Found Thrift Store Patterns

Feeling guilty because I decided to play hooky yesterday at the thrift store instead of getting work done, I decided to do a little research and take pictures of patterns I found around the store. Made me feel like I was getting something done!

Three and the Moon: Early Work by Illustrator Boris Artzybasheff

During a recent thrift excursion, for some unknown reason I picked a book from the shelf and boy was I glad I did! You see, the library-bound cover was nothing spectacular, so who knows why I was drawn to it.

But as soon as I saw what was inside, the book was in my cart. And I haven't read any of the stories, yet, because I can't stop looking at the striking illustrations! The book is Three and the Moon: Legendary Stories of Old Brittany, Normandy, and Provence by Jacques Dorey, illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff, and published in 1929.

Later in his career, Mr. Artzybasheff moved on to produce more detailed illustrations of three-dimensional, often surreal and grotesquely anthropomorphic objects. He also illustrated several Time, Life, and Fortune magazine covers.

It's a Paint-By-Number Christmas!

Inspired by my collecting obsession with vintage paint-by-number paintings, I decided to go the "original" DIY route with this week's Spoonflower contest entry.

The assignment this week: create a festive tree that can be printed on one yard of fabric. My one yard features a 24" x 30" tree painting in a vintage frame, along with seven ornaments you can paint yourself (using the color key provided, or using your own colors), then cut out and attach to the tree! One yard of Linen-Cotton Canvas actually has an additional 12 inches, so the extra space includes more unfinished ornaments, as well as seven finished ones. I plan to adapt this to a wall decal, too, once the contest is over. Might be a fun way to decorate a child's room for Christmas!

What do you think? Wanna vote? Click here! Thank you!

Detail of the unfinished ornaments:

Detail of the finished ornaments, using the color key provided:

And a mockup of a decorated tree!

Richard Scarry Is Golden

I found this Rabbit and His Friends Little Golden Book while thrifting recently, and bought it not only because it was written and illustrated by Richard Scarry (1953), but because my son is obsessed with platypuses (platypi?), thanks to Perry the Platypus from "Phineas and Ferb". Anyway, I thought I would share with you a couple of my favorite pages: the title page, with some chalk lettering (!), and the last page, which features a poster set in several kinds of wood type.

A Kaleidoscopic Wonderland of Hi-Fidelity Vibrancy

Okay, so check out the amazing stack of vintage record album banners I shuffled up on the Stereo Stack website, developed by my favorite local Seattle record shop, Jive Time Records. Shuffle the stack if you want, and purchase coordinating prints and tees. Bold, graphic, and retro. I love it!

It's a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World

Before I get to the main subject of this post, I want to say a big heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you who voted for my Geek Chic design in the Fabric8 contest! All of the 100 semi-finalist entries were amazing, so I am honored to be in the Top 8.

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The past few days I poked my head above the water of the ocean that is Geek Chic coordinates to take a quick breath and design something completely different for this week's Spoonflower contest: Mod Wallpaper. When I hear those two words together, I immediately think of flowing geometric designs from the '70s, in oranges and yellows...remember when groovy wallpaper was even printed with silver foil, so some of the elements were mirror-like? But 'mod' can also refer to the mod culture of the '60s, with coffee bars and jazz...and even perhaps a bit in line with Midcentury Modern and TV's "Mad Men".

There is a specific 'rule' in this contest: Use only three colors, and optional black OR white. I had an idea of the motif I wanted to do and tried it in more of a late-'60s, early-'70s color palette and style, but found that it worked better using a more late-'50s, early'60s palette. I chose GOLD (D49F11), PINK (E9B8A7), and GRAY (C8C6C5), with the optional BLACK. One thing I love about the computer is the ability to try different orientations and palettes in just one or two clicks. The final pattern I chose was not at all what I had originally envisioned, and I love that! Although now that I think about it, having so many options can also make it difficult to choose a favorite.

I think there will be a wide variety of patterns in this contest, as the term 'mod' can be interpreted so many different ways, but I can't wait to see them all! You can vote for your favorites starting Thursday, May 23, 2013, here.

Above: Choosing a color palette. I will probably do all of them eventually--which one is your favorite?

Geek Chic: Dorky But Cool

It's that time of year again: time for the Robert Kaufman Fabric8 Contest. In this competition, the judges from Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Spoonflower pore over hundreds of designs (one entry from each designer) and choose 100 semi-finalists. Then the general public votes, and the top eight designers then create a collection around the original design. The general public then votes again on the collections to determine a winner, who will be given a contract to work with Robert Kaufman!

The theme for this year's contest is "Geek Chic", so I went back to my '80s roots and focused on fashion and hobbies of the hipster dweeb, naming the collection after the term coined by Judd Nelson's character, John Bender, in the ultimate '80s flick "The Breakfast Club". Using hand-drawn illustrations, as if doodled in a notebook or *gasp!* on a desk, the collection features cameras (perhaps thrifted for 25 cents before the obsession became mainstream), calculators (everyone turned into a nerd when the calculator became a necessity in the trigonometry classroom), record players, Swiss fashion watches, combs we'd put in our back pockets, hi-top sneakers, and of course, "The Cube". All of these things have become "cool" again, perhaps even more so, some 30 years later. The ultimate revenge for those of us who have always been geeks at heart!

The first design shown below, "Make It Snappy!", is the print I'm entering into the contest. It features a collection of vintage and retro cameras, including those resembling the Brownie, Polaroid One Step, Canon Snappy (my first camera)...even a couple inspired by Fisher-Price toy cameras. These may not have been geeky at the time, but collecting them now is all the rage for geeks like me. To me, "Geek Chic" could be defined as "dorky and cool at the same time." And it seems kind of dorky-yet-cool to go back to using analog objects now when digital cameras and apps for processing and sharing are the mainstream.

Make It Snappy!

Cal Q. Lator and High Energy (Gray)

Apple Pi with close-up

Hi-Fi (Black) and All-Stars (Gray)

May the Cube Be With You and Magic Cube

Hi-Fi (White) and High Energy (White)

Geeky Stripes (Black on Grid) and Oh, Goody! (Black)

All-Stars (White) and High Energy (Red)

Hi-Fi (Yellow) and Oh, Goody! (Pinstripe)

Swiss Time and Geeky Stripes (Color)

I've had so much fun working on this collection, not only because the subject matter is so nostalgic, but because it is different from anything I've done with surface pattern design. Doing the drawings and then seeing them come together with color and in patterns...I could get used to this! There are just too many geeky-but-cool things from the '80s--I have a feeling I'll be doing a second collection!