Meandering Mermaids Swimming in your Direction!

It has been a while since I shared about a Spoonflower contest, even though I have been entering them quite often. So here is my entry, for the Mermaid themed contest.  The objective for this contest was to design a print with girl's pajamas in mind, and the theme was mermaids.  I am not the biggest mermaid lover, but I liked the pajama aspect and the prize is an extra good one, so I decided to join in.  There were many design restrictions for the this contest, which were a nice challenge to work within, especially in the color department (since the tones I picked are outside my normal color box).  I am very happy with the result:  pretty, almost retro looking mermaids, with long swirly hair which is mimicked by the white swirls in the water.  The contest is over but the design is available for purchase now in my Spoonflower Shop.



Find this design in my Spoonflower Shop.

Pattern Observer Challenge

As indicated by the button to the right... I love Instagram!  It is such a fun place to meet and interact with other designers and pattern lovers all over the world.  What is even more fun than normal Instagram posting: An Instagram Challenge!  Throughout the month of March, Pattern Observer hosted an Instagram Challenge for designers to share patterns that they have created that especially work for quilting, in conjunction with the design competition that were co-sponsoring.  I tagged many designs for the challenge and was happy to have a few selected to be featured on the Pattern Observer Instagram feed.  In addition to that feed, the Pattern Observer blog also had a feature post about the Challenge and I am pleased to share that I had two designs included in that as well.  Below are the two designs of mine that were chosen.  You can see them as well as the whole collection of patterns from a large array of talented artists on the post itself.

And, if you love any of my featured designs, they are available for purchase as fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap in my Spoonflower Shop! 

Shop the whole collection



Confetti Fish

Ballet in the Field: Dancing Mice

It has been a couple of weeks but I am back in the Spoonflower Contest swing of things this week my design:  Dancing Mice for the theme Ballet.  For this contest I wanted to do something playful and fun that was also delicate and girlie.  My whimsical ballerina mice wear cute outfits in shades of pink.  I have them dancing among pink flowers because little mice are best found at home in the fields than on a stage!  I hope you love my design as much as I do and if you do!  The contest is over, but you can find my design now for sale HERE.  Happy dancing everyone! 





Dancing Mice

Zoomed in Detail View




Printed on Kona Cotton

Coordinating Pattern:  Ballet Flowers

Bookworms Everywhere!

 

A new contest on Spoonflower has prompted a new design that once again was inspired by a note card design I created for my card line:  BdoodleZ.  The theme for this contest:  Libraries seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to create a pattern using my very popular Bookworm illustration.  But why stop at one?  My little bookworm needed some friends!  Thus, my "Bookworms" surface pattern design is a celebration of many book loving not-so-creepy crawlers.  I am in love with this playful design and I hope you love it too!

The card that inspired the design





Design Copyright Brenda Zapotosky

Design Copyright Brenda Zapotosky



Going Retro with some "Hip Hexagons"

See my design along with all the other
designers work in the Online Gallery.

Looks like School's IN for summer!  In a good way.  This summer I have decided to participate in a fun (and free!) Surface Pattern Design Summer School hosted by the team at Make it in Design.  This "school" is not made up of classes, but rather three unique assignments to help you stretch your design legs and maybe think outside your normal box. I chose to participate in the Intermediate Track for the first assignment which focused on color and had a fun retro theme!  For our first challenge we had to design a print with swimsuits in mind.  The theme was retro geometrics that should be bold and yet still modern AND also infuse your personal style: Quite a list of criteria!  My mind went almost immediately to hexagons, a shape I haven't personally worked much with but one that really screams retro to me.  We were provided with several color palettes for inspiration.  The one I used has bright and bold oranges and yellows with a deep brownish purple to ground it and a nice light pink to round things out.  I love this palette as I think it looks both modern and retro at the same time.  I applied it to hexagons of varying sizes that were scattered in a random pattern to form a seamless repeat.  And to add that special "Brenda Zapotosky" touch:  Some fun hatchings thrown about!  I am super happy with the finished design and think that it really reflects my style while still fulfilling all the requirements. 

Hip Hexagons swimwear mock-up

I plan on creating at least one coordinating print to go with it and at least one other color way of the designs so be on the look-out for them to appear in my Spoonflower Shop this fall!

I am really happy to be participating in this summer experience.  As part of our Summer School we have an online group set up specifically for all the participants and it has been so much fun seeing everyone post their work and getting to know some new designers!  So between that and the interesting assignments I would say that this summer experience gets a good grade so far!  There are still 2 more assignments to go so please stop back to see what other fun designs I will be inspired to create!

 

Tennis Time!

It is challenge time again at Spoonflower and the theme this week is Tennis.  For this theme I wanted to steer away from a novelty style print and instead create more of an abstract pattern.  I was inspired by the grid of the net, and thus my "Nothing But Net" design was born!  To add a bit of contrast in both shape and color I threw in a few tennis balls "caught" in the net.  It is a simple design, a bit out of my normal box which I think is kind of fun!  If you would like to vote for it, Voting is open until Wed. August 13th!  And if you would like to purchase this design as fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap it is available in my Spoonflower Shop.  Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

Printed design on Kona Cotton

The Beauty of Dill

A new contest is approaching on Spoonflower and the theme is:  Herb Garden.  My design for this challenge went through many iterations before I settled on a final design that I liked. Initially I thought I would do something very rectilinear, depicting herbs in boxes both from above and in elevation view.  But as often happens when designing, the vision in my head and the translation to the drawn art were not in sync and I decided to take a different approach.  I thought that perhaps I would just do a tossed-style pattern of a variety different herbs (no boxes).  I pulled out my sketchbook and began drawing herbs.  I thought they were looking very pretty on the page, but I wasn't very excited about this concept either.  Just having  herbs tossed about didn't seem very unique or interesting to me.

Hand-drawn herbs in my Sketchbook

 

While I was drawing these herbs, I stumbled across a plant that did inspire me:  Dill Flowers!  I had no idea that the flowers for dill were so pretty: Delicate spirals of little buds radiating from slender stems. I was finally really excited about an idea for this theme!  So I ditched the sketchbook drawings and went back to Illustrator and began drawing my version of these pretty plants. 

Finished Dill Flowers Pattern

 

There is so much detail in these pretty little plants that I decided not to add too many other elements to the pattern. A simple pale yellow circle pattern over classic white creates a subtle print behind the dill flowers.  A funny thing does seem to happen though in a zoomed out view of the print:  The yellow in the spirals almost create a blur of color around the stems.  For this reason I wanted to share a close up of the design so you could see the detail of the flowers.

 

Zoomed in Detail of Dill Flowers

Printed Fabric View

I hope you love this summery print as much as I do!  Voting is now up for the Herb Garden competition and runs through Wed. July 30th.  You can vote here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/261