365 Patterns: Easter Edition

I don't know why Easter snuck up on me this year.  In my mind, Easter was always about a month or two away. Until a couple weeks ago, when I realized I had better get started on Easter preparations!

So last weekend, we bought Easter candy and goodies.  Grandparents wanted to get the girls their Easter dresses, so that's done.  And this past week, I made a couple more simple shirts for Boo!  I'll show you those later—I thought about making Easter-specific shirts, but then they're weird to wear after the holiday.  I made her nice summer play shirts instead. (Nope, Daddy's Girl isn't getting new play clothes; she has lots that fit.  It's the tragedy of being the younger child.  At least until she's old enough to know.)

And I made some Easter patterns.  I wanted to make religious patterns, Easter being a religious holiday and all, but without going the obvious route.  And there are some Easter eggs and Peeps thrown in for fun, too.  Hope you like them!

The inspiration for this pattern was the beautiful stained glass windows I saw in so many cathedrals the one time I've been to Europe.  (One of these days I'll make it back; that was a great trip.)  On a technical note, look closely at the glass—I used a new technique I've learned called Inner Glow. Pretty nice, huh?
  

It's actually really hard to think of religious-themed Easter designs when you exclude the most common motifs.  My husband suggested honeycomb, because Jesus ate fish and honeycomb after he was resurrected (Luke 24:36-43).  

And for some non-religous fun, I love these Easter eggs.  They're just so happy!  And fast to make.  That's always nice.

I do like this pattern, but I don't love it.  It's pretty and useable (little girl's dress, perhaps?) but not terribly exciting or innovative.  I was practicing gradients again.  And made flowers.  Woo-hoo.

Chevrons are cool.

Do you like Peeps?  I don't.  But the bunny shaped Peeps are pretty much adorable.  

Finishing off this week's pattern set is my He is Risen! pattern.  I love how the text looks like shouting, and I colored the pattern like an old newspaper to emphasize the feeling. He is Risen!  Hallelujah!  Let everyone know so we can all celebrate together!  

Happy Easter to you and yours.

365 Patterns: Happy Rocks, Monsters, and Frogs, Oh, My

This 365 Patterns series has two purposes:  to keep me practicing Illustrator after my class ended, and to learn and use more skills.  Hopefully, my patterns will just get better as the year goes on.

I love these balloons!  This is my first (successful) use of gradients, and I think they greatly improve the simple balloons.

Just simple dots.  But I like dots, so there you go.

I call this pattern Happy River Rocks.  The purple/yellow/blue color scheme just makes me smile.

Do you recognize these frogs?  They came from the Tribal Frog Onesie I made for a baby shower present a few weeks ago.  I actually made the design on the computer before carving the stamp, so turning the image into a pattern was easy-peasy.  I love how, if you step back from the pattern a bit, the frogs turn into a camouflage pattern.  My husband suggested that this pattern would be great for little boys' shorts.  Wouldn't that be cute?

Okay, not excited about this one.  Snowflakes.  Meh, whatever.

I do like this one.  I wanted to try a technique I learned for "spot detailing" (what the instructor called it).  I think this looks like scales—monster scales, since they're purposefully irregular.  :)

Really simple, but I'd been wanting to do a hexagon pattern.  It reminds me of a quilt design I've seen.

On a completely different topic, is it getting to be spring for you yet?  I'm totally done with winter, so hopefully winter is totally done with me.  We've been having a couple warm days, then a couple really cold days...

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365 Patterns: Lots of Love

I decided to go with a theme for this week's patterns, so get ready for lots of love!

I like the hand drawn feel of these hearts; sometimes Illustrator projects can feel too neat and clean.  Wouldn't this pattern make for great wrapping paper?

I wanted to make the green hearts to seem random, even though it's the same block of hearts repeated.    The trick is simply to start with a large enough block of pink and green hearts.

This, to me, looks like a classic Valentine's Day pattern, good for stationary, wrapping paper, or whatever.  Lots of use...but not terribly exciting.  And I just realized some of those hearts are doing funny spiky things...I'll have to look at the original file and figure out what's up...

Ah, interlocking hearts.  That's a little more fun.

For this pattern, I experimented with different brushes in Illustrator, something I don't do nearly enough.

This is my favorite of this week's patterns, and it was probably the easiest, too.  There are so many things I'd use this.  My favorite idea, though, is for a duvet cover.  Wouldn't you just feel happy every time you walked into you room?

(Sorry to be anti-climatic with this variation of the first pattern.  The numbering got off; it was supposed to be the first pattern, not the last.)  I like this heart pattern.  Not much more to say.

Did you like having a theme?  Is there any pattern/image you'd like to see me create?  I'd love to hear what you have to say!

365 Patterns: Stormy Clouds and Sunny Flowers

For this week's patterns, I revisited some themes from last week, and added some new ones.

First, I did another version of the Citrus Dots I did last week.  I like it.  Bright and happy.

This pattern was inspired by one I've seen recently.  Okay, it's just like the lining of our diaper bag, only with reversed colors.

I was feeling like strawberries today, so this pattern turned into a lattice of strawberry blossoms.

And then the strawberries themselves.

Again, sitting in choir, singing "Singin' in the Rain," I was inspired to make more rainy day patterns.

I was working on a flower pattern that was just not working, so I gave up on it (for the moment—I hope to get it figured out eventually) and whipped up this pattern.  I love it!  It's so happy and bright.  Who else is ready for spring?

And lastly, my Beachy Argyle.  This pattern was harder than I expected, but again, it is an interlocking pattern, so I should have known.  I just expect classic patterns to be easier for some reason.  I did finally mostly get it.  Some of the stripes don't meet up quite right, but you have to zoom in really close to tell.

My favorite patterns of the week are, by far, the Stormy Clouds and the Sunny Flowers.  What are your favorites?  Any suggestions for future patterns? 

365 Patterns: Raindrops and Daisies (and more)

Week 2 of my pattern challenge!

I really like this daisy pattern.  It's white flowers on a blank background, so I can make it in any color I feel like at the moment!

The choir I'm in is preforming "Singin' in the Rain" this season.  I was inspired.  I'm planning to make another pattern sometime with a little man dancing in the rain.  :)

Wouldn't this design be nice for curtains, or pillows, or a rug...

These four patterns are actually the same artwork as #10, but tiled differently.  Cool, huh?

I had too much fun with this one; I made it into seven or so color schemes.

I thought I'd try a nice, classic pattern.  That'd be easy, right?  Wrong.  This was actually really hard to get right.  (Probably because it's an interlocking, rather than just repeating, pattern.)  Finally got it, though.

One good houndstooth deserves another, right?  If you thought it'd be simple to just recolor some of the ... hounds teeth?...you'd be wrong.  But I do like how it turned out, and I'm glad I could figure it out.

Simple pattern today.  Just some nice, happy citrus to brighten your day!

Do you have any suggestions for future patterns?  I'd love to hear them!

365 Patterns Challenge

Something I really like about Illustrator CS6 is the pattern making capabilities.  Apparently, pre-CS6, making seamlessly repeating patterns was pretty obnoxious to do.  Now, it's so easy!

Two of the teachers at Nichole's Classes (where I took my Illustrator class) undertook a really cool challenge last year—to make a new pattern every single day of the year.  For the whole entire year.
(Click here and here their work. )

It's a lot.

I thought that was a pretty awesome way to learn/practice Illustrator, so I've decided to take on that challenge this year myself.  So each week, I'll be showing you what I've done.  

I started out really simple:  Polka Dots!  Love me some black and white polka dots.

As simple as the black and white polka dots were, I actually learned a lot from making them.  For example, I realized that you don't have to include a background in the pattern.  These polka dots are just repeating white circles that can be placed on any colored background.  Talk about versatile.

This pattern (not chronologically #3, but I didn't keep track of the order, so here it is) came from the artistic version of a writer's block.  Nothing was working; nothing was right.  And Boo wanted me to paint with her.  So I did.  I painted an organic blue doodle, liked it, scanned it into the computer, used Live Trace on it to turn it into a vector object, and made it a pattern.  I like it.  I'll have to paint my patterns again.

This pattern came from #3.  I wondered if I might like it better not all organic, but with circles and ovals instead.  It reminds Kelli of jewelry.

Ah, this one was hard.  I really wanted to try to make a pattern that actually interlocked, rather than just repeated.  It took a while, but I got it.

And this is the same as the last one only in two colors instead of four.  I kind of like the simplicity of having only two colors.

I love these calla lilies.  The idea for this pattern just came to me one night—"What if you made stripes, only they were actually calla lilies?"  The pattern ended up more calla lily and less stripe, but I still love it.

I wanted to try a more simple flower design.  I think it would be better a little bigger, and the nice thing about Illustrator is that it's easy to change the scale.

I had a really nice streak going on, but then all four of us—the little ones, hubby, and I—all got a really bad cough/congestion/holding-the-baby-all-night-long-because-she-couldn't-sleep-laying-down sickness that lasted an entire week and totally derailed my pattern-making, to say nothing of life in general.  (We're finally pretty much over it...)  So I realized a pattern every day might not be reasonable, but I'll try my best.  And, hey, I can always make up the sick days.

Last Week of Illustrator Class: Birds, Boats, and Business

Well, did you make it through all my homework posts?  This is the last one, I promise.  I'm so glad I took the class; look what I can do now!

I found I photo I'd taken who knows when of a bird in snow, and used Illustrator's Image Trace feature to turn it into a vector image.  I made a couple copies, played with the colors, and there you go.

And why not make it into a pattern?  I think this would be really nice on fabric, maybe for a pillow...

I didn't realize I liked sailboats so much, but I love love LOVE the boat pictures I made this week and last.

For my final project, I made a set of designs for my Etsy shop that I will hopefully be opening soon.  

Oh, and I re-did some stuff for my blog.  :)