All the tea in China

With extra free time, I've been working on my design skills by doing some challenges from Spoonflower.

Spoonflower is a print-on-demand fabric company and every week, they have themed challenges. The submitted designs are voted on by your peers. I managed to make the top 25 on the last challenge but it's tough because there are some pretty awesome fabric designers out there.

This week's theme is "Chinoiserie". I submitted a tea-themed design. I watercolored my tea cups and teapots, scanned the illustration, and then designed my repeat fabric on the computer. This was quite a challenge for me because I figured out the repeat for the cups and pots first, and then had to make sure the background pattern also repeated. To set off the blue and white teacups and teapots, I used a dark peach background. And then I tried it with a blue background. Now I can't decide which I like best.

You can vote for your favorite Chinoiserie design on the Spoonflower website, here.

I drew my images in pencil on bristol.

added some shading with watercolor paint...

added the detail.

Option 1 - Peach background

Option 2 - Blue background

The designs on the tea pots and cups were inspired by Chinese batik designs
from a book my sister gave me.

2014 Calendar

I've been slacking off lately on my blog - mainly because I've been busy but also because I've been a little lazy. There, I said it. Anyway, here is my 2014 calendar. The images were printed on my trusty printing press from my hand cut linoleum blocks. This year's images were inspired by my Japanese tea pot collection, bouquets of flowers at the local farmer's market, one of my vintage ink bottles, and oak leaves and acorns from trees in my neighborhood. I also printed a gift bag with the bird image from November, and made a coordinating gift tag.

The calendar, by itself or as a gift set, is available in my Etsy shop.