Please may I ask for your vote?

This is my entry into this month's "Double Take'" Spoonflower/Betabrand Challenge - the brief was to create a design that was either a trompe l'oeil (I went this way) or something that could be seen two ways - like an Escher print. 

I painted up a realistic daylily from my garden in watercolour and separately a cut work or lace pattern to look 3D and then subtly 'threaded' the daylily 'through' the background design. It's quiet but I hope not too subtle for the brief!

And what an unusual colour palette for me - I am normally very multicolour so just violet and orange is a new direction.

I will be populating my POD's with this design in the next few days and will do another blog post with all the links.

In the meantime please

VOTE

for me (by clicking on the word vote) - there are a lot of entries and they are shuffled for each voter so thanks so much for taking the time from your day - very appreciated!

Here is the link to my design in my SPOONFLOWER SHOP

PatriciaSheaDesigns

Autumn's tapestry

There's something so textiley about the tumult of wildflowers this time of the year, the fields are tumbled with starry, sprinkling beauty, like a milky way of flowers  - everywhere I look I see the colours of rich European tapestries.....and then there are the leaves, which are only just beginning to show their majesty thus:

Tomorrow is the last day in a glorious week of opalescent, glimmering skies, balmy wafting breezes and blissful fragrant days - I am going to drink it all in to my memory banks for the coming season of blizzards and ice.

The Humble Flowers of Blueberry Hill

My house is right next to a blueberry barren and when the weather is good I wander up there and see the whole of the top of Penobscot Bay laid out before me, including Blue Hill across the bay. Commercially blueberries only fruit every second year and this is the off year so there are few blueberries to be seen but lately I've been paying attention to the tiny, quiet humble little flowers up there and today I photographed some of them as seen below - aren't they pretty - I don't even know the names of most of them - do you?

A snowflake in July? The lovely bobbing Queen Anne's Lace are here in full force - wafting  around like spinning plates by the side of the roads and highways - they have a lovely old fashioned fragrance that reminds me of Mimosa.

Is this Purple Vetch?

A glowing Black Eyed Susan

A teeny tiny daisy that grows about 3.5 feet tall and smells so deliciously of light lemon

A type of Spirea perhaps?

What are these little bell like flowers?

Good old Black Eyed Susan's against the faraway hills.

Queen Anne's lace in the making - each 'bud' has one large leaf to the side.

A real close up of the Queen Anne's Lace - again very wintery I think

I don't know which kind of flower this used to be but the basket weave  in the centre there is near perfect

And my fave - the lovely little clover - awww!!

On the way back down I did espy a few blueberries nestling in the leaves -  I think the fox, coyote, turkey and deer may get to enjoy them.

August is nearly here - what delight should I make for my next recipe - it should be something with blueberries methinks!!

An empty nest, burgeoning green and lupines!!

Does this constitute dappled?

Maine is an amazing place in more ways than one but one of the most amazing things is how winter lasts forever, spring is barely recognizable as such, nothing is growing, nothing is growing, no leaves are out, there's just a hint of a bud here and there, it's cold and dreary and then BAM it's wildly green, the grass is a foot high and the world is blindingly GREEN - chartreuse, glowing vivid bright green!! Today was the day IT happened and today was the day our little robins flew the nest and started on their new adventure - our nest is empty - bye bye little guys - safe travels - all four of them took flight and we wish them well - so sad looking out the kitchen window and not seeing them there but maybe they'll be back next year?

Awwww - it's empty!!

 Is this green enough? SOOO many ballerina poppies to come - just one is showing a little of her tutu right now - when will we see the other layers - I LOVE these poppies and am so glad to be on the side of looking forward to them once again - yea!!!

I've never really paid mind to these Bachelor's Buttons before but today their colour just glowed against the humming greens - what a splendid pallette above - I should do a textile design in these colours - now that would stand out but I don't know how I would create that ultraviolet!

 How elegant - it looks like a thistle!

 

And the lupines yes the lupines - they grow wild everywhere - hello friends!!

 

And last but NOT least the poor maligned dandelion - how can you not like the flowers which give us these wonderful dandelion clocks! You tell the time by how many puffs of breath it takes to send the little parachutes on their merry way!

Blue Rhapsody - my latest submission to a Spoonflower competition

This is the allover repeat textile pattern I just submitted to the latest competition at Spooflower - a competition called "Hand Drawn" - at first I wasn't sure if my design was eligible as I think of hand drawn as drawn with pencils or pen and ink so I clarified with Spoonflower and indeed hand painted was more than OK to enter the competition.
Would you please consider voting for my design HERE - there are quite a few pages of designs to scroll through but it does go quite quickly and the designs get constantly shuffled so I can't tell you which page my design will be on - you can vote for as many fabrics as you like, there's some very nice ones in there. My thanks in advance for voting for me!!

Below is the original design which I hand painted in watercolour on paper. I scanned the design and reworked it into the design above which is a pattern in repeat available for purchase as soon as I approve a sample swatch now on order from Spoonflower - a print on demand textile company based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I have already created other items in this pattern at CafePress - I decided to do those on a white ground or the colour ground as provided by the item itself - as in the iPhone cover.

A Kindle cover available HERE

A laptop skin available HERE oddly enough I sold the first laptop skin in this design the same day I uploaded the design to the Spoonflower competition - interesting......

An iPhone cover available HERE

Below are two items I have added to my Envelop store (they have not been approved yet but should be up in the next couple of days) - a print on demand company based in Antwerp, Belgium who provide lovely home textiles and have free shipping worldwide BUT for my US customers I caution that custom duties may apply for items coming into the US.

Before I started the design for this competition I made myself commit to doing it by asking on my Facebook page which of the 3 following designs my audience thought I should create into an allover print. As the deadline rapidly drew near I realized I was being too ambitious with any of these 3 and decided to enter "Blue Rhapsody" as I had almost finished the repeat a few months ago and more than half the work was already done. I shall however be working on the Strawberries and Cream design soon ready for summer, the grapes I will do in time for Autumn and I think the Gilding the Lily design might be more appropriate for a Winter debut.

A Plethora of Pink and Red Poppy Pictures

Now isn't this how the hats at the Royal Wedding should have looked? The pink poppies, for which I have waited quite the number of years to bloom, are THE perfect pink, no really they are...in person they have an inner glow that makes them

almost neon (in a good way) and they are a little more saturated and a little more perfect...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!
I am so enamoured of some of these photographs that I will have them available as archival prints in my Etsy store sometime this week.