In the end I couldn’t think of any way to avoid repainting the background to last week’s snowdrops in a stronger, darker blue.
It wasn’t quite the sunshiny effect I was hoping for and I didn’t enjoy painting carefully in between all those stems and leaves but I think the end result was a big improvement!
I was able to make it into a variety of cards by adding different coloured borders, as well as the ‘February Birthday’ card for my daughter.
What I hadn’t realised is that the snowdrop is actually one of the ‘January Birthday’ flowers, along with the carnation. So I made some cards for January birthdays too - and a few others besides! Click here to see all the snowdrop greeting cards.
Having brought myself up to date with cards for upcoming family birthdays, I couldn’t wait to get back to designing some more repeating patterns.
I wanted to do something a little less flowery next, working my way towards some patterns that would be suitable for Messenger Bags for men and boys as well as for women and girls.
Browsing through a book of authentic Victorian stencil designs, I came across a highly embellished ‘fleur de lys’ motif that I thought would make a great repeating pattern that could be viewed either way up if necessary – as in the case of the flap of the messenger bags.
I’ve always had a tendency to ‘re-invent the wheel' so I didn’t use that design in the book, even though it was copyright-free but just took it as inspiration for my own design.
This is how it worked out - but it may be rather too pale to see, depending on your computer screen.
When my neighbour saw it, he said it looked like a Victorian bathroom – it reminded me of a very old-fashioned Public Convenience, and apparently, that’s what my neighbour really thought but was too polite to say so!
This one shows up a bit more clearly and, with the pencil lines removed, it's starting to look more like wallpaper than bathroom tiling –
Once I’d worked out the pattern and its repeats by going through all the processes that I described a fortnight ago, I painted one ‘block’ in gouache:
The next stage is to place these ‘blocks’ side by side in my photo-editing program and fill in the background colour on the computer to make sure it's even and you can't see the 'joins'.
How will it work out? Will the 'tiles' match up? I’ll let you know next week . . .
.
I was able to make it into a variety of cards by adding different coloured borders, as well as the ‘February Birthday’ card for my daughter.
What I hadn’t realised is that the snowdrop is actually one of the ‘January Birthday’ flowers, along with the carnation. So I made some cards for January birthdays too - and a few others besides! Click here to see all the snowdrop greeting cards.
Having brought myself up to date with cards for upcoming family birthdays, I couldn’t wait to get back to designing some more repeating patterns.
I wanted to do something a little less flowery next, working my way towards some patterns that would be suitable for Messenger Bags for men and boys as well as for women and girls.
Browsing through a book of authentic Victorian stencil designs, I came across a highly embellished ‘fleur de lys’ motif that I thought would make a great repeating pattern that could be viewed either way up if necessary – as in the case of the flap of the messenger bags.
I’ve always had a tendency to ‘re-invent the wheel' so I didn’t use that design in the book, even though it was copyright-free but just took it as inspiration for my own design.
This is how it worked out - but it may be rather too pale to see, depending on your computer screen.
This one shows up a bit more clearly and, with the pencil lines removed, it's starting to look more like wallpaper than bathroom tiling –
Once I’d worked out the pattern and its repeats by going through all the processes that I described a fortnight ago, I painted one ‘block’ in gouache:
The next stage is to place these ‘blocks’ side by side in my photo-editing program and fill in the background colour on the computer to make sure it's even and you can't see the 'joins'.
How will it work out? Will the 'tiles' match up? I’ll let you know next week . . .
.
5 comments:
Thanks for visiting my blog, and for the words of encouragement,Judy. I am so glad it led me back to yours. I am going to be a frequent visitor here now, I am sure.
Thank you for your comments, Jane, and welcome :)
Hope some of my visitors will take a look at your lovely blog too!
You do amazing patterns and I know it will work out perfectly.
Thank you, Carole - I'm still experimenting with the best way to do repeating patterns, tracing paper or computer? At the moment, the computer seems to be winning!
I enjoy looking at the snowdrop flowers, and I especially love the blue background with them. Always a pleasure to see your continued creativity.
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