Cutting Paper, Spoonflower and Monday Joy

Having been on a bit of a collage kick lately, it seemed fitting that I participate in Spoonflower's most recent Design Challenge. The theme? Paper-Cut Florals.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but I had spring on my mind. At first I thought I'd create a variety of types of bulbs, but then, once I started looking through photos of flowers and cutting my paper, I narrowed my focus to tulips.

Although it wasn't a requirement for the challenge, I wanted to start my design by actually cutting paper. I would have liked to have painted papers, but I was short on time and didn't want to wait for paint to dry. Instead I used markers on card stock, deliberately making the colors "line-y" for depth and texture.

I cut petal shapes, leaf shapes and stems.

I glued them to white card stock to scan with the plan that I'd put together flower, leaf and stem in Photoshop. That would give me greater flexibility when it came to adjusting colors and tweaking the designs. (I used the same process for scanning and digitizing that I teach in my latest Skillshare class).

From there I arranged and rearranged my flowers to create a repeat pattern that I liked. It went through many variations before I was finished.

Here's an early version:

Actually, looking at this now, I quite like it, but I wanted something a bit more dynamic with less space between the flowers.

So, I kept rearranging (and adjusting the background color) until, eventually, I arrived at this:

I submitted it with barely five minutes to spare. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

There's still time to vote (voting closes April 11th at 3 pm EST). As always with the Spoonflower contests, you can vote for as many designs as you like (there are many lovely ones).

When I was finished, I pulled apart my scanned pages and used them to create some tulips in my sketchbook, too.

At 9" x 9" my sketchbook pages were a little bit small for these tulips, so I trimmed the stems and spread the flowers out over three pages.

For now it seems that this sketchbook has become my collage book. I'm ok with that. I'll just need to start another sketchbook for doing the other things I can't do here.

As it's Monday (and a bit of a dreary one at that) how about a Joy List?

Joy List Monday: 

a weekly ritual

a reminder to stop and pay attention to the little beauties and graces that make life magical and to set aside time for gratitude each day

Today's list:

• a gorgeous warm weekend
• time in the garden
• long walks with the dogs (and Matthias)
• weekend cooking: homey meals made and eaten together
• more grilling
• planting more seeds and getting seed orders in the mail
• blueberry muffins
• flowers in the garden* and watching buds swell and leaves form everywhere around me
• hearing spring peepers, on a walk and at my parents' house
• finding a cool metal plant stand on the curb (and dreaming of what color I want to paint it)
• orchids in my studio
• going barefoot in the garden
• a nice visit with my parents
• ideas and plans

What's on your list today?

*it's so strange because the viola and pansy flowers in my garden keep disappearing. I think someone must be eating them. A bird? A squirrel? I don't know. Truthfully, I don't begrudge them the treat. If I were a bird or squirrel, how would I resist?