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!!