Raise your hand if you know
Spoonflower
How many hands do I see? Not many I think.
Spoonflower is a fabric and paper printing company and this is their tag line:
“At Spoonflower we make it possible for individuals to design, print and sell their own fabric, wallpaper, decals and gift wrap.”
In other words, anyone can create a design, upload it to the Spoonflower site, and have it printed on eleven different kinds of fabrics, two kinds of gift wrap, wallpaper or decals.
This is really C O O L.
Reception area at their headquarters in Durham, N.C.
The company was started in 2008 and has grown from, I think, four to almost forty full and part time employees. Aside from their main, and thriving, business of digital printing,they also offer all sorts of “Events” such as Surface Design: Creating a Basic Repeat with Paper or Mixed-Media Collages as well as opening their design space The Greenhouse as an open studio where you can bring your own project and work and meet others.
I went over there in January (it’s about 30 min. from my house) for an evening workshop
Digital Design: Prepping Photos for Print
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but went prepared with many designs on my laptop. The course was taught by Allie who was excellent, answered all our questions very thoroughly, and even took us on a tour of the entire facility.
THE editing tool of choice is PicMonkey. I’ve been using this program for a while and did a tutorial here and here. I think everyone there was familiar, at least vaguely, with this program but Allie gave us lots of hints and tips so that even a seasoned user like me came away knowing some new tricks. PicMonkey, of course, is a wonderful, and free software program for editing any photo or design, but also for actually creating a design. This I had never done before.
What I really learned was that I can use PicMonkey in many of the same ways I use Photoshop…. and it’s easier, faster and just not as complicated. I will most certainly continue to rely on Photoshop, but now I do some of my editing right in PicMonkey and I’m liking it. One valuable piece of new information is the use of saving an image as a .png file instead of .jpeg and thus saving more of the file’s information. See, you do learn something new every day!
My desk during class:
Don’t you love collecting samples and goodies like these?
Love this chair with their color chart (above) printed in yardage and upholstered here:
Their workshops are especially fun for those of us…ahem…me, who work at home all the time and need to get out. It’s so important to stay connected to people, to trends, to technology while also having fun.
Next up just might be this workshop:
Surface Design: Printing With Fruits and Veggies
I want to do this one! Not sure about the timing, but I’m going to try. Just how fun will that be? If I DO go I’ll be sure to show you what I made…
