Textile Design Lab's Summer of Creativity: Editing a Texture

Look!
This:

Came from this:

Lesson Two was a quickie editing technique for textures that ended up working out well on my 2nd try.

1) Added "Content Aware" fills by making a selection, Select > Inverse, hit Delete (choosing Content Aware)
1A) a misfire -- cropping area has too much white edge

[from here on, a reenactment] 

1B, Red shows a tighter selection, better all-over fill 

2) Cropped to an area that I liked (this art not in repeat)

Next, I'll show crops of the transformations without the step-by-step directions.
Maintaining a bit of mystery, since it's not a free course.

 Oops, reenactment doesn't match. Oh well -- glad that I saved the original!

The Textile Design Lab is a monthly membership fee-based site. Well worth it, so far!

Linking up with Shelbee's On the Edge of the Week

Textile Design Lab's Summer of Creativity: Stamping

Tactic #2 to generate some new personal designs was to join in on the Textile Design Lab's [TDL] Summer of Creativity [SoC]. There are weekly lessons, projects, and videos for seven weeks.

Week One is Stamping.
I totally forgot about stamping! 
Remember this piece? Probably not, it's from 2010:

[from the "What If" series of posts]
I stamped with bubble wrap and a bottle cap, and painted on a stencil on a dot print strike-off from work.

Enough history! Get to the stamping! 

On Wednesdays, there is a TDL One Hour Challenge which this week related to the stamping lesson.
Just my cup of tea -- a little creative play date, without a heavy time commitment.
Bonus: this week it's all analog. Deploy the ink and gouache!

I opted for finding six random items to use for stamping, and spending ten minutes stamping with each.
My tools:

Dessicated Lime, Golfball, Cork, Fake Fur, Shoe, Zip Cartridge

I cleared a space on my studio table:

And used the golfball with ink (you can see it resting in the ink puddle above).

In ten minutes, I filled sixteen pages with textures! Very exhilarating!

In my second session with the golfball,  I used ultramarine gouache (which very quickly merged with the leftover ink due to gravity and general sloppiness):

My goal with the gouache was to see what kind of marks I'd get with a more "watercolory" medium.
Eighteen pages generated!

My third session with the goofball golfball was stamping with acrylic paint.
[Trying to find my acrylic paint was no walk in the park. But that's a topic for another post].
The goal was to see if the marks were different with an opaque medium.

Totally forgot how stinky acrylic paint is. Especially 30 year old puff paint. Not very opaque either.

Results, 13 pages:

Mr Lou, my studio assistant, remained unimpressed.

Thirty minutes total with one "tool", forty seven pages of textures = SO much fun!

But I don't think I'm finished yet -- now I want to try the golfball with oil paint, because THAT is truly opaque.
Will add my results if I get to it.

Spoonflower's Betabrand Challenge and Contest

See the plaid in the upper right? That's my entry for the Spoonflower's Betabrand contest.

Some of the prints that I voted for. Yes, I voted for myself! 

The design brief:
"Our Betabrand Double Take Design Challenge seeks designs that invite a second glance to add to their lineup of prints. We are looking for quirky new takes on classic patterns, designs that reveal more than meets the eye upon a second glance, an allover print that could be two things at once..."

A closer look:

Link to design

Winners are determined by popular vote and with 568 randomly displayed entries, it's a lot to slog through. I haven't figured out if there's any way to direct you to my entry. Sigh.

My source images, which I found in the kitchen:

Steamed rice in a saucepan

Chopstick

I edited the imagery in Photoshop, then built the repeat in Illustrator. 

Joining this challenge was part of an effort to do more personal design work. It's difficult to get inspired to do my own projects after spending four full work days creating repeats for the money job. Baby steps!

Adding this to Shelbee's On the Edge of the Week linkup. Maybe I'll generate more votes?

[7-28] The winners are here.