fabric – mamasbrush

Mushroom Surface Pattern Design

Surface pattern design with whimsical mushrooms, turtles, leaves, flowers, and snails. | mamasbrush

Mushrooms, turtles, and snails combine with leaves, berries and flowers to highlight some of the flora and fauna of the forest floor. This weeks Spoonflower Design Challenge is “Forest Biome” and I had fun bringing a touch of whimsy to my design.

Whimsical mushroom with a face. | mamasbrush

It all started with the mushrooms. Once I had 4-5 drawn out and colored, I decided that a couple of them needed faces. I’m pleased to introduce you to Lady Mushroom (see my first animation of her over on Instagram).

The leaves were next. I wanted a variety. Those little heart branches were last and they are my favorite!

Then I needed berries… but I wanted a variety of berries for interest.

I added the turtles in honor of my 8 year old son. He loves turtles. I’m not big on realistic turtle drawing, though. My turtles often have those super unrealistically high shells. He has vaulted ceilings. 🙂

Cute snail illustration, whimsical snail with brown shell and a smile. | mamasbrush

I thought I was done, and I was really happy with the design, when my husband decided I needed to add snails. He does that sort of thing all the time.

“But I don’t want to add snails! Snails sound hard!”

Nonetheless, I added snails. And I love them. He was right. It definitely needed snails. And one of them definitely needed a face, however unscientific it may be. 🙂

Spoonflower is showcasing these in their contest as wallpaper, but how would you use it? Fabric? Wallpaper? Would you turn it into a little girls dress? Or dress the walls of the kids playroom? Let me know in the comments!

Gathering here.

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Dandelions at Play – fabric design

This week’s theme at Spoonflower was Weeds. I thought and thought about how I could uniquely represent that theme, but I kept coming back to dandelions. Well, I thought, maybe I can at least use a different angle on them.

Different or not, I ended up creating this sweet print of children with dandelions. She is blowing the fuzz off a spent bloom and he is offering her a fresh one.

I don’t usually dabble in people, so this was a challenge for me. I changed my design half a dozen times over a weeks time. Then, the night before, my husband made some suggestions that turned my design on its head once more. (My designs are always better for his input!)

Tuesday morning found me working on it still. I finished it with only a couple hours to spare. As it turns out, there was a flaw in the copy I submitted. The flower he is holding in this pic was on the wrong side of his hand (Stem showing). Oops! I guess I’ll never know whether it would have been more popular without that mistake. Oh well. I’ve fixed it up in time to share it with you. Dandelions at play! What do you think?

If you like my Dandelions at Play design, would you please pin the image below or share it on other social media!

You can find me gathering here.

My Fabric Design For Sale

Chickens and Trucks Fabric Design | mamasbrush #oldtruck #farmhouse #chickens #fabric #surfacepatterndesign #pastelchickens

Chickens and Trucks is a fabric design I entered into the Spoonflower Challenge this last week. I am really happy with the way it turned out. We were supposed to use those three colors in our designs. I struggled with what to do until my husband suggested the trucks. I had a really cute design I was happy with, but I was getting mixed reviews from the family. It was my husband, again, who challenged me to push a little further.

I had these chickens from another project so I started to play with the colors. Who would think of making pink and green and purple chickens? I kept working with it. At first I was just going to do the chickens, but then it occurred to me that I could use both the chickens and the trucks… and “Chickens and Trucks” was born! I was super excited to see that people seemed to like it as well and I placed at #66 this week! See it on “real products” here.

I’m thrilled to announce that Chickens and Trucks is now available for purchase in my Spoonflower shop!

If you like my Chickens and Trucks design, would you please pin the image below or share it on other social media!

You can find me gathering here.

Pockets – A Repeating Pattern

This past week I entered another Spoonflower Design Challenge. The theme was “Pockets”. I had a lot of fun designing, first, the actual pockets, then the various components.

I placed 253rd out of 655, which puts me in the top half, so I’m pleased with that. And it took over the second place spot in my own personal designs.

Hop over to see it on Spoonflower or even on “real” products. 🙂

If you like my design, please consider pinning the image below or sharing it on other social media!

You can find me gathering here.

Floral Sketches on Periwinkle

This past week I participated, again, in the Spoonflower Design Challenge. I love these challenges because they put my art in front of a lot of people, push me to try new things artistically, and they force me to learn more about Adobe Illustrator.

This design is part of a larger project I’ve been working on, my first collection. (It is mostly done and I hope to share it in the near future.)

In the mean time, I changed the color palette to match the theme for this past week’s challenge: Very Peri.

You can find my design on Spoonflower here. And see it on products here.

Do you like my design? Please take a moment to pin this image and/or share it on social media! (Thanks!)

You can find me gathering here.

Flower Pots Repeating Pattern

This fall, I jumped back into designing repeating patterns, but I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought, I dabbled, I deleted. Then I decided to set it aside and work on something for the upcoming women’s retreat. The theme for it is Come to the Garden. Pots… they seemed like they would be fun to sketch on my new digital tablet. I was still (am still) learning to use my digital tablet and Adobe Illustrator, so it was a good project for me.

After a couple days of dabbling, this is what I came up with. I must say, they made me happy… still do. Please understand that I get excited any time that I try to make something and it actually looks like it might be the thing I’m trying to illustrate. And if someone else can tell what I was going for… even better. 🙂 I am still an aspiring artist in my own mind.

Then I started thinking about what I could do with them. To be honest, the retreat was no longer in my mind. Instead I started visualizing a repeating pattern. (I’ll be using them to do something for the retreat in the next couple weeks.)

I added flowers and color. I moved them around a dozen ways. Before long, I had a design. After a week of voting, not only was it in my top 10 designs, it moved into the number 2 position! That was pretty exciting! You can find my design on Spoonflower here. And see it on “real” products here. (I must say, seeing this pattern on a sheet set makes my heart smile!)

If you like my design, please consider pinning the image below or sharing it on other social media!

You can find me gathering here.

Dog Stuff Pattern for Fabric, Scrapbook Paper, Wallpaper, etc.

Dog Stuff Pattern for Fabric, Scrapbook Paper, etc.

I created this dog print with my sister in mind. I thought it may be cute to make a bag or a doggie bandana or a whatever. I’ll be honest, a dog person I am not, but I know that people love their dogs and I now have a new love for dog stuff. It was super fun to doodle these little dog things!

I didn’t just decide one day to doodle dog toys, food and beds. Spoonflower is at it again, pushing me out of my comfort zone and into the unknown. This time the theme is Dog Days (may as well add “of summer”, right? Maybe I should have gone a different direction with this theme?)

Dog days? As a non-dog-person, I’ve never really spent a lot of time illustrating dogs. I thought about it for about a half second before disregarding the whole idea. Living things are hard, People! But their stuff… now that’s another animal all together. (See what I did there?)

So here it is, my entry for the Dog Days Design Challenge over at Spoonflower. It’s open for voting between July 18-23, 2019. Click over and check out the compitition. Oh, and vote for mine too if you like it. 🙂

Gathering here.

Nautical Repeating Pattern – Sailboats, anchors and life preservers in watercolor

March has been a busy month with birthdays, leaving very little time for painting. I’ve been dabbling here and there on a few projects, but they always take longer to complete that way.

This one has been in the works, from idea to completion, most of the month, maybe more. It all started when Spoonflower announced their March Design Challenge Themes. This week’s theme, Nautical.

I’ve been working on the sketches and imagining the outcome in my head for weeks, but the deadline sneaked up on me. It isn’t what I had in my head (rarely does that work out), but I think it turned out cute. I didn’t have “boy nursery” in my head from the inception, but it works. I can see this on gift wrap or bedding for the crib.

What would you use it for?

Click here to vote (between 3/28/19 and 4/2/2019) or here to see my shop.

Gathering here.

Repeating Star Pattern with Limited Color Palette

Limited Color Palette Stars - mamasbrush

We interrupt this Valentine’s streak, to bring you stars.

Yes, I know, I’m kinda on a roll with all the Valentine’s posts, and don’t worry (or I’m sorry, depending on who you are), there will be more. In the mean time, I wanted to share this repeating pattern I’ve entered in the Spoonflower Limited Palette Design Challenge.

That’s it… short and sweet today. Voting closes Tuesday, February 5th, if you’re into that kind of thing, or let me know what you think in the comments.

Blessings!

Gathering here.