New Spoonflower contest...Feathers!

A new weekly contest has begun over on Spoonflower. The theme is 'Feathers.' Because I went geometric and anti-cute on the 'Kite' contest last week, I'm going humorous on this next one. The logic behind this decision is based upon looking at all the current feather related fabrics on Spoonflower. Most of the fabrics I saw are great, but are simply decorative feather motifs. I have a theory that cute and humors motifs score higher in Spoonflower contests. Not that that's a bad thing, but I like to be diffrent. I'm willing to test this theory with my contest entry.
I chose 'Horse Feathers' as my subject matter. It's a fantastical plant related to Snap Dragons and Cat-tails.
It also brought me back to my forestry days at SFA, drawing twig anatomy for class. I chose a nice zig-zag black locust twig as a model and replaced the buds with horse bodies.  I chose simplified feather drawings because I knew the repeating layout would be chaotic and didn't want feather texture to add to it.

Go vote! I'm pleased to say there are some really beautiful entries to look at. My favorite is Paisley Feathers by Irrimari.
As for the last contest I only ranked in the low 70's as my geometric take did not fare as well as my last few entries. Oh well, It's still one of my favorite patterns so far. See the last contest rankings here.

Golden Flower bookplates 2 and 3

It's been a busy week.....I won't go into details, just boring work, work, school, and holiday preparations.
Here are the fabulous chrysanthemum chromo lithograph book plates 2 and 3  from 'The Golden Flower Chrysanthemum'. Remember these are accessible only for a limited time! Read my last blog post if you need to catch up on more information about this topic.
here are a few links to information reguarding this book as well:
NYPL Digital Gallery- Sows other images int he book.
MFA Educators Online- images of the chromo lithographs. The images on my flicker account are much larger than their images, so you can see the printing detail better. 
The literary world, Volume 22; Google Books- a reference to the book from an antique advertisement.


Click on plate descriptions for a link to larger images on my flicker account.

This lovely plate is called 'Kyoto'

And here we have 'Medusa'

One final note about these book plates. They are raw scans. I have done no digital cleaning except automatic contrast; but they are free for you to download and copy. In some cases I had to scan and image in 2 pieces and then piece them together in Photoshop. I did my best to make the pieces 'whole' and merge them back together.
Happy Holidays!

Christmas Countdown, and A Holiday Gift

Ive got several little things to cover today.
First of all I placed 22nd in the Spoonflower Advent calendar contest. You can see the final rankings at the Spoonflower Blog. I'm actually quite thrilled with my ranking considering I felt like this project was seriously rushed and I had difficulty making my theme (Sew Your Way To Christmas) consistent. The competition was feirce too. Some really fabulous calendars won the coveted top 10 slots.
Ive also uploaded a revision of my layout to Spoonflower and ordered a full yard to proof the images on the fabric and sew my own calendar. My mother really wants to see it put together. The revision is pictured below.

 As a side I also entered the kite contest. I fear I won't do so well in it because I chose to go anti-cute for this one. I knew there would be plenty of competing cute images so I went geometric instead. It won't win but it's different and I think it's unique enough to stand out.

Aside from my advent calendar, which I hope will be proofed and posted for sale before everyone starts counting down to Christmas, I have a new t-shirt for sale on Society 6.
Having many geeks in my family I had to come up with something they would actually wear for the holidays.
I came up with a Circuit Board Snowflake. I used Make-A-Flake again to get a good snowflake to manipulate. Its not a new concept. I did a little searching after making and posting my own and found several older images with the same concept, some of them quite good. You can do your own search and be the judge on which ones are the best. Mine is pictured below. The text on it reads 'JOY CAPACITOR', 'HOLIDAY RESET', and '9V BATT'.

 

Lastly in my Etsy and Melyah clipart shops I have Reindeer, Vintage style Christmas frames, and Snowflake frames. Use the frames for Christmas photos, ornaments, or gift tags. All are on sale for under 2.00 to celebrate the holidays. They use the Spoonflower color palette too. So long as you change them up some for your creative uses I have no problem with you using them on Spoonflower. Just read the attached Permissions and Content file that comes with the files for the copyright details.

 

Lastly, in the spirit of the Holidays I have some great floral images I'm going to share with you till Christmas.

My mother found a wonderful book copyrighted in 1890 called the Golden Flower Chrysanthemum. As you may, or may not know, anything published before 1923 in the US is public domain. I will share 16 of the fabulous floral book plates with you (roughly 2-3 a week) until December 24th. Once the new year begins they will disappear. So keep your eyes open and your computer ready to copy and save. The first bookplate is below along with a bonus page giving the details of the book and illustrations. Larger images are available from my Flicker set 'Golden Flower'.

Free printable Cut and Paste Santa Ornament

This little Santa ornament was inspired by cut and paste ornaments from the 50's and 60's. The above image shows some of the prototypes I made while trying to get the design right.
Click the image to get the full view than right click it to copy. From there you can paste into Word or image editing software. Print him on card stock if you want him to last past Christmas. You can decorate him further with glitter and silver paint to make him even more glamorus.

Look Mom! I'm posting to Etsy!

We all know mothers know best and mine is no exception. My mother has taken notice that my Etsy shop for vintage items and art has been neglected lately. I help my friend Jo photograph and post her items to Wonder-filled once a week I slipped a few of the things my mother gave me for my shop. Hopefully this will satisfy her for a little bit. BTW mom I hope your listening....I'm going to add more to my shop as I work with Jo. This will occur once a week as Jo comes over every Friday so we can work.

So without further delay here is a peek at what I'll be posting. The tackle box, shown below, was my grandmothers (we lovingly called her MawMaw; that's her in the first image). She had many wonderful sewing sundries tucked away and hidden about her house. We only discovered them after she passed away. Some of these items are beautiful, and lacy. The butterflies are labeled ''Forster Willi', 'Made in Switzerland'.
My mother has added some other pieces of beautiful trim to the box that she found while antique and thrift shopping. All together it now contains pieces ranging from the 1950's to the 1980's.

Also don't forget to visit Wonder-Filled and Jo's new items as well! She listed a bunch of old postcards, a few valentines, and some cute photographs of children today. She's also installed the new shop banner that I made for her this morning (pictured below). Go have a look at her Wonder-Filled store!

The banner background (gnome and animals) came from  The Graphics Fairy and I added some clip-art of my own making (cracked paint in the banner and the cat label) along with a nice font that I manipulated a little.