I decided that this year for the surface design side of my business that I’d respond to one design challenge each month provided by the fabric, wallpaper and home decor company, Spoonflower. Spoonflower actually release a new challenge prompt every two weeks, but I decided that it would be more manageable if I stuck to completing one challenge each month throughout 2024. This also allowed me to pick prompts that felt more applicable to my style - although I did end up creating some designs in a slightly different style.

I really enjoy the run up to Christmas, as I’m a natural list-maker and organiser. I love getting cosy at home with the wood burner on and the smells of Christmas baking and cooking, or venturing out into town or to local events with twinkling lights and good company.

I’m still enjoying participating in this challenge and have been lucky with some of the prompts that they featured the types of illustrations/motifs I’m naturally drawn to (like food and things in nature). Quite a few of the illustrations for patterns in this quarter have made their way on to Art Prints and Cards in my shop, which is a great way to get additional benefit from participating in the challenge!

I love to illustrate simple steps that people can take to live a more environmentally-friendly and sustainable life and incorporate this into my repeat pattern design.

’ve written previously about why I decided to participate in the #52patternsayear challenge to create a seamless repeat pattern every week for a year. If you’ve read my first post about the experience, you’ll know that I had a somewhat mixed success rate in terms of being able to create my weekly patterns - but I’m pleased to be able to say that I haven’t missed a week in my second quarter of the challenge!

Did you know that that infamous breakfast dish - the kipper - is a smoked herring? But why did I choose a herring as the inspiration for my latest artwork?

I decided to commit to the process: 1 seamless pattern (and associated artwork), created from scratch each week and shared with the Instagram challenge hashtag for a whole year!