Ringing in the New Year with... Peace, Love + Paper Party Hats!

Peace, Love + Paper Party Hats!
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Designers were asked to celebrate their New Year traditions in this week's Design Challenge! With everything happening in the world today I thought that spreading some peace and love as my holiday tradition would be a great way to ring in the new year!

Happy New Year everyone!

Voting will open Thursday, December 17th, 2015 and stay open for two weeks instead of one (Spoonflower is skipping a contest in observance of Christmas). Please Vote Here!

Knit + Purl

Knit + Purl ©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

The Spoonflower designers were asked to... 'Create a knitting-inspired design just in time for the cozy holiday season'.

A handmade 'I love you' stitched from the heart!

I was so excited to squeeze this design in this week, it was such a fun design topic! 

Voting will open Thursday, December 10th, 2015. Please VOTE HERE!

2016 Tea Towel Calendars!

It's that time of year again!

2016 'flea market finds' calendar (white)
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

2016 'flea market finds' calendar (avocado)
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

2016 'choose happy' calendar
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

2016 'farm friends' calendar

©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Spoonflower is hosting it's annual design contest for tea towel calendars.
I have re-issued my 'farm friends' calendar for 2016, and added 2 other new calendars (in 2 color ways) as well! (Previewed at the scale of a linen/cotton fat quarter (27" x 18" oriented horizontally).

I have until Tuesday the 27th of October to decide which calendar to enter into the contest, so if anyone has a preference - let me know! All 4 Calendars are currently available for purchase at Spoonflower. (Great holiday gift - just hem + give!)

Voting starts on Thursday, October 29th, 2015. Vote Here!

Garden Border Print for Mom!

Mother's Day is just next week and this week's design is for my Mom Claire!

Claire's Garden
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

My Mom loves flowers and she taught me the names of so many when I was growing up. With eight kids, various dogs, hamsters, turtles, fish and even a rabbit, things could get a little crazy at our house. In all of the chaos, my Mom found joy in her flower arrangement on the kitchen table. (It was sometimes the only thing that she could control and it brought her to a happy place.)

As I'm writing this memories of my childhood and picking flowers with my sisters from the woods next to our house are flooding my mind. Lily of the valley grew wild along with the 'turks cap' tiger lilies and the Queen Anne's Lace was everywhere... we loved to pick them for our beautiful Mom.

My sisters and I have raised our kids with fresh flowers on our tables as a reminder that we should appreciate the little things.

Love you Mom!

In honor of Mom, Spoonflower asked it's designer's to create a floral border print design to be previewed at the one yard size (42" x 36"). This type of print could be used for skirts, dresses, aprons or even for home dec use!

Voting will open on Thursday, April 30th. Vote Here!

Balloon Rides for Spoonflower!

'Balloon Rides!'
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

This week's contest was to create a flying machine-themed design! I completed a similar assignment for this theme in my Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells e-course, I used some of the icons from that finished piece and added some new icons to complete this pattern.

Voting will open on Thursday, April 2nd. Vote Here!

Suzani by the Sea!

Coral, mint, black and white...

'Suzani by the Sea' ©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Spoonflower's challenge this week was to create a design using all four colors in this restricted palette,

restricted palette

no less, no more. The only restriction was the color, the design concept this week was left wide open, so I chose to make a Suzani* type print.

I had drawn hundreds of these elements for MATS 4A this fall and was looking for a way to make a design for Spoonflower using my sketches, so I opened my sketches in Photoshop and added my new palette. Then built my layered elements into designed motifs and created my pattern.

(*Suzani is an embroidered and decorative tribal textile made in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries. Popular design motifs can include the sun, flowers, leaves, vines and an occasional bird or two.)

Voting opens on Thursday, March 5th and continues until Thursday, March 12th, 2015. Click Here To Vote!

A Rhino for Spoonflower!

This week, I've created a fabric design that celebrates rhinos!

'Rhino + Friends' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

'Rhino + Friends' (1/2 brick repeat)
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

My inspiration for this assignment comes from these photo's that I took at our local zoo… Lion Country Safari. It is a drive through zoo so you can get up-close and personal with the animals in their own environment. The rhino area is large and they have many white rhino's of all different sizes including some of the babies pictured here. 

The Design… Started with sketches of my inspiration photo's on my iPad (Adobe Ideas App). My family was on vacation and I did all of my sketches this week while on or waiting for airplanes. When I got home I opened the illustrations in Photoshop and colored and arranged the elements into a simple layout. The 1/2 brick repeat is sized as a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Voting began on Thursday, July 10th, 2014. Vote Here!

 

Mature White Rhino.

Rhino baby!

Baby White Rhino.

Sleepy

More about the Rhino's from the Lion Country Safari website… 
"White Rhinoceros are located in Hwange National Park which is a famous reserve located in western Zimbabwe.

Lion Country Safari is proud to be a part of the SSP (Species Survival Plan) of this endangered species, and many white rhinos have been born on our preserve since 1977. In the wild, rhinos have been hunted for their horns. Instead of being composed of bony material, rhino “horns” are made of fibers of keratin, a protein also found in our human hair and fingernails. White rhinos get their name from the Afrikaans word “wyde,” meaning wide, or square-lipped. Their color is actually stone-gray, not white as their name suggests."

Lilies for Spring!

'Lily + Palm' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Lilies are a sure sign that Spring is here! This week at Spoonflower, designers were asked to celebrate Spring and Easter with patterns that included the Lily!
This week I wanted to keep it simple. I drew a ton of lilies and lily of the valley icons. Then as usual some birds worked their way into my sketches. I just can't resist adding a few happy birds whenever I can. I added palm branches as a way to give my pattern structure, then some hydrangea petals for a spot of color. Only minimal details were added to keep it… simple!
Design preview is in a quarter yard (21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, April 10th, 2014 and will continue until Thursday, April 17th, 2014! Please Vote!

'Wellies and Umbrellies' for Spoonflower!

April showers bring May flowers! This week's challenge was to design a fabric to celebrate the trusty rubber boot!

'Wellies and Umbrellies'   ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs.

This concept came easy to me this week. I live in beautiful south Florida and am surrounded by amazing birds year round. I am constantly photographing, drawing and watching birds. (I took the photo's below).

Two sandhill cranes - backyard 

 

An egret with rosette
spoonbills - local pond

Flamingo - Palm Beach Zoo

Ibis - pond

rainy season rainbow - backyard

Egret - backyard photo

 The weather is gorgeous right now but in rainy season the only creatures happy to be in the rain are the birds. 

I decided to incorporate the boots and birds with rain and some fun umbrellas. I was excited to use some of my sketches from my iPad's Adobe Ideas App. I drew some wellies, umbrellas, rain, clouds, flowers and accessories for my characters like the bathing cap, glasses, and hats to give them personality. 

When the drawings were done I imported them Photoshop on my main computer and assembled them with color and pattern in layers, almost like a collage. When my characters were complete I made a repeat of the rain and clouds and added my characters!

Previews will be sized as a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Voting starts Thursday, March 27th, 2014 and continues until Thursday, April 4th, 2014. Please vote!

Resolutions!

This last week's designer challenge... use hand-lettering to write a New Year's resolution. Design elements were allowed, but the design must have text that has a hand-lettered appearance, and describes a resolution.
This challenge started with some soul searching. I tried to draw resolutions that were positive and hopeful. I drew about 30 resolutions with my iPad and drew tons of organic design elements… birds, trees, leaves and branches with my trusty black markers and colored them in photoshop. Textures were added to some of the elements for interest. I uses burlap that I scanned and posterized into black and white then changed the colors to accommodate my palette.
I picked 9 resolutions and placed them on my page then added the design elements. I chose to limit the color palette to 5 colors to connect the messages and graphics. When the layout was almost complete I thought the pattern needed one more unifying element and a new color to pop so I added the hearts. And there you have it!

Happy New Year!!

'My Resolutions!' ©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Previews were shown at the fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Voting started on Thursday, January 2nd, 2014, and continues through Thursday morning January 9th, 2014. Please Vote!!

New Year... New fabric designs! This week Toile!!

More fabric to start the new year! Spoonflower asked designers to come up with a murder-mystery themed toile de Jouy. Previews sized as quarter yard(21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was Tuesday, January 15, 2013. Toile de Jouy is a type of design popularized in the 18th century that typically depicts a complex scene, often pastoral, arranged into a repeating pattern. Classical toiles are usually two colors, with white or off-white as the background color and the pattern printed in black, dark blue, or red.

My concept for these illustrations center around cats doing what cats do. These Bad Kitty's are not very good at covering their tracks, they even appear to be proud of what they've done! Voting starts today January 17th and goes through Wednesday, January 23, 2013!!

©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Here is one of my new designs in different color combo's... "Flights of Fancy"! Some in the collection are available now and more will be available in the new year!