Red Velvet Cupcakes for a Spoonflower Design Challenge

Time to vote on my Red Velvet Spoonflower entry! CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Vote for as many or as few entries as you like by clicking on the preview images. For fairness, designs are presented in a random order for each person who votes. Your votes are submitted only after you reach the end of the voting pages and submit your votes. There are 1403 entries in this contest. (Yikes)

It's a LOT of entries to sift through, and 1/3 if not 1/2 of the entries did not follow the design brief:

For this official Pantone x Spoonflower Design Challenge, we invite you to create a design featuring Viva Magenta, a color which was selected to represent the bravery to break boundaries, fearless optimism, and Pantone’s pillars of Art + Design and Science + Tech. Use only Pantone’s Ignite palette below for this challenge, showcasing Viva Magenta as your dominant color, sparking energy within an otherwise soft palette. 

Pantone’s palette, Ignite:

18-1750 Viva Magenta, Hex: #BB2649 (your dominant color)
13-1404 Pale Dogwood, Hex: #EDCDC2
13-1010 Gray Sand, Hex: #E5CCAF
13-3804 Gray Lilac, Hex: #D4CACD
15-1216 Pale Khaki, Hex: #BFAF92
15-1115 Fields of Rye, Hex: #B7A990
15-6307 Agate Gray, Hex: #B3B1A1
13-4111 Plein Air, Hex: #BFCAD6

• 12/02/2022: Submissions open
• 12/20/2022: Submissions close at 3pm EST
• 12/22/2022: Public voting opens
• 01/03/2023: Public voting ends at 3pm EST
• 01/05/2023: Spoonflower will announce the winner

I got 56 votes, the winner got 338

Thanks so much!

Linking up with

Shelbee's Spread theKindness on the Edge

#AtoZchallenge 2022 Theme Reveal

For the Blogging from A-Z April Challenge this year, it's my favorite A-Z subject: FLUEVOG SHOES!

As you can see, this is an old sketch. I never put it in repeat.
For "A" in 2019, I used Aimee instead.

What the heck IS the A to Z Blogging Challenge? you ask.
Allow me to Articulate (haha).

The A to Z Challenge is held every April. The challenge is to blog through the alphabet every Monday through Saturday. The “A” theme is blogged on April 1st, “B” April 2nd, etc.
More about the challenge can be found on the official Blogging from A to Z Challenge Blog.

Just like last year, I've created an UNOFFICIAL Link Party for challenge participants.
Feel free to join in the fun! I also have a very long A-Z Blog Roll underneath this post.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking up with: 

The A-Z Theme Reveal List

Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

Bee Dazzled

 I encountered this fabric last week at the Textile Arts LA textile swap:

It was very familiar, because of this video:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kristine Augustyn (@kristineaugustyn)

Which was part of an online collaboration I had with Kristine last year (see it here).

But not only that...

My response to her video was this:

Release, 2020 (more info on my art website)

And to create it, I knocked off the bee print!

I was considering this concept as a possible print for girl's panties, maybe with ladybugs instead of bees, but had second thoughts -- do young girls want bugs on their underwear?

Today, it went into a Scrappy Square, flying full circle, so to speak.

Linking up with
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness (Tues)

#AtoZchallenge 2021: D is for Dede

 

Oh Dede

How badly I wanted to own thee

You broke my heart

By making my feet smart

And all I can achieve is Dede wannabe

The Fluevog Dede, part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

I really did try these on. See the post here.

Linking up with

Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

Hopscotch Fun

I'm on week 4 of the Summer of Creativity course and this week's theme was Humor.

That's a puzzle in the lower left. Yes! Redbubble offers puzzles now!

Get the 1000 piece version and drive yourself crazy!

[puzzle link]

You may need this laughing exercise while working on that:

Spoonflower is doing a "Sports" design challenge and I'm adding the Hopscotch placement design into the contest. I think it might be a good design for bedding, which Spoonflower offers.

The scale is too small, I had to reduce it for the contest and will make it bigger after it's over.

Wait. 

Is hopscotch a sport or a game? 

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I'll update with a link when voting starts 7/30.
Voting is open until 8/4 There are 486 entries in this contest. (Yikes)
Not a winner. Boo.

Linking up with

Michelle's Creative Compulsions

Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

#AtoZchallenge 2020 Theme Reveal

Regular readers, are you expecting more Fluevog sketches and repeats?
Not this April! [Maybe next month].

This year, I'm featuring the alphabetical journeys on "Stitching the World", my current massive embroidery project.

As I've been stitching the responses to my 4 Questions*:

Join in! link to answer form*

And documenting my week-by-week progress: [week 1] [week 2] [week 3] [week 4]
I've realized it's been very difficult to see the details. How to show them? The large image is too far away and the photo quality is bad.

My favorite shots have been those of the growing mass of French Knots of LA:

But there are so many other areas to see!
115 journeys to be exact!
Come back on April 1st to see the "A" journeys.

* The Four Questions will close on 3/29 at 3:29PST. 
If you would like to join in, click here to answer before the deadline.

Curious about the A to Z Challenge? Read more here, on the A-Z Blog, and consider giving it a try! I’ve discovered new blogging friends and have created lots of new art through it.
I have an A-Z blogroll on the bottom of this page, to give you an idea of the wide variety of possibilities.

My past A-Z challenges here
A-Z Fluevogs 2019

A-Z Fluevogs 2018
A-Z Fluevogs 2017
A-Z Tartans 2016

and elsewhere
A-Z Trucks 2019
A-Z Trucks 2018
A-Z Trucks 2017

Southwest A-Z 2015

Enid in the Scarf Closet A-Z 2015

Linking up with
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness
Michelle's Creative Compulsions Linky Party
Catherine's #shareallLinkup

Stitching the World at stARTup Art Fair LA

This past weekend Stitching the World met the public at the stARTup LA Art Fair held at the Kinney Hotel in Venice Beach.

Room 207

The public responded:

93 answers during the three days of the fair!

The four questions:
1. Where are you from?
2. Where are you now?
3. Where do you want to go?
4. What color is your journey?

Stitching...

Most journeys meet in Los Angeles (the popular answer to "Where are you now?")

French knots at the hubs

The current state of the world.
click to embiggen

Want to join virtually?
CLICK HERE TO ANSWER THE 4 QUESTIONS (goes to a previous blog post that has the color chart)

Linking up with
Catherine's #shareallLinkup
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness

Fluevog Bee's Knees Repeat Artwork Update

Ah, Fluevog Bee's Knees, you are such cute shoes! Putting that lacing into a proper repeat stung!
Now you're giving me a hard time with how the colors print. Buzzzzzzz.

I managed to refresh the colors for the Aqua colorway (which was disturbing me, not a big aqua fan).
The Black looks bad on my Spoonflower strikeoff and I'll have to wrestle with the digital file to get it to work.

Aqua strikeoff . Black strikeoff

Aqua: old . new

on Redbubble . on Spoonflower

Black: (still trying to come up with a solution)

AND
Good news for you fabric hoarders collectors -- Spoonflower is granting FREE SHIPPING worldwide until 3/8!!!

Spoonflower link

Linking up with Shelbee's #SpreadtheKindness

Diedrick Brackens Studio Visit

Diedrick Brackens is a fiber artist who has been selected to be part of Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer.
Through the auspices of Textile Arts Los Angeles, I was able to visit him at his studio in Leimert Park today.

He shared examples of experiments from a recent residency in New Orleans.

if you feed a river

jubilent . unidentified

detail

part of a project about water
yarn is dyed with black dye and the water from different sources

Pacific Ocean on left, Lake Pontchartrain on right.

 Three of us then walked over to Maren Hassinger's opening at Art + Practice.

More about that in a later post!

If you live in Southern California, and have an interest in the fiber arts (in all its many forms!), consider getting on the email list of Textile Arts Los Angeles. Lots of interesting things transpiring with the group! 

Linking up with Shelbee's #SpreadTheKindness
and
Catherine's #SaturdayShareLinkup

Party Leopard

Meet "Party Leopard" my newest print-from-a-class-demo artwork:

I didn't think I'd come up with anything exotic this week, I surprised myself!

At the end of class, I took a photo of the classroom's Cintiq monitor and posted it to Instagram, as a joke.
Lo and behold, a Facebook Friend loved it and wanted yardage!
I then had the task of putting it into repeat, because it was an unplanned combination of 3 different repeats.

Here are the elements:
Leopard forms the topmost layer of lavender ground and transparent leopard motifs.
It came from this demo file:

Next are the purple dots, from this file (in class, we all created a dot 1/2 drop from scratch):

And, at the bottom layer, is a lovely print that I've been using to demo Photoshop's Offset Filter.
I call it The Tie Dye Eggs:

I found this dumpster diving at the Otis Fashion Campus in the early 00s,
when they were situated at the Cal Mart in downtown LA.

IT EVEN HAS COLORWAYS!!!!

Recently, while doing a Google Image "tie dye" search, I discovered it online!
Had to "Pin" it! [Alas, the Pin link is not good. Boohoo]

So yes, the Party Leopard can [soon] be found on Spoonflower* if you want yardage.

And Redbubble* for most of the Redbubble things:

* I get a small commission from Spoonflower and Redbubble on purchased items.

Party on, Leopard People!

Did someone say Conga Line? Taking this party to Shelbee's #SpreadTheKindness and Catherine's #SaturdayShare
Catherine introduced me to Redbubble, and I'm forever grateful!