MERRY MAKEWELL DESIGNS
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About Me
  • Contact

Merry Makewell Designs... Blog

Quick and Easy Fabric Bows

10/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Towards the end of last year I designed a series of Cut and Sew fat quarters on Spoonflower for creating fabric bows.  The fat quarters consist of five pairs of patterns that can be cut out and sewn together to create cute bows that can then be attached to hair clips or brooch backs, or used as accessories on clothing and bags.  Instructions for putting the bows together are included on the fat quarter panel.   

Read More
0 Comments

Lockdown Lowdown

21/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
So here we are, back in lockdown.  I honestly didn't think that we'd be here at this point.   As I work from home and don't really go out much, for the most part living in lockdown hasn't really affected my day-to-day life and I actually really enjoyed it last year.

One thing that does seem to be a symptom of having everyone around all the time though is that my creative mojo seems to have up and left me!  I just don't have the drive to design or make or create anything.  The same happened last year.  I'm pretty sure that part of it is a time issue; homeschooling the kids does take a chunk out of my day, but thankfully they're smart kids and don't need too much intervention so it's not completely immersive.  Maybe part of it is my introverted nature - I do like to spend time on my own and with everyone around I don't get the chance to just sit with myself and recharge as much as I normally would.  

So I'm getting through the days, but I don't feel like I'm making much progress.  In the past when I've felt lost and directionless making a good plan and daily schedule has really helped to get me back on track.  You can't exactly schedule creativity, but it seems like a good place to start.  
0 Comments

Tea Towel Calendars

4/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Tea towel calendars are now available to buy in my Spoonflower shop.  Choose from 4 designs - including a couple of variations on the theme of Birth Month Flowers featuring some gorgeous watercolour illustrations of the various flowers.  

For the Birth Month calendar designs I created a more traditional, ordered layout, and a more organic, contemporary layout. 
Birth Month Flowers 2021 Tea Towel Calendar 1
Birth Month Flowers 2021 Tea Towel Calendar 2
All The 20s 2021 Tea Towel Calendar
2021 Floral Tea Towel Calendar
The designs were made to fit a fat quarter of Linen Cotton Canvas, but also fit onto a fat quarter of Lightweight Cotton Twill in case you prefer a lighter-weight material for your tea towels.  And if you don't want to sew them up yourself, you can also buy the ready-made tea towels.  
0 Comments

Impossible Jigsaw Puzzles

10/11/2020

0 Comments

 
Redbubble now do jigsaw puzzles!  They've been live for a couple of months and I'm slowly but surely enabling jigsaws for as many of my designs as possible.  As many of them are repeating surface patterns, they make really difficult puzzles!  You can see a few below with many more available in my shop.  So if you enjoy a challenge head over to the shop and take a look.  The jigsaws are available with 30, 110, 252, 500 and 1000 pieces (252 piece puzzles shown). 
0 Comments

Geo Wheels Surface Pattern

8/8/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
As I mentioned in an earlier post I opened a shop with Woven Monkey and so I am slowly uploading my existing designs to the platform.  It's an interesting process because it has made me revisit some designs that I'd sort of forgotten about.  Geo Wheels is one of the first surface pattern designs that I created, originally with white, aqua/mint and red backgrounds.  I couldn't resist playing around with more colours and loved the results with lilac, mustard and teal backgrounds so these are now available at Woven Monkey and also in my Redbubble shop.
0 Comments

Face Masks on Redbubble

23/7/2020

0 Comments

 
Face masks are now live on Redbubble.  There are three size options: kids, small and standard.  Here are just a few of the available designs.  Head over to my store and take a look at all the options.
0 Comments

Merry Makewell Designs x Woven Monkey

9/7/2020

0 Comments

 
I've opened a store with Woven Monkey!  They are a UK-based supplier of print-on-demand fabric.  You can upload your own designs or buy from independent designers like me.  They have 20 different fabric options - from a range of different cottons to velvet and scuba stretch (lycra).

I didn't realise how many designs I actually had in my portfolio so it will take a while to upload them all, but head over to the store to see what's available.
Picture
0 Comments

Orange Blossom Pop

6/4/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
One of the Spoonflower Design Challenges last year was "Pop Art Citrus".  I created a repeat pattern that I called "Orange Blossom Pop" featuring groups of oranges with orange blossoms and leaves on a polka dot background.  The original background was a shade of royal blue.  I didn't really love it so I went back and made some adjustments and, as always, tried a few different colourways.  One of those was the green background shown above.  I really liked the bold motif so I took away the other elements to create a piece of wall art.  Get the art print in my Redbubble shop and see the design on lots of other products here.
0 Comments

Spoonflower Challenge - Papercut Napkins

30/3/2020

0 Comments

 
The challenge over at Spoonflower this week is to create a design featuring a composition of paper cut-outs to be displayed on table napkins. 

Instead of creating a brand new design I decided to tweak the teacup design that I created for the Chintz challenge back in November last year where I digitally cut chintzy patterned swatches with a teacup punch.  To adapt it for the current brief I removed the foliage from the background and reverted to a solid pattern on the teacups instead of the white heart cut-outs seen in the original design.  I also decided to go with a light blue background because I liked how it looked on the napkins.
Picture
Head over to Spoonflower to vote! Voting closes on 7th April at 3pm EST.
0 Comments

Spoonflower Challenge - Faux Textured Wallpaper

16/3/2020

0 Comments

 
The latest Spoonflower Design Challenge is Faux Textured Wallpaper.  The brief was to "create a repeating design that you can’t help but touch".  I had lots of ideas for this, but not necessarily the time or the skill to make them happen.  In hindsight I should have saved my Mirror Ball design that I used for the Roller Rink Nostalgia challenge for this challenge.  But I didn't, so I had to come up with something else.  

I really like my collection of designs inspired by Spanish Tiles.  Originally in teal and white, I have tried one or two coloured variations of the Entwined design.  A while ago, while learning how to use mask layers in my graphics program, I played around with using textures with that design, so I decided to revisit those experiments for this challenge.


I was originally going to go with a blue and gold colour scheme, featuring blue glitter and gold foil.
Picture
But I wasn't completely feeling it, so in the end I opted for this pink and gold version.
Picture
Picture
The textures that I used here are glitter and gold foil. Did I make the right choice for my challenge entry?  Voting is open until 3pm EST / 8pm GMT on 17th March, so if you like what you see, please vote for me.
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    I like patterns and flowers and bright colours.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019

    Categories

    All
    Collage Art
    Fabric
    Home Decor
    Print On Demand
    Shop Updates
    Surface Patterns
    Wall Art

    RSS Feed

Site powered by Weebly. Managed by Porkbun
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About Me
  • Contact