Patterns for me

Server update, next post

It’s been a really long time since my last post, sorry for that. I’ve had some personal issues to take care of, but I’m going to try to get this blog up and going again very soon.

If you’ve been here before you might notice that the blog doesn’t look like it used to. That’s because I’ve updated my server and of course forgot to take a backup of my blog’s design. The look will change soon, I promise.

How to create a pattern – Part 2 (Creating shapes)

This is my first video tutorial and I’m very excited. It took me four hours to create the tutorial and this is only the first part. In this part I show you how to create shapes in Inkscape that you can import into Seamless Studio.

You can find more information about the tools I used in part one of how to create a pattern.

How to create a pattern – Part 1 (Tools)

I promised to show you how I create my version of the Chinese pattern from last weeks post, but I have been really busy at work this week and therefore haven’t yet had time to create something. Instead this post will be about what tools to use when creating a pattern and the next post will be about my own version of the orange and blue Chinese flower pattern.

My inspiration source

Most of my patterns are created in Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is a great tool, but quite expensive, so I thought I would use free and open source software for this pattern. The software I’m going to use are Inkscape and Seamless Studio. Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. Inkscape is free and you can create svg-files (Scalable Vector Graphics) with it. Seamless Studio, on the other hand, is not open source nor free, but if you are a COLOURlovers member you get a $20 discount, which will make the software cost you $29. Compared to Illustrator, which can cost up to $599 (full downloadable version), Seamless Pro feels almost for free. You can also use Seamless Studio on COLOURlovers, but I don’t think all the tools in the downloadable version are available on the site.

Installing Inkscape

You can download Inkscape from the frontpage of their site. The latest stable release can be downloaded from the link in the upper left corner of the website.

Inkscape website

I’ve been using their nightly build for Windows from the download page and they usually also work well. They are not stable versions, though, so even if the nightly build include all the latest upgrades and tools, the software might also include bugs and might not always work smoothly. If you’re not a geek like me who likes to install new versions of software and submit bug reports, I suggest you use the stable version of Inkscape.

The stable version of Inkscape includes a wizard, which makes installing it easy and fast.

When the install has finished Inkscape should open up in your preferred language.

Inkscape main window

If you want to change the language of your interface, open File -> Inkscape Preferences and scroll down to Interface. Select your language from the Language field on the picture below.

Inkscape language preferences

Installing Seamless Studio

I haven’t used Studio a lot yet, but from what I’ve seen it seems to be a great tool for creating seamless patterns. You can create seamless patterns in both Inkscape and Illustrator but making the pattern seamless can be difficult depending on what type of pattern you want.

If you are a member of COLOURlovers you can log in to your account and download Seamless Studio from there. This option of downloading will automatically give you the $20 discount. If you’re not a member of COLOURlovers I suggest you sign up before you download Seamless Studio.

For those of you who have never heard of COLOURlovers I’ve quoted a snippet from their About page below:

COLOURlovers is an international creative community that helps people discover their inner designer. We provide people with a wealth of user created & shared color inspiration as well as tools that make the creative process as simple as possible. Whether you’re simply looking for a color palette to kickstart your next project or want to produce a piece of vector art, we have the tools and services to help anybody from go from design inspiration to execution.

There are 968,863 COLOURlovers around the world who have created 4,530,771 Colors, 1,838,811 Palettes and 1,936,232 Patterns.

Signing up to COLOURlovers is free, but you can become a sponsor for $20 and get some additional features added to your account. Sponsors get an additional discount of $10, which means that they pay only $19 for Seamless Studio.

With Seamless Studio you can create seamless tiling patterns, design pattern templates or multicolored patterns, build custom shape libraries, import existing shapes, share your patterns with COLOURlovers and export to PNGs, JPGs, or SVGs, which can be opened in Illustrator, Photoshop, Inkscape or GIMP.

Seamless Studio was easy to install and you can either choose to buy it right away or try it for 15 days.

Seamless Studio main window

This ends my post about tools used to create my own version of the beautiful orange and blue Chinese flower pattern I found on the Internet Archives site. Hopefully soon I will find time to finally create the pattern.

Where to find inspiration

I have about 500 different patterns in my portfolio at Shutterstock and I have to admit it’s getting harder and harder to come up with new and original ideas. I haven’t created any new patterns lately, the one’s I’ve added to my Spoonflower portfolio are already sold on Shutterstock. I wanted to do something new and started to search the internet for inspiration, and I found the Internet Archive with loads of old public domain books.

What is the Internet Archive?

The Internet Archive is a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. (source: Internet Archive About page)

Chinese ornaments

I found a lot of old books about patterns in the Internet archive’s database and one book I liked a lot is a book about Chinese ornaments. There’s a load of nice ornaments that I could use as a source for a pattern, but I’m going to use the orange and blue flower pattern on the image below. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do and what it’s going to look like, but my next post will be a tutorial on how I turn my inspiration source to a fabric pattern.

My inspiration source

Book prewiev

Patterned paper

I’m not a scrapbook artist and I’ve never made a greeting card, but I stumbled upon a Youtube video and a blog and I just loved the patterns and the way the artist combines the patterns in her cards. You can find the blog here: KWerner Design Blog

Here’s the video about combining patterned papers in card.

Inspiration boards and other tools

I was looking for a tool or place where I could create inspiration boards to use when I design. I already use Colourlovers to create and save colorpalettes. At Colourlovers you can browse almost 2 million palettes and that is a greate source of inspiration.

I found a coulpe of sites that can be used as inspiration boards and to my surprise I found a couple of my patterns on these sites. The first site I found was Pinterest. Pinterest requires an invite, but it was easy enough to sign up for the invite and I got one within one day.

The second site I found was Polyvore. Polyvore doesn’t require an invite, but even though I did find a couple of my designs there, it seems to be more a fashion site than a site for textile design.

The third was Kaboodle, which at a first glance seems to be more about shopping than about design.

I registered at all three sites, but I think I will use Pinterest more than the others and I also added a Follow me button on my blog for those of you who are interested in creating inspiration boards too.

My first real post, a book review

I’m a self-taught designer, which means I get most of my knowledge from books and online resources. I have taken a couple of university courses in art history, but that’s about all formal education in design that I have. I’m always in search of new books that can help me develop both my skills as a designer and also the knowledge needed for me to be able to sell my fabrics.

The latest addition to my library of art books is Alex Russel’s “The fundamentals of Printed Textile design”. Below is a quote from the back cover of the book:

AVA Academia’s Fundamentals titles are designed to introduce students to the key elements of visual arts subjects and the ideas that underpin them. Packed with examples from students and professionals and fully illustrated with clear diagrams and inspiring imagery, they offer an essential introduction to the applied visual arts.

The fundamentals of Printed Textile Design is about contemporary practice in printed textile design. It provides an introduction to the creative skills, techniques and processes required by designers in order to produce a professional, creative and commercially aware portfolio. The book outlines the design process, looking at the vital roles played by drawing, colour, style and content. It also looks at how to contextualize and visually communicate effectively in order to build a professional portfolio, whether with traditional design staples or via a more innovative approach.

I haven’t read the whole book yet, because it is a book with a lot of information. On 200 pages the author writes about everything from printed textile design history to how to design for manufacture. There’s lot of information about the technical part of printing on fabrics as well as about the design process. I like the book and what I’m sure I will have good use of it on my own venture into the textile design business.

I’ve added an affiliate link to the book on amazon, but this blog is not really about making money blogging, so those you who feel you would like to buy the book, but don’t feel comfortable about doing it through the affiliate link, you can use this link instead: The fundamentals of Printed Textile Design.

Welcome to patterns for me!

Welcome to Patterns for me!

This site is created as a way to explore patterns, both in textile and web design. I’m a teacher in a business vocational school in Finland, but my passion is textile patterns and patterns used in web design. I create patterns and sell them on mickrostock sites and I also design fabrics that are sold on Spoonflowers.

I’m a self-thought designer and the purpose of this site is to collect information and inspiration. I would also love to connect with people who share my passion and who want the share their own designs and sources for inspiration.

This blog is still under construction. I will work on it for about a week, so bear with me, please.

One of my patterns sold at Spoonflowers.

Blue and green stripes on white background