You travelled to France in the spring and came back with a cold, some ideas and a thousand photos. The creative process begins when you fall in love with the floor tile at your sister’s apartment and are compelled to recreate it in an illustration.
One idea you come across is hodgepodge shelves – perfect! Your tile could go behind some messy shelves full of stuff. You also picked up some cool whiskey glasses on your trip, those would be fun to draw, add some pretty bottles and bam, there’s your artwork. Except none of it works together and there goes your fancy cool tile idea and so many hours.
Mid-summer in my world means it’s time to start thinking of the holidays (it’s ok to cringe, same here.) You get the urge to design some ominous Christmas cards and check out Pinterest for some vintage holiday cards from 100 years ago. Many are super creepy – probably on purpose – you can get behind that vibe.
You are also inspired by 80’s horror movie and book cover fonts and sketch out lettering that you kind of like. But the other elements you sketch, a weird bear made of pinecones and a strange elf, aren’t right at all. You set aside the lettering idea and sigh in frustration.
The prompt for your monthly on-line drawing class is a cast iron stove. It’s literally the last thing you want to draw. But you log-in to class anyway because showing up is half the battle. Some decent reference images of vintage stoves motivate you enough to start sketching.
Gradually you find yourself really invested – you must finish drawing this stove for reasons you aren’t sure. The discarded tile re-enters your mind, then the lettering; drop in a few more cute elements and suddenly the holiday card you were convinced wasn’t going to happen is happening!
And just like that, all the bits make sense, and nothing is ominous because maybe that isn’t the message you want to send, particularly for the holidays.
The creative process can be unpredictable and messy at times. There is some mystery in how all the bits found their way into my So Very Merry holiday card. I’m so excited to offer it in two versions: one for the dog lovers and another for the people who are owned by cats.
So Very Merry holiday cards are now available in my shop in sets of 5 for $20.00 with pretty red envelopes. Get them while you can – I’ve printed a small batch of each style for now.
Several new projects have kept me occupied this year – I started sewing bags (and even some wallets) featuring my pattern designs printed on cotton canvas. This summer I designed another surface pattern collection for textiles and wallpapers, themed around pollinators and their host plants. Some of these patterns may appear on future bags. You can see the whole collection on Spoonflower.
My time in France was an adventure and maybe later I’ll tell you more about how I snuck knives into the Louvre. (Ok, they were new cheese knives, still in their box, but I made it through security without questions.) Anyway, France was fun and extra and expensive and all the things. I can’t wait to go back.
P.S. If you’d like to share your thoughts about the creative process or anything else here – don’t be a stranger and hit the button below, I’d love to hear from you!
