news, Kevin bought 60 mason jars at the store and I think we maaay have settled on a super-fun, casual caterer.

Taking an Ocean Break

I turned in my outline for my grad school final project yesterday so it was finally time to take a little break tonight. My client is the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration which has actually been really interesting.
Granted, I've been kicking myself for picking a complicated topic since there's just so much to learn about aquaculture. Who knew? Some of the photos on their website are really cool and beautiful. Like these pictures of deep sea corals. 
So I thought I'd draw some "ocean-y" patterns and these look a bit like waves, which was a surprise actually because it started out looking more like this. I really love blue and white!

Asparagus or Bow Ties?

One of the greatest things about designing abstract patterns is listening to what people think they look like.  I always have my own opinion which you can usually see from whatever I named the file on Flickr, but I've heard some pretty weird ones too.

Do you see bow ties or asparagus bundles? 

What about now? Fun fact. I came up with the shape when I was trying to draw a pleated skirt. Unrelated, I'm in the midst of reading this textbook about surface design I bought and learning lots about the business and what it actually takes to do it. I'm such a glutton for punishment... I spend my free time (when I'm not writing my grad school thesis or doing my real life work) reading textbooks :oP

Webbed Feet & Pumpkins

As I mentioned yesterday, we decided to take this lovely weekend to go pick some pumpkins. Kevin and I are pretty particular about our pumpkins so he covered a lot of ground before picking his. I spent more time playing with Instagram and taking some pretty photos.

Which reminded me of this picture of seagull tracks I took at the beach a few weeks ago. The shape of the tracks and the texture of the sand was really inspiring. Most of my patterns recently have started with a particular shape so this was a good jumping off point for me.

I kept running with the same color theme from yesterday. 

So between the successful pumpkin patch picking and some fun graphic prints, it was a pretty great weekend. How was yours?

Hyper Links

Hey Internet. It's been a busy week for the beginning of October. Today we went pumpkin picking (more to come on that tomorrow) and I spent the afternoon baking an apple pie while watching the poor poor Florida Gators play LSU.

But in between all that, I managed to work out a new pattern that I really like. I wasn't sure (as usual) how it was going to come out because it was a little extra complicated. To get all the little links in each area all linked up I had to keep messing around with it.

The result was well worth the effort though. I love that the more I practice this the more I love each pattern. I think I'm definitely improving which is a huge confidence builder.

It's All Part of a Plan

Here's something I made yesterday that's the start of the "big plan" I've been thinking about over the last few months.

So I'm thinking a lot about the "what to sell" question and if I want to sell prints I should probably make something that has a more central image. Here's what I came up with that builds on the above pattern:

Lastly, I tried to eek out another quick matching pattern. (I got sleepy though and had to set it aside for a while so I'm not in love with it.)

So all this is a demonstration of something I think I want to try and that's creating art prints and coordinating fabrics. I figure I can sell the prints on Etsy and link to the coordinating fabrics on Spoonflower. 

At very minimum, creating a few fabric collections on Spoonflower I think would be a good start. The commission is only 10 percent, but it's a start, right? So yeah, it's something thats going to take a few weeks, but I'm excited about it. 

Loop Dee Loops

Ok, I'm getting ready to take off for the weekend to the super fun Dogfish Dash in my super cool Battery Brewing t-shirt. But last night as I was procrastinating on paper, I adapted another part of my secret project into another pattern. This one kind of blows my mind (if I'm allowed to say that...)


This was actually taken from a large script, block print "W." I just cropped the loop and started messing around with it.


I love how the blue reads differently on the light green vs. the dark green. Anyways, hope everyone has a great weekend. I'll be back Monday with those fun Team Battery Brewing pics :o)

Block Prints Gone Digital

Woohoo, I have to keep this short because it's been a long day of "real life" work, additional "real life" work on top of work, grad school scariness and Declaration of You worksheet-filling-out. I just wanted to share the patterns I created with my block printing experiment over the weekend.

I love navy and white  as evidenced by my blog's design duh. Make sure you click this one so you can see the funky block printing mistakes details.

Next I tried to incorporate some colors from another design. In theory (maybe totally not based in reality because this is just something I'm inferring) if I want to make a line of fabrics, papers, pillows, dog costumes, there has to be a cohesive color theme thingie (lots of things around here are "thingies," I guess I need learn some of the vernacular). So I recycled the color from my beloved dot from two weeks ago.

So there ya go! I can't wait to start working on some other patterns using this method... as soon as I'm done with all this other stuff...

Block Printing Take One

As previously noted, I recently purchased some supplies to try out linoleum block printing. Let me tell you, I'm more of an instant gratification person so block printing seemed like a good alternative to screen printing. Not that screen printing is necessarily hard... but there's lots of steps... and waiting. I have no patience for those things. Linoleum block printing basically has three steps: 1. carve 2. ink 3. press and DONE! The carving was the hardest part and ended in me stabbing my fingers with the pokey-carvey-tool (technical term) more than I care to admit.

So here's what I made...

This was the basic block and the first attempt. After this I cleaned up the relief a bit with the carving-scraping-finger-poking tool. Then I started experimenting with some patterns and different color inks...

Kevin also got in on the block printing action. He was determined to make his first attempt as hipster as possible. He plans to make other prints including mustaches, birds and plaid shirts. Isn't his bike so cute?!

Have you ever tried block printing? Are you clumsy like me and stab you fingers 43 times? Would you admit it if you did? Stay tuned for part two when I scan these suckers in and play with them in Photoshop. Oooo. It's gonna be excitin' y'all.

Hot Like the Weather

No shocker for anyone here in the D.C. area but it was ridiculously hot today. And that's saying something because I grew up in Florida where most summer days are pretty blazing. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time inside so I made some new patterns.

What do you think about the colors? I picked them with Adobe Kuler. Also, I drew the original flower shape with pen and paper before scanning. I think I'm learning that that's just easier for me than drawing straight onto the tablet.

Flowers have really been inspiring me lately so I've been doing a lot of flowers Snarky Beagle-style (since I honestly couldn't draw a flower that looked real to save my life). Have a great weekend everyone. Stay cool!

Let's Call it Plan B-Dot-0

Alright, let's talk a little about me. If you don't want to talk about me, you can just admire my latest and greatest pattern seen below. If you want, you can click on it and make it your desktop wallpaper! Because I love you Internet. Ok? Ok. 

Let's be real. I am not an easily motivated person. Really. I know that's shocking. So I've decided I need to lay out a plan to help me be more motivated towards a creative goal. Here are some of the steps:

1. Draw: I doodle a lot, but now the goal is to make those doodles into patterns. Also, I just need to practice, practice, practice to keep getting better at drawing and stuff.

2. Share: Share everything I'm drawing/creating plus maybe get some feedback?

3. Read: There's a lot of people on the internet that like to give advice to creative people about how to turn their creativity into a living. I'm gonna read some of it. I'm also going to read the blogs of illustrators, graphic designers and surface designers who inspire me.

So, I'm hoping that these first three steps will help me decide the next steps to take. Despite the fact that I'll be finishing my grad degree in Public Relations in December, should I go get an art/graphic design degree next? What kind of products could I make/sell with my patterns? Should I open an Etsy store? Is this just a hobby that I love and nothing more?

Yeah, that's A LOT to decide and it's pretty important to me. I'm not gonna quit my day job or anything, but I really love this stuff. Anyways, enough about me, what do you think? Do you have a three-step plan? Any suggestions on what to read?

Illustration Friday: Stay Up All Night

So it's been a while since I did Illustration Friday. The theme this week is "stay," which made me think of staying home so I started drawing a house... but then it got a little lumpy (what can I say... drawing things that actually look like things is not really my forte' but this is all for practice so I'm laying it all out there, yeah, Internet, so there) so it turned into a tree house.

I always wanted a tree house. I used to draw plans for tree houses and try and convince my dad to build one. We had this great (somewhat dead, but great) dogwood tree in the backyard. It would have made an epic tree house tree but it was hollow soooo maybe not the most structurally sound tree.