HELLO 2020! I have a couple things I'm putting up in the house that are specifically for this year. Yes, calendars! Both print calendars (wall and daily) and calendar tea towels (at quilt shops or spoonflower).

I have been creating artwork for the Seize the Day line of calendars with Sellers Publishing for 10 years! My first ones were for 2011 but that means I was working on artwork in 2009 to get in for printing in 2010 to sell for 2011. I just finished up my artwork for the 2021 calendars and got it all sent in last week. You can probably understand why I sometimes get confused about what day it is or even what year it is!

There has been a lovely correlation for the past few years between my fabric lines and my calendar artwork and covers. It hasn't been intentional to make a cover that is an upcoming or existing fabric line, but the two often overlap and compliment each other. I'm so pleased that Painted Meadow is being used to sew with now and still in shops while those perky coneflowers and big fat bumble bees are buzzing around my calendar for 2020.

The first page of the calendar gives a grid of September-December of the previous year, so you can start using it early to transition into the new year. Since I have my calendar from the year before up till December 31st, I skip over using this and I usually feel that this page is a little forgotten in my studio. So maybe if I share it here it will have more life and space to shine.

The desk calendar has tear off pages for the days of the week (Saturday and Sunday share a page) with a variety of quotes and images. I save my pages to write notes on the back. I'd like to say I find all those quotes myself but I don't. The folks at Sellers Publishing find lots of great sayings and sentiments to fill your days with inspiration. I find ones for the wall calendars and a few daily but they put in a lot of effort to fill those pages with daily optimism. Thank you Sellers Publishing!

Side note: where to buy Seize the Day- Barnes and Noble often carries them, I spot them in places like student bookstores on college campuses and sometimes office supply places. I'm curious...would you buy this at a quilt store if they carried them?

And then there are calendar tea towels! I started doing these through the spoonflower competitions each year. As the competition draws close I update the previous designs to the calendar grid and year of the new year coming and I work on a new idea. This year I decided to work with the quilt theme and I created "Sewing Up the Year" tea towel. 

Here it is in the Love Patchwork and Quilting Holiday Gift Guide. It makes a nice gift for the quilters in your life. I will be updating this towel each year to reflect the calendar for the coming year (usually around October or November)

A few more tea towels in my shop- calendar themed. There are non-calendar as well and you can check the tea towel collections on my shop page. All of the spoonflower tea towels fit on a fat quarter of linen cotton canvas. You can also get towels that are finished (hemmed and hang tag on corner in back) from roostery.com

A new item this year has been the calendar tea towel for MODA FABRICS. I designed one for 2020 that used the drawing lines from a few of my collections to make a lacy illustration of florals around the calendar grid. 

I keep mine folded over a glass door on an antique cupboard in my office. I like to see the contrast of how the linear flowers go with the prints from my collections. Here it is with scarves from Painted Meadow and Abby Rose.

These tea towels with MODA FABRICS are exclusive to MODA and quilt shops. Give some love to your local quilt shop- we need and love them! I know my local shop was carrying them but they have sold out so if you are a shop owner and have these in stock, please comment and let us know so we can send folks your way!

I hope you are as excited for 2020 as I am. It already promises to be filled with lots of activities and shows- which is even more reason why I've got to start getting it entered in my calendar!

Do you have a tiny dancer who is performing in the Nutcracker? My daughter used to do ballet and she was in the Nutcracker twice. The Nutcracker Ballet is a lovely holiday tradition. I've taken my "Clara's Nutcracker Ballet" print from spoonflower and made four tea towels that fit on one yard of linen cotton canvas. You can make four tea towels (all the same design or one each of the four combined on one yard) on each yard of fabric to help celebrate your holiday traditions and add some ballet cheer to your holiday kitchen! Dance on!

Visit my spoonflower links for my Nutcracker collection and Tea Towels collections.

Color and more color...I love to play with different color ways and see how different a design looks in each! Here is my Deco Garden tea towel in gray and green colors. I've got my sample swatch on the way and I will be ordering this one and the citrus palette for my kitchen. 

I couldn't resist one more color grouping. I was thinking of a kitchen, two houses ago, where I had my cobalt blue kitchenmaid mixer on the counter and lots of warm orange and gold colors in the decorating. The jewel tone towel would have been the right choice for that kitchen. 

If you'd like to see these and more, check out my spoonflower shop!

I love old mason jars. The beautiful aqua blue of the glass reminds me of sea-glass and retro kitchens. When spoonflower.com had a competition with the theme of "spoons" I thought it would be fun to have the colorful plastic ones waiting for a bowl of ice cream at an afternoon party, displayed in lovely mason jars. Since then I created a set of tea towels using the party spoons and mason jars that fits an assorted four designs on one yard of linen cotton canvas. I recently updated the calendar tea towel for 2017. 

You can find the group of four together on my spoonflower shop link here or find them individually and see other tea towel designs in my tea towel collections page.
Thanks for visiting my spoonflower shop!
​http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/robinpickenswww.spoonflower.com/profiles/robinpickens

These are some alternate color palettes for my Hawaiian Pineapple Tiki design. I know if I were wearing a Hawaiian shirt, I'd probably go for more of the teal colors mixed with warmer greens (than the original color palette that was specified by spoonflower.) Now for coordinates... Visit my spoonflower shop for more designs!
#SFWeeklyDesign #HawaiianPineapples

Today my experiment is with pinterest and a format that is good for pinning. With social media having different requirements in different places, I think it's a good idea to try out some tests. So excuse any duplication...I'm learning!

Another new thing I'm experimenting with is the spoonflower weekly design prompts. I loved the weekly contests they used to have. There was a wonderful sense of community, camaraderie and support with the comments people would leave on your designs for that week. It was great to see the variety of solutions people came up with for a theme. Often as I would go through the weekly voting, I'd be delighted by the unexpected perspectives and the gorgeous solutions the other designers had entered. It was a fun activity and a chance to experiment and push yourself to do new work or try new styles. I am sad that spoonflower is no longer doing the weekly challenges. They have larger, monthly ones with other sponsors, and although that is a good challenge as well, I miss the structure and the feeling that you didn't have to be too precious with the weekly one. Spoonflower has now started doing weekly design prompts that encourage people to share on social media. There is no "gathering place" to see all the entries on the spoonflower website at this point, but I am hopeful there will be at some point to replace the community that happened with the weekly contests. But I am also hoping the silver lining to this change is that I stretch myself in my social media and experiment and explore other avenues of sharing outside of spoonflower's site.

Back to the design prompt. This week's theme was to create a pattern that could be used on a hawaiian shirt using a limited color palette that spoonflower provided. I think I will experiment with some other color palettes (with a more muted green)  but I am happy with the pineapples and tropical feel. I mocked up this shirt using the Negroni shirt pattern on sproutpatterns.com. If you'd like to see more, see my shop page on spoonflower. #SFWeeklyDesign #pineapple #hawaiianshirt

Modern. Southwest. Baby bedding. That is the challenge with Spoonflower and Carousel Designs this week. As I was pondering what to do, I kept thinking of the unique and interesting shapes of cactuses - they seem so representative of the southwest - and I wondered "can cactuses ever be cute and cuddly?" So I set out to make modern and appealing cactuses that you wouldn't feel bad putting a smiling baby down on for a nap. Also I love the geometric patterns of ceramic tiles and wanted to keep that bold pattern feel for visual stimulation for babies. I've included a collage of cactus and tiles in a one-yard cheater baby quilt. I used the crib image from Carousel Design's website to see how my patterns could work in a baby's world.
Visit http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/4083311 to see the bumper pattern or visit my shop to see the whole collection of "Cactus Garden."

Woo Hoo! It's never to late to celebrate! Whether it's Dia de los Muertos or Halloween candy hangover or just a love of all things skulls...have fun with some sugar skulls! SOCIETY 6 is having a great promotion of $5 off things in my shop AND FREE worldwide shipping!! Use this link: http://society6.com/rpickens?promo=9YJF73TD2JPT

Just working on these yoga girls has brought a smile to my face and a sense of calm to my day. I love a reminder of the things that ground you, the things that help you keep balance, the things that bring you peace of mind, clarity, and health. Isn't this what we all need as we rush around with holiday activities?

I'm happy to present my yoga girls line in my Society6 shop. There are a variety of poses with blooming inspiration growing from each. And now, perfect for the holidays, Society6 is offering a promotion through December 8th. By using the link here, http://society6.com/RPickens?promo=37095a you can get $5 off each product and free shipping. Please note, this promotion is only available through the above link.

Promotion expires December 8, 2013 at Midnight Pacific Time. *Offer excludes Framed Art Prints, Stretched Canvases and Throw Pillows with insert.

Some of the items available include mugs, phone cases, iPad and laptop covers and skins, tshirts, hoodies, tank tops, totes, pillows (with or without inserts) and wall art. I hope you like them!

Namaste.

I'm enjoying my new "drinkblots" coasters at my desk today. These coasters absorb water and come in sets of 24 different designs. I love them! And I love that they are reusable and recyclable (AND made in the USA). I finally got some pictures of my new collections that are available. I'm fortunate to have two lines with Studio M, the maker of drinkblots (and part of the wonderful Magnet Works family). The first set is "Summer Garden" and is a collection of birds, butterflies, flowers, and patterns in blues, greens and purples. Fresh and cool. The second collection is "Nature Lover" with images from my modern lodge collection. Just the style for a fishing trip, the mountain vacation home, or just remembering the beauty and serenity of our forests and lakes. Have fun enjoying a different image with each coaster you use.

I've been asked where you can order drinkblots. They are available through a number of retail stores. The company Flag Fables carries the whole line and has online ordering. If you are interested in "Summer Garden" (http://www.flagfables.com/product-p/mc-db11327.htm) or "Nature Lover" (http://www.flagfables.com/product-p/mc-db11351.htm) or any of the other inspiring artist collections of drinkblots, check out http://www.flagfables.com/category-s/386.htm.

A toast to artful homes!