Design Surface Patterns from Scratch

Welcome to my stop on the Design Surface Patterns from Scratch blog tour. I hope you also checked out Heidi at Lost In Reverie yesterday. Two months ago I came across a promo for Bonnie Christine's class on Creative Live, Design Surface Patterns from Scratch. Bonnie is a designer for Art Gallery Fabrics and has come out with some beautiful collections. I had never really given much thought to surface pattern design but I liked Bonnie's work and the class sounded interesting so I followed along for the three day class.

Wow, did I learn a lot! She was kind enough to start with the basics for people like me who had never even looked at Adobe Illustrator. From there she went on to reveal all of her secrets and her entire design process. It was a wonderful look into her world.

Practicing making a color palette from a picture.

I did end up signing up for the 30 day free trial of Illustrator on Creative Cloud and I'm practicing some things while I have that trial time. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep up my subscription afterward though as it's not especially cheap for something I may not use very much. What happened to just being able to buy the software and then you own it? That would make things much easier.

Making a butterfly along with Bonnie - that's the class video in the lower right corner.

I'm hoping to have a blog header and all kinds of other fun goodies designed before my 30 days are up. While I learn, I'm having fun following along again with Bonnie's class. If you've ever thought about designing fabric or other surface patterns, I would highly encourage you to buy this class. Rewatching little bits at a time and being able to pause and rewind has been very helpful. And she covers so much - you will definitely get your money's worth.

As part of this blog tour, Bonnie has offered my readers a free one month membership to the Roost Tribe, a special section of her website where she shares exclusive content, resources, and discounts. Just click here to sign up for your free month. For now, I'll leave you with a color palette I made from a photo I took at a recent trip to the aquarium. I just love all those colorful sea anemones! Be sure to visit Susan at Designs of Home tomorrow for the next stop on the tour.

Allison