Developing a Style

From the inside of my design world, I can't see what my style is.

It seems to change from week to week, depending on what I've fallen in love with.

Perhaps it's the approach I take to each design that defines my style. 

But, whatever it is, this week I'm loving subtle colors and quiet vintage.

Distressed

I'm still really digging the grunge/distressed look. It's been around for a long time now, and I see it everywhere, mostly on advertising fonts.

Working in vector, my favorite way to achieve a distressed effect begins in Photoshop. I create a 12" x 12" transparent 300 dpi document and use a wide variety of free web grunge brushes in black. Saved as a png, I open it in Illustrator, use Live Trace, then work it into a seamless tile. 

It is now a vector grunge repeat that I can lay over an existing design. 

Here's a recent example:

I love it!

19th Century Fabric

I LOVE this floral!


I basically redrew an image of a 19th century fabric, simplified it, and added a textured background.

A bright, more contemporary color palette was also in order.

It really is stunning, if I do say so myself.

It's available to purchase in perfect repeat.

Bird Card

I found myself away from my own designs during the last 10 days. Fun personal stuff and working designing for someone else at a paying job took priority. I'll be seeing my designs on scrapbook paper in the near future.

I had another card approved at Greeting Card Universe. I like to think this is an honor since the process can take 10 weeks . And many, many long-timers at GCU are retroactively having cards deleted as they no longer live up to the higher and higher standards.

This artwork is different for me since I used Photoshop for to distress and layer the textures.

Illustrator is my home. I only visit Photoshop on occasion.

Pretty Bird Card

Fabric Collection

After being waylaid with other design work, I have finished my next quilt fabric collection. It includes 6 patterns.  The focal fabric, that big flower with the fancy stripe is awesome! It was inspired by an antique French textile.

This is the the "working" color palette, but that yellow/green is not quite right, a little off-putting. I'll be going in now and exploring alternatives. 

The collection I have planned next will be much simpler, perhaps just three colors.

After I initially posted the image above, I revamped the colors. These are happier, friendlier.

New Colorway

I've completed the third and final colorway for this group.

Tomorrow, I'll begin work designing a new quilt fabric collection!

Another Digital Quilt Block

After recoloring my recent quilt fabric collection, I applied it to a different digital quilt block than yesterday's.

It makes me happy!