Headbandhappyak.com recently introduced headbands with my Bigger Swimmers Swimming Laps fabric. I’m so thrilled and just ordered one. Click here if you’d like one for yourself.
Swimmers
A Creative Collaboration {A Drawstring Bag}
Since starting to design fabric prints, I’ve lamented that I can’t sew. A few months ago I decided to look for someone who can. The first person I found when I googled “sewing blog” was Mary Sigler-Earle of thedailysew.com. Mary was the second person I reached out to. I gave her the link to all the fabrics that I’ve designed and simply stated,
“I’d like to offer you free fabric, from one of my own fabric designs. My motivation? Seeing them turned into something beautiful! I can’t sew at all, but love designing fabric prints! And a mention on your blog would be awesome! I’d in turn post on my blog.”
I was thrilled when Mary said yes. She didn’t hesitate in picking the “Swimming Laps” design, but as she writes in her post she did hesitate in deciding on a sewing project, eventually picking a drawstring bag because of something I wrote in a post. You can download the drawstring bag pattern here.
It’s amazing when you meet the nicest people – all from a google search! Mary put a lot of work into designing and sewing the bag, and creating the pattern and thorough instructions with photos to go with it! My younger son said to me, “Do you get the bag?” I told him no, it wasn’t about getting the bag, but seeing it turned into something. But guess what? Mary wrote that she wanted to send me the bag.
Of course I was thrilled, look how cute it is! I wrote to Mary and said that I really got the better end of this collaboration! She put so much time into it. How could I ever thank her? How about some more fabric?
Download the FREE drawstring bag pattern here.
Order my fabrics on Spoonflower here.
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A Painting from Start to Finish
On your mark, get set, go! First, I painted the swimmers, lane lines, etc.
Then I added the water.
Then more water, especially around the swimmers.
Lastly, details to the line lines and white gouache for splash around the swimmers, and I reached the finish line. 😉
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Waiting to Swim
Yesterday was the first swim meet of the summer season so it was no surprise that I was sketching swimmers waiting for their race this morning.
Have you seen my Swimming Laps fabric print?
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Painting swimmers
A few years ago, inspired by the swimmers during warm ups at a swim meet, I created the watercolor painting above. I loved the perspective of the painting, but always wanted to create another version with richer more saturated colors. And I did – see my steps below.
I taped off the edges of my paper with thick painter’s tape, to create a white border. I marked where the swimming lane lines would be with a pencil and ruler.
I painted the swimmers first, so I could add blue paint (water) over parts of them, so those parts would look like they were underwater.
When the swimmers were completely dry I painted the blue pool water. I tried to keep the blue in the lane line areas lighter.
Once dry, I painted the swimming lines using a flat brush, red watercolor paint and white gouache.
Next, I added more blue to darken the water in areas. I also added white gouache around the swimmers for splash.
The richer colors make such a difference. Makes me want to dive right in! The perfect painting for the swimmer in your life. Create one or order a print on canvas (pictured above), paper, acrylic, and more on Zazzle – click here to visit my Zazzle shop.
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A swimming pattern…perhaps
My goal this year is to design a pattern a month. So as the month starts to wind down, I’m thinking about swimmers.
Last month I created an ice cream truck pattern from illustrations in my sketchbook. It’s available for purchase on Spoonflower here.
In January I designed a penguin polar bear pattern. Available here.
See all my designs in my Spoonflower shop.
Want to learn how to create a repeating pattern in Photoshop? Read:
mycreativeresolution.com 