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!

Terrariums... 'Tiny Gardens Too' for Spoonflower

   Even if you don't have a green thumb, bringing the outdoors in can be fun with a tiny garden. This week at Spoonflower… 'create a design that celebrates terrariums'.

Tiny Gardens Too! ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

    A couple of months ago I did a composition using terrariums for the 'Chinese Paper Cutting' design. The shapes were all cut paper and scanned into photoshop and presented in only red and white. For this week's assignment I did a bit of recycling and used many of those same elements combined with new ones to create this fresh pattern.
   The first decision I made was to once again try to keep it simple. The plants have intricate shapes so I felt that the terrarium containers should have clean lines. I removed the details of the terrariums by just using their outside contour and keeping their shapes a solid white. The idea of keeping the color palette simple made sense too, so I limited the design to 2 colors with black and white.
   I opened a new photoshop file (21x18") and a copy of my original layered file for my existing terrarium design. Then copied and pasted the white containers into my new file and created a pattern with my shapes to repeat seamlessly. I gathered a page of my plant drawings and colored them all the same green and copied + pasted them over my container pattern. Stones were added to the base of the container to 'hold' the plants and then the grasshoppers and caterpillars were placed with some stray lily of the valley buds. The last part was the irregular grid pattern that I added between the background layer and the other elements. This helps the green layer to pull forward and adds texture to the piece.
   Previews designed as a quarter yard (21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 and continues until May 15, 2014. Please Vote!!

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!