I’m teaching online!

Please join me for my first ever SkillShare class!

OK, so I was a bit nervous about being in front of a camera, but I pushed through it because I was so driven to create this class. You may want to grab some snacks, this is going to be a long one. This subject is so close to my heart.

Let me back up a bit here…

When I started designing patterns a few years ago, I joined Spoonflower, and I signed up for SkillShare so I could learn how to create patterns of my own. At first, I just designed what I thought was easier: basic repeat patterns. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with basic repeats, but I was always jealous, looking at all these other more elaborate patterns and thinking to myself “Wow, I’ll never be able to create something that sophisticated.”

But I kept hearing this term that seemed so completely foreign to me:

HALF-DROP

I had no idea what that meant, and the name sounded kinda math-y and intimidating, so honestly I just ignored it. I focused on building out my Spoonflower shop with basic repeat patterns. But I had this feeling that I could be doing more. And the fact that I’d scoffed at the idea of learning something new kept eating at me. I’m never one to shy away from a challenge, so I figured I’d learn how to create a half-drop pattern.

I’d only created a couple of them when…

One day, I got an email from Spoonflower. They told me someone had ordered a bunch of rolls of wallpaper in one of my designs (yay!) but the customer was having an issue: there were weird lines in my pattern (definitely not yay). This was a basic repeat pattern, and I’d uploaded a ton of those to Spoonflower by that point. Wondering what could’ve gone wrong, I immediately responded and told them I’d fix it as soon as possible (which was going to be immediately). I inspected my Adobe Illustrator pattern file. I tested the file in Illustrator by tiling it manually, because that was how I did it back then, and it seemed fine. I went back and forth with a very patient and wonderful Spoonflower employee who shared with me that I needed to test my pattern in PhotoShop. I read a few tutorials and lo and behold: my pattern did have hairlines—between each seam!

Yikes!

I freaked out, and I felt so many things. I was frustrated, embarrassed, remorseful, and anxious because I knew I needed to fix this ASAP. I read some more tutorials and fixed the error that day, and everything luckily worked out. But then I realized, I’d have to go back and fix almost 200 more patterns before I could in good conscience have them for sale anywhere. So for 2 weeks, I painstakingly, meticulously fixed and re-tested (the right way) each one so I knew they were perfect. Let me tell you, during that 2 weeks, my boyfriend really showed up in terms of his love and patience for me. I was a stress mess. But I made it through and kept practicing half-drop patterns.

I’m a huge fan of working smarter, not harder.

I’m always trying to find ways to streamline every process in my life from making my morning coffee to planning trips. So naturally, I started trying to find ways to work more efficiently when creating half-drop patterns. I wanted to spend the majority of my creation process drawing, not copying, pasting and moving, over and over again. That can get so tedious and it sucks the joy out of creating art (at least for me). I knew Adobe Illustrator really well—I’d been using it since 2001, so I knew it was powerful enough to help me automate a lot of the mundane tasks that made pattern design more of a headache than it needed to be. And I came up with a system. After designing hundreds of half-drop patterns using my streamlined workflow, and remembering that horrible experience of having to go back and fix a bunch of broken repeat pattern blocks, I realized I never wanted another surface designer to go through what I had. I deeply value community over competition, so I felt driven to share everything I’d learned and pack it into one class.

Time is so precious.

No one wants to spend their valuable time doing stuff they don’t enjoy. Most of us artists make art because we love it, and we find true happiness through creating. The technical part of making repeat patterns shouldn’t be a huge time sink, because it really doesn’t need to be. I hope my new SkillShare class helps other surface pattern designers streamline their process, so they can rediscover the fun part of making patterns: creating the artwork!

So now, here we are today, and I’ve launched my first class!

Thank you for sticking with me through this long long story. I feel so strongly about all this, and I really want to give back to a community that has taught me so much along my art journey. I hope you enjoy my class, and if you don’t currently have a SkillShare membership (trust me, it’s worth it, there are so many amazing classes on that platform) you can use my link to get a 30-day free trial. If you don’t have Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, you can sign up for free trials using my links here too.

Please swing by, say hi and follow me on SkillShare.

If you take my class, please consider leaving me a review. They’re super helpful for other potential students.

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