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As we head into winter I thought it would be good to have a reminder of sunny days and summery good times to keep us warm when the cold finally hits. As I write this the weather is extraordinarily mild (for the UK!), the sun is shining away brightly, I'm not as yet huddled in front of the fire, and am enjoying every moment of light and clarity ... while it lasts. Here's a little print I've made to lift the spirits during the greyer months ahead, or just to provide an extra glow if you're lucky enough to live where it's warm all year long.

I re-coloured my Painted Flowers pattern for this, and cleaned it up further. Seemed perfect for this month, wouldn't you agree?

As always, it's available as a free printable (along with the past 10 monthly designs for 2014) for all subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just click here.

Wishing you good humour for the week ahead. Cheers.

I am going to have to apologise in advance as blogging is going to be a bit erratic in the next couple of months, as I'm dashing around clearing things up and packing. Yes, packing. More on that later ... Meanwhile, here's a little paint doodle I did a few months ago that I've finally cleaned up and created a pattern with:

And here's the original sketch:

I left all the painted imperfections in this time. I normally photoshop them out, but I liked them here, it's oddly childlike and simple but sweet. Well, that's my opinion ... what do you think?

Wishing you wonderful days of sunshine and all things good. Cheers.

I'm still working on different colourways for my Into the Woods collection, but meanwhile, here's another new mini-collection that I've designed for spring and summer. It's wonderfully bright and cheerful, with lots of flowers that pop, and coordinating little florettes (well, that's what I call them) and stripes of curvy leaves ... wonderful for outdoor parties and get-togethers in the sunshine.

I've already placed in onto tons of lovely goodies for the home, kitchen, and on gift boxes and matching cards and wrapping paper. Click here for a peek at a Pop Flowers table setting, and on the links below to pop over to the stores where it's on a whole range of sweet products:

Pop Flowers Collection by Floating Lemons for Zazzle

Pop Flowers pink at Society6

Pop Flowers blue at Society6

Have fun and enjoy a wonderful week. Cheers.

I took a course from Pattern Observer, called Mastering Your Market, at the beginning of the year, but never had the time to showcase the pattern designs that evolved from it. It's about time I posted them, as it was an excellent course and I learned so much from it.

The patterns I created during class were very different from those I was used to designing - one reason I so thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, as it forced me to think and see from another perspective. Here's just one of them, Into the Woods ...

I was curious to see how it would look on bedding, so of course I made a mock-up from it ... what do you think?

I'm going to play with different colour variations to see how it might turn out, but was very pleased with this final result and a good review from it too. Now it's time for me to really go into the woods with the dogs for our daily walk.

Wishing you a fantastic day. Cheers.

I'm finally back in France after a wonderful two week holiday, and it's taking me ages to get back into the 'routine' and catch up on stuff, and e-courses. I'm working on the text design for next month's newsletter at the moment, but apart from that haven't had the chance to do any new art really, though I'm full of ideas after the trip to Istanbul, that I hope will eventually make it out into the light of day.

Meanwhile however, remember the Cat Blobs that I drew last month? I did get around to creating a pattern out of them, though it still needs a bit of further re-fine-tuning. And I have some doodles that were hidden in the moleskine sketchbook that might not mind being shown off ...

I'd really like to create some patterns from those bees, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the Sharing is Caring bear and owl, or the sleepy cats, but as I'm quite fond of them I'm sure they'll get improved on and worked into something in the near future.

Now it's time to start catching up on two weeks worth of my e-course! Wishing you wonderful learning experiences. Cheers.

I'm on a special holiday in Turkey, celebrating my father's 80th birthday, in the beautiful city of Istanbul. Walking down the wide avenues and into history, one of the first things I noticed of course (once I'd recovered from the overwhelming gloriousness of it all) was the ornamentation - patterns galore everywhere I looked; and colour, decorative ornamentation, flowers ... patterns patterns patterns.

I've only managed to post a few of my photographic captures here, hoping that they'll inspire you as well ... my creative soul is dancing with delight in this country. I shall have to visit again one day, for longer than one too-short week.

I've barely had time to breathe never mind draw anything, but have tons of ideas to work on once when I get back on Monday. I'll be posting pics of the city itself as well soon, and more ... meanwhile, you'll have to forgive me if things are a bit erratic in here for ... well, for a while yet.

Wishing you a glorious week. Cheers from Istanbul.

Still working on sketches for my e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design Module 4 ... I did some doodles and sketches with geometric, floral, and typography themes in mind.

I'm not sure if the final results below would be considered strictly geometric but hey, I drew grids and shapes and then got carried away filling them up. There are florals there too, so perhaps I managed to work on two of the themes at one go. Oh, and some typography too ...

The second one is still unfinished. I 'work' on it whenever I have time, i.e. when I'm uploading designs onto stores. I used to have a dodopad in high school, and used to colour it in with magic markers, does anyone remember those? These grid doodles reminded me of that, and the whole exercise is teaching me tons about colour, and is fun to boot.

I did some typographical sketches with a holiday theme:

I love playing with text design. And some of you may know that this year I've decided to do a monthly design based on "I Choose ..." as a positive affirmation, that I make available as a free printable to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons Newsletter. It's a hugely wonderful experiment in typography for myself, and these are the ones I've come up with so far, for January till April:

They count as typographical exercises, wouldn't you say? Next month I'll be doing "I Choose Courage", as I'm going through huge changes in my life that require a large amount of deep breathing, and I'll be plunging into a different life and lifestyle. Scary, but also very exciting. I'm thoroughly enjoying the text designs and the affirmations that are emerging, and hope to do a calendar with them at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll be away for two weeks as of next week. I shall try to blog as much as possible, but as it's my dad's 80th birthday that we're celebrating, I may not be able to do that, so forgive me in advance. I'll be posting up at the facebook page, so follow me there if you want a peek at my updates, and to see photographs of whatever inspiring bits I pick up from the United Kingdom and Istanbul (yay).

Meanwhile, have a fantastic week and don't forget to experiment joyfully. Cheers.

Yes, I love studying. So I've just started on The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design's Module 4, having taken the previous 3 Modules last year and loved them. The e-courses are doing me a ton of good and, if anything, letting me know how much I have as yet to learn about art and design. It's the first week of ABSPD, and I've been sketching Things and Characters. Here's a bit of what I've come up with so far. I'm calling this first one "Cat Blobs" ...

I don't know about you lot, but I really want it on a print and, oddly enough, a tea towel - perhaps even a journal/notebook! The second one was just organic blobs really, and I'm not sure where it came from but quite liked it:

And this final one was an attempt to sketch birds. OK, it needs more work, but I can see a few there that can be improved on and used for something later, what do you think? Any favourites?

I'm not too sure of how that cat got in the bottom of the page, but it probably thought the birds just too good to resist. I'm off to sketch more today, let's see what pops up. Can you tell that I'm thoroughly enjoying this?

WIshing you a day full of pleasant surprises. Cheers.

Am I getting sick of jelly yet? Not at all! Have had a huge amount of fun sketching it, colouring it, changing it around, watching it wibble and wobble away ... it hasn't been easy deciding what to do with it, but I do love a challenge - you can see a few of my prep sketches here and here.

The assignment for my MATS class was to create a jelly illustration or pattern to go onto fabric, and as I'm still polishing up my pattern design skills, I decided to turn my hand to that. It's now done and submitted, and here's the final piece as well as, under that, the pattern that I produced from it.

Can you see it on aprons and tea towels? I can! I've enjoyed this so much that my next step will be to wish up a couple of patterns that will nicely coordinate with it. Meanwhile, however, my own home is in chaos as the main rooms are being painted, so I'm camping out in one of the guest rooms and ignoring the mess till I can get back in there to sort it all out. Another week or so I'd say. All part of the huge changes that are coming up, which I shall share with you as soon as everything is confirmed and completed.

Until then, there may be a few quirks and trip-ups where blogging is concerned, so thank you for your patience (in advance). Have a delightful week. Cheers.

Another exercise from my excellent e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design, that I struggled to complete. The class is really challenging me which I consider absolutely brilliant even if I don't live up to my own expectations. But I'm certainly learning tons.

Remember my Playful Geometrics Giftwrap Collection from a couple of posts ago? Well, not only have I created a mockup presentation for it, but added gift tags and a square greeting card. Of course, this is when my printer decided to play up and print out the most dreadful smudges ... I finally found a way to work around that  ... but I now have to learn more about gift-wrapping as, honestly, I've just hidden all the dreadful mistakes I've made! I'm not going to go anywhere near mentioning my lack of photographic skills. All now on my lengthy to do list.

Anyway, here are the results:

Here's the mockup page for the Gift Tags:

And here's the one for the Greeting Card:

Phew. I'm exhausted! Taking a tea break before getting back to work on my next piece. Cheers!

An exercise for my wonderful e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design - this was a difficult one for me, as I decided to challenge myself and not only stick to just geometric patterns this time, but also use colours I wouldn't normally use. It's taken me ages to complete, but I finally have some samples ready as well as the collection in two different colour combinations!

To begin, here are the sketches I doodled into my moleskine journal. Ignore that flower in the front, that was just for play. I didn't want the geometric patterns to look too rigid or formal, so I added a bit of quirkiness to them. There are whimsical warped circles, oddly shaped squares and rectangles, and slightly distorted plus signs scattered around everywhere. I wanted it to have slightly sophisticatedlook but with a dash of casual fun.

Most of the above rough ideas were scanned in and below are the end results. First, the Playful Geometrics Collection 1, based on the Pantone spring summer 2013 colours:

Next, a couple of the above on mockup giftwrap paper sheets:

Then, I (re)created the above patterns using the colours from my Peach Tulip Hues photograph (here's the image in case you're curious: Peach Tulip Hues) ... so here's the Playful Geometrics Collection 2:

And finally, a few of the sample giftwrap paper sheets from the above:

Having completed all that, I'm now no longer sure which colour combinations I prefer. I'm going to be using one of the above Collections to work on further, does anyone have a preference? I do like them both but may go with the second collection as the colours seem more spring/summery, what do you think?

Back to the drawing board! Have a sunny day, cheers.

An exercise for my brilliant e-course, The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design - having some fun with nail art. I hadn't realised how much intricate and crazy and lovely art there was out there for the ultra-manicured set, till I did a google search. I am now in a state of stupefied silence (typing doesn't count).

I had a try at playing with some nail designs myself, but they all seem pretty timid in comparison to what I've just seen. Still, this is about as wild as I'm willing to go for the moment ... here's a peek:

Nowadays, painting a coat of clear polish onto my nails is pretty much a huge event in my life, so anything more than one shade of any colour is pretty much beyond me. Hats off to those who adorn their fingers in such a gorgeous way, and if any of you have amazing designs to show off please do send me some pics, as I'd love to see them! I'm off now to give myself a much-needed manicure ... cheers.

I've no idea how this little sketch of candy canes transformed itself into a pattern ... I was just fooling around and well, this is what happened ...

I started off doodling some candy canes - no surprise, it being the festive season and all, and the mood of the moment:

Don't they look like they're dancing? I then decided to scan it in and just experiment a tiny bit, but got carried away. So, this happened ...

I then thought, oh well, I've gone this far, might as well add some stripes, a different background, etc. And a simple, cheerful collection emerged ...

Too late to put up on cards and gifts for this Christmas, I know, but watch out for it next year. I'm thinking it's going to look pretty cute on fabric and giftwrap, especially if I add polka dots somewhere along the line! Cheers.

I managed to get slightly carried away with my doodle (see previous post) ... I decided to use it in one of the exercises for my excellent e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design ... but ended up only completing part of the exercise as I got distracted playing with the various combinations that I could create from this particular pattern. So I'll post this here now and carry on experimenting and will come up with the rest of it later.

Here's what a couple of those patterns would look like on swimsuits ...

What do you think? This is all pretty new to me so I hope you'll bear with me if things aren't quite right or I make mistakes along the way ... I'm learning to pick myself up, dust the ongoing errors off and prepare myself for more of them! Cheers.

Original art © Mariana Musa

More creative exercises to play with. This time I picked up my black pen and scribbled unplanned 'marks' on a page, then decided they somewhat resembled leaves and so drew a whole lot of those, spacing them out in a grid. After which I sketched out their outlines, and finally, still exploring and playing (couldn't stop myself!), I added colour.

The original marks were made on paper but I scanned that and the outlines were worked on in Photoshop. I filled the colour in with marker pens on paper as well, and that too was then scanned in and finished up in Adobe Photoshop. Had tons of fun.

Now I just have to figure out what my next step might be ... Cheers!

Looking for inspiration in shapes I see around me. Circles. I took tons of photos but here are three of them.

After which I did a bit of an exercise with all that inspiration! Used the rose in the above photograph, got my pencils and pens out, and started playing ...

Quite enjoyed that. Have a lot of catching up to do this week, so there's long way to go as yet ... Cheers!