illustrator
8 Seamless Repeat Tutorials for Designing Custom Fabric
Surface pattern design is not just for the professionals! If you’ve ever browsed our Marketplace for llamas, rainbows or even motorcycle fabric, there’s a good chance you’ve been curious to know how designers have created their seamless repeats. From traditional tools like a pen and paper to design programs like Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® Illustrator®, we’re showing you eight seamless repeat tutorials to help you find your tried and true resource for creating seamless repeats. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll be ready to enter one of our upcoming design challenges!
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Meet the Designer: Annie Chen of Lemonni
For this week’s Meet the Designer series, we’re traveling to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to talk with self-taught surface pattern designer, Annie Chen who is known as lemonni in the Spoonflower Marketplace. With a deep passion for sleek colorful pattern that is both sophisticated and playful, Annie seeks to share happiness and style with the world through her home accessory line of the same name. We are in absolute awe over Annie’s imaginative body of work and can’t wait another second to dive in!
My day starts with:
“Coffee. I cannot function without a good cup of coffee. I usually check my emails first thing when I’m at my desk. And then I’d spend a few hours doing some admin work, such as replying to emails, following up on leads, maintaining my online shops or working on marketing. During the day I also spend a lot of time and energy taking care of my two fur babies (one senior bunny and one young dog), so I usually design and work on projects in the evening when I feel most focused and creative.”
Meet the Designer: Vince Desjardins aka Vinpauld
In the latest edition of our Meet the Designer series, we discuss the creative process with Vince Desjardins (Vinpauld), a designer living in Bloomington, Indiana inclined toward trees, birds, and vintage items. Vince recently also made the top 5 in our Aurora Borealis Design Challenge. Visit his Spoonflower shop and read on to learn how he incorporates wildlife into his imaginative ditsy and toile designs.
Win a Creative Cloud Subscription!
Have you joined our 12 Days of Design Challenge yet? If not, it’s not too late! To help with your continued designing process, we’re offering one lucky winner the ultimate design tool– a one year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud! With Creative Cloud, you’ll always have access to the very latest Adobe desktop apps, including Adobe Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign and more.
Enter by Tuesday, December 9th, 2014 for a chance to win. We will announce the winner on the blog on Wednesday, December 10th. Good luck!
*You do not have to be participating in 12 Days of Design to enter.
Artist Interview: Leah Goren
We’ve launched into week three of our August SpoonChallenge: A Month of Drawing. If you’re just now joining us, it’s not too late to sign up for the SpoonChallenge to receive daily drawing prompts, creative inspiration, and interviews with amazing illustrators and pattern designers. Share what you’re sketching with the hashtag #spoonchallenge on your social media platform of choice. If you’d like to jump in, follow the link after our artist interview to sign up for the SpoonChallenge!
Meet Leah Goren, a Brooklyn-based illustrator and surface pattern designer whose painted ladies, animals and florals feature in commercial artwork, publications, textiles and other goods.
Arrow Fabrics Aplenty — Plus A Prize From Adobe
Our
contest this week for arrow fabric has a special prize, presented in
partnership with Adobe. To celebrate the new seamless repeat tool in
Adobe® Illustrator® CS6 (check out the video on how it works if you missed it), the winner of this week's contest will win a
one-year membership to Adobe Creative Cloud™
as a prize. While it's too late to enter, it's not too late to vote for
your favorite arrow designs! We'll let you know who won next week.
![[button] Vote now for your favorite arrow fabrics](https://d2q0qd5iz04n9u.cloudfront.net/_ssl/proxy.php/http/gallery.mailchimp.com/dee209d512d07ce1c58bd6a4f/images/VoteNow.png){kind=small}
The participants this week are:
1. Endless Op Art Arrows by
paintedstudio
2. 15 Minutes of Moxie by meduzy
3. 5 by going_home_to_roost
4. A Boy's Own Archery Set. by
rhondadesigns
5. A Little to the Left – Blues
in Linen by shelleymade
6. aarows by rar1013
7. Abstract Arrows by saenzdesign
8. Airport Arrows by candytree
9. akhaskett_waikiki by
ak_haskett
10. Akkerman_Arrows by
holly_akkerman
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Upcoming Contest: Win A One-Year Membership to Adobe Creative Cloud
If you haven't checked our upcoming contests page lately, you should know that we've got a couple of amazing prizes around the corner. Our most recent contest partnership is with Adobe, a company whose products have touched all our creative lives, which has introduced a feature specifically for creating repeat patterns as part of their new Adobe® Illustrator® CS6 software. Check out a video on how it works:
The theme of this very special contest will be fabric designs using arrows as a design motif. The amazing piece of all this is that the nice folks at Adobe have agreed
to put up a one-year membership to Adobe Creative Cloud™
as a prize. The membership gives you access to all of Adobe's creative products and services, including Illustrator. Apart from the necessity of submitting a seamlessly repeating design (no centered
designs, please), this one is wide open for your creative interpretation. You
can even explore the new pattern tools in Illustrator CS6 to create your
design; a free 30-day trial is available. Entries will be previewed at the scale of a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry is Tuesday, October 23, 2012. See our Upcoming Contests page for details on how to enter:
Mastering a Master Layout using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
Mastering a Master Layout using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
It’s a great idea to combine several design files into one main file if you know what you want. Specifically, you’ll need know the fabric type you want to print on and its printable width as well as your design size. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be working with six individual designs that will print onto one yard of our 54-inch wide cotton voile.
Step 1: Know Thy Fabric. Spoonflower fabrics vary in their printable widths. I started this project knowing that the cotton voile is our best hankie material, so I knew that my design would need to fill a yard of voile that measured 54 x 36 inches.
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