Visit with Decor8 founder Holly Becker

Holly Becker

Anthropologie hosted an in-store event with Holly Becker, the founder and editor of decor8.  I had been following the famous blog along with 45,000 other daily readers and enjoyed her interior design publishings as well as following her on Twitter.  So I went to her presentation on mood boards and got the chance to meet her in person.

Mood board

Mood boards are inspiration or concept boards for finding your personal style when decorating a room. Holly's guest bedroom mood board she created for us started with a beautiful textile she bought in Turkey.  It became the basis for coordinating colors, textures along with photos from magazines for inspiration. Holly emphasized that our homes need to reflect who we are.  Absolutely!  Take a look around your own home.  Does it tell the story of who you are?  This is your personal space to experiment and find what moves you.    

  I am inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement in my art work and enjoy the look of past artisans like Stickley, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and Wm. Morris but I don't want my interior designs to be recreations of styles 100 years ago, yet rather a new mix clean lines, earthy colors for a contemporary setting.

Holly was signing her book Decorate and took the time to talk to each of us.  I brought along a sample of my Roses fabric design I created and printed thru Spoonflower, a digital fabric printer.  I told her I intended to decorate with my fabric to personalize my home.  She took the swatch and started folding it and visualizing it as roman shades for a room.  Holly was warm, friendly and wished me luck.  I think observing her decorating tips in her book will help me loosen up to find ways to combine my fabric, prints and rugs in a contemporary way.  Thanks to Anthropologie for hosting a fun evening event!

Calla Lily Process

Calla reference, pencil sketches and some test print outs

 This week I'm sharing my Calla Lily card illustration and a couple pics of my process.  Sometimes people don't understand what digital art is or what the steps are involved in going from sketch to final art.  To me, the computer is a tool just as a paint brush is a tool to paint with.

Pencil drawing after redrawn on the computer

The Calla Lily is an interesting symbol because it's often used for both weddings and funerals.  In weddings, the white symbolizes purity and makes a striking floral impression, whereas at funerals it symbolizes rebirth.  I didn't plant any in my garden this Spring, so I bought some burgundy ones for reference.

Final card

The first step is to draw the Lily in pencil, quickly sketching the way the petal wraps around the yellow stigma and seeing how to simplify the shapes.  Then I use tracing paper to simplify the shapes into a single line drawing that I can scan into my computer and use as the base for my line work.

I work in Illustrator and retrace my line work with a mouse for basic shapes.  The background is the bottom layer with a color and a fat line border.  The second layer is the white flower shape also with a colored line border and the third layer is the yellow stigma and the shadow behind it.  I have to make all the decisions, not the computer.  The computer helps by creating perfectly uniform lines weights that are difficult if done by hand but the artist still has to make all the visual decisions.
Then using the computer PMS to process color palette, I experiment with color combinations.  That's the other advantage of using the computer.  When I was air brushing art back in the 80's and 90's, I was limited to the colors I could mix with acrylic paint and then try to remix later.  Now I can create and easily recreate color palettes with subtle tones and experiment with the same line art trying several different combinations before deciding which I like best.  Then I print out a test card and make a card file for the printer.

Etsy shop listing: http://www.etsy.com/listing/81702991/calla-lily-card

Garden Wish List

Last week I wrote about how the local garden centers lacked the type of Arts & Crafts items I want for my backyard.  This week I went shopping on Etsy and created a Garden Wish List Treasury of items I feel would work in an Arts & Crafts style garden.  Please click the link to view the individual items.

How refreshing to see the artists creations in metal, glass, wood and stones for different objects from bird feeders to toad houses.  I prefer simple geometric shapes in earth tones that compliment the plantings in a garden.  How fun to imagine these in my garden!  

Bill Collins Garden Art

This time of year I check out the garden centers for good deals on perennials to add to my garden.  It's nice to use my purchases as an excuse for business expenses to create new card art.  So I've been cruising the places in Southwest Minneapolis and checking out the plants and garden accessories like trellises, pots and sculptures.  Much to my dismay, there weren't many that fit into an Arts & Crafts style landscape.  I know the trend for such gardens are Japanese influences but I'm looking for something different.  Bungalow owners, you don't want victorian or  shabby chic, do you?  When retail fails, check with local artists.

My favorite local garden sculpture artist is Bill Collins.  He created three pieces I have in my yard including this diamond marker that repeats a red diamond shape on our house.  The stained glass is wonderful when the sun shines thru it and it ages beautifully.  I also like how it looks great in the winter, too!  Since we have such long winters, it's important to have something that can stay out all winter and add to the landscape.  Bill's website is here and his Facebook fan page is here for you to check out his wonderful creations.

I want to hear from you if you have an Arts & Crafts style garden artist you want to share with me.  I also want to hear if you are like me and feel there's a niche to fill in Arts & Crafts style garden art.  What would you like to see?  I'm thinking of making an idea notebook and sketchbook of items.  Maybe patio pieces that use my fabric?  Stepping stones or garden markers with my graphic florals?  Let the fun begin!

Lavender

Newly planted Lavender

I planted Lavender for the first time this year. My investment was just one plant to make sure it liked my border spot.  I had lost two perennials and some annuals earlier not due to the bunnies but heat, stress or in the case of the sunflower seeds, the perennials in front blocked the seedlings from getting enough sun and they withered.

My other reason for trying to grow Lavender was to create a new card design.  Melissa at The Linden Tree where I have cards, prints, fabric and rugs on consignment suggested it to go with other Lavender groupings in the shop.  I can always count on Melissa for great suggestions and ideas for future illustration ideas.  Her shop is
dedicated to Handmade local artists and specialty fabrics for your sewing projects.

Thank You card design

So I took some photos of my plant, brought some up to my studio to study and sketch.  The stems are quite long so I drew 3 stems in a consistent wave for repetition and drew the seeds with repeating ovals over and over.  The leaves had a fun looseness to them so I didn't regiment them.  I chose a soft lavender color and played around with the cropping. The one long leaf just seemed to point to an empty space and was perfect for the message 'Thank You'.

The card is always the starting point for my designs and I may extend the lavender into a print then a repeating pattern for fabric.  But first I will drop these off to Melissa this week at the Linden Tree.  Check the link and stop in to see her shop!

Wild Blueberry Inspiration

This was my second year picking wild blueberries near our cabin in Iron River, Wisconsin. It just happened to coincide with the annual Blueberry Festival in town.  I only went to town to get blueberry donuts at the bakery and the rest of the time was spent picking the real ones along the back country roads.  I don't think people realize how short wild blueberry plants are.  They aren't like the domestic kind at the garden stores.  That's why I like to pick a 'bouquet' of them- they're short and make a perfect edible bunch.
 This year my sister-in-law Mona found the best spot and we picked about seven hours in two days. It gets addictive!  The picture shows just part of our bounty.  We ate them raw, we ate them in a tart, in a parfait dessert, in a slushy cocktail and then Mona showed me how to make freezer jam. It was wonderful!



I created a new card to honor the blueberries we love to pick and listed it in my Etsy shop. I also just got my fabric swatch back from Spoonflower. I think it made a really fun pattern.


So if you see some ladies out in the brush with little buckets next July in Northern Wisconsin, you'll know what we're doing out there.

Stone Arch Festival of the Arts weekend

Another huge event for me this year was being chosen to do the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts poster and exhibiting as a guest at the Festival on Father's Day weekend.  For those of you who don't know, there are 250 artists exhibiting, bands perform, food is served and thousands of visitors flock to the site along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.  It was the biggest event I've ever shown my work at and I had a prime location at the center of the activity.

Artistic Indulgence who's booth was next to mine, helped me to 'waterproof' the tent on Friday which proved quite useful for the heavy rain that fell during the event.  I'm grateful for their assistance or it could have been a disaster with all my prints and cards.

Saturday started off with a bang. People, kids, dogs, (lots of dogs) came by to check out my poster and the art I brought. I brought along my sample pencil drawings, scans and explained how I build my shapes and fill them with color in layers in Illustrator.  The poster was printed by Ambassador Press in Minneapolis who also prints all my cards.  They did a fantastic job with the quality and the colors.  I signed and numbered 100 limited edition posters which were sold at Artistic Indulgence's booth.  It was exciting to hear people tell me how much they loved the poster. I told people I created a poster that I would want to hang in my house.

I loved meeting all the people including some of my art college friends, business friends and tons of new contacts. I liked the lady who bought a Columbine print because she had a beautiful columbine tattoo on her shoulder, the Concordia grads who bought my corn cards because they are 'cobbers', the people who love 'poppies' and 'ginkgo' art, and was surprised when people wanted to buy my vinyl decorative banners hanging in my booth.  It was fun to tell people how I make patterns of my art and create fabric thru Spoonflower, how I work with Rug Rats to make my rugs and evolved my Etsy shop into a growing business in two years. I'm a long time freelance illustrator but my personal Arts & Crafts inspired art is breathing new life into my career.

The best weather was on Sunday afternoon when the sun finally came out and we took the back wall off the tent to allow some sun in and a beautiful view of the Mississippi. Thanks to those of you who stopped by and thank you to Sara Collins from the Stone Arch Festival for the opportunity to do this year's poster. It was an unforgettable experience!