Friday, December 27, 2013

Milk and Honey and Spoonflower and Me

A few months ago I was one of 4 winners for a design contest sponsored by Spoonflower in tandem with Milk and Honey Shoes.  Entrants were to design a textile print to use on the Milk and Honey website for shoes.  Winners got a free pair of shoes with their design on them.  The design will also be available for the public to use on shoes they design! Is that not the COOLEST thing ever?

Milk and Honey Shoes are fabulous...you can design your own shoes there using a ton of different materials and shoe styles.  You choose the body, the heel shape and height, the materials, pretty much everything so your shoe will be pretty unique.

I chose a boot. I'm a boot kind of girl.  I chose a stiletto heel with an internal .5 inch platform.  They are simply put...bad ass.  Lookie here.

Photo by Nathan Hanlon. Legs and feet by me.

Are they not gorgeous?  I love, love, love them.  I want to wear them every day...I do have to go buy an outfit or two to go with them tho.  I want a linen dress to wear with these and some fabulous linen pants too.  I'm pushing it wearing these kinds of boots since I'm a mature (ahem) woman but hey, with the right outfit I won't look like a hoochie mama wearing her 22 year old daughters clothes.

It's a hard to see that my design has a linen background but you can see it here if you want to look at it more closely. Here are a few more photos of the shoes (and just my legs).

Photo by Nathan Hanlon. Legs and feet by me.
Photo by Nathan Hanlon. Legs and feet by me.

Photo by Nathan Hanlon. Legs and feet by me.

This bird one is my fave because we came upon these abstract birds in an alley doorway. Since there are little birds in my design I thought it was Kismet.

Milk and Honey also asked each of us to send photos of ourselves wearing the shoes. OOOh, do I hate seeing photos of myself.   There is an art to photographing mature women...and luckily my daughter has learned some of the finer points of the art.  I didn't have to Photoshop any of the photos I used (hahaha, I also tossed out a whole boatload of photos tho).  Here I am casually posing in my boots.

Photo by Zoë Odien.
Photo by Zoë Odien.
Photo by Zoë Odien. 
Photo by Zoë Odien.
I sent all of those photos to M&H and I have no idea how many of them they'll use or if they'll do some Photoshop work on them. LOL, If they can take off 20 years I'd be estastic.

I have to thank my daughter and her boyfriend for taking the photos.  They were good sports as I looked at photos and said things like: "No, too close...OMG, do you see my double chins?" Or "Look at those rolls!  No rolls!." Or "...maybe you need to step back 20 feet and shoot from way up there looking down at me."  I'm lucky because they're both taller than me so they didn't really have to climb on ladders.

I'm still waiting for the blog post (probably delayed because it took me a few days to get my photos to M&H) and will post the link to it when it goes up.  I believe the design will be available for the public to use on their shoes at that time.  I'll keep you posted!


Wednesday, December 18, 2013

#Spoonflower Top 25 Favorite Designs of 2013

Yipeeee!  My design "All the Pretty Little Horses" made #15 in the Top 25 for the year.  You can check out the blog post here at the Spoonflower blog.  And if you're feeling generous go to the blog, click on the link to my design and favorite it at Spoonflower and Facebook and Twitter and anywhere else you can think of!



You never really know who well you stack up against other designs at Spoonflower so it came as a complete surprise that I made the list at all.  They have their own ranking algorithm that I cannot figure out so you have to kind of search around to see what are the more popular designs in the millions of images there.

I feel really lucky because that list shows a lot of designs that have been around for a few years (and popular for good reason too) and mine has only been up there for 5 months.  So pound for pound I feel 15th is totally stellar!

I've really had a fantastic year in design. Placing this high at SF, winning a number of contests this year: Fairy Lanterns at SF, Fairy Lanterns at Connecting Threads and the Spoonflower sponsored Milk and Honey show contest.  (A blog post is coming soon on that one).

I'm jumping for joy this morning! 

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Color palette for the Spoonflower Retro Ski contest

This weeks Spoonflower contest is a limited palette contest and the theme is Retro Skiing.  Here are the colors:
Not my fave color combo when I think of snow, mountains, skiing, cold, winter, etc. But plenty of designers came up with fab designs using those colors.

I did a very calm mountain slopes design.


I played around with some textures to give it some depth and called it a day.  I love my design and feel it's very usable for quilting or a fun lining to a warm winter jacket.  I'm not positive that anything I could come up using the other 2 colors I didn't use would sell very often so I stayed with what I thought worked even if it's a pretty calm design.

If you want to check out all the designs in the contest go here Spoonflower Retro Skiing contest. Vote for what you like, as many designs as you like. Make sure you don't miss mine because it doesn't have the orangey-red and yellow combo in it!

Happy weekend to you!

Oh and btw, my poor embarrassed dogs only placed 17th in the last contest.  Now they're really mad at me for making them wear those silly sweaters! hahahah. 

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Spoonflower Ugly Sweater Contest

I laughed when I first saw this challenge."Ugly Sweaters  This week, designers should create patterns featuring images of (or images inspired by) ugly holiday sweaters. "

I wracked my brain trying to think of something that worked for me. I'm always mindful of what I think will have some longevity and I really didn't think ugly holiday sweaters would be a big seller. I could absolutely be wrong but that theme would never be something I'd buy except as a joke.  And with no time to purchase the designs by Christmas it just didn't seem like the timing was right.

Others may disagree.  That said I created something that tickled my fancy and didn't stick with any holiday at all.  Here is my design (which btw, is lo-res and does not repeat).


I love dogs, we're a dog lover family.  We have a ton of dogs.  I had to put one down about a month ago so our dog family shrunk down to 5.  :-( Some tolerate outfits and others just would never, ever let me or my daughter dress them up.  But we think it's a holiday when we can get our dogs in outfits!

Each of the dogs here have specific outfits that either coordinate with their breeds or are the total opposite of their breed. For example The basset hound is often thought of as lumbering (although they really aren't) and he got fairy wings.  He's quite embarrassed by them too. The Jack Russell got a turtle shell because ours needs to slow down some. She's a pistol.  The dog curled up with a lions mane is my nearly 20 year old Jindo Gae who has the biggest lions heart you'd every want to know.  The Corgi gets a giraffe outfit because in her mind she is taller than all the other dogs here.

So, even if my design tanks in the contest I am very happy with my doggies.  They think the sweaters are ugly so that's all that counts right?

Thank goodness for our furry family, my design is dedicated to Sheeves the Jindo because she's nearing the end of her life with us and I have to pay tribute to her. Because she's the best dog I've ever had and my 22 year old daughter has never known life without her (that she remembers anyway).

If you want to vote go here Ugly Sweater Contest. And if you want to see my design where it does repeat go here to my "When Humans Learn to Knit" design.
Ugly Sweaters
This week, designers should create patterns featuring images of (or images inspired by) ugly holiday sweaters. Previews will be shown at the fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry is Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013.
- See more at: http://blog.spoonflower.com/upcoming-spoonflower-contests.html#sthash.mx9lr5gO.dpuf
Ugly Sweaters
This week, designers should create patterns featuring images of (or images inspired by) ugly holiday sweaters. Previews will be shown at the fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry is Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013.
- See more at: http://blog.spoonflower.com/upcoming-spoonflower-contests.html#sthash.mx9lr5gO.dpuf