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The first week of December always has the design world buzzing because that is when the leading company in color matching : Pantone reveal the color for the upcoming year. Last year we were all subjected to the Mocha Mousse snore fest . This year we all hoped we would get a bolder color, especially with the HUGE revival of the Art Deco and Art Nouveau trends and the return of maximalism. Oh boy were we wrong! When I first saw the color of the year they picked for 2026 my reaction was : "Has Pantone lost the plot?" and it turns out I am not the only one. Pantone, the leading expert on colors has picked a boring off white as its 2026 color of the year. Except that they call it "Cloud Dancer" to appear fancy and intellectual. We aren't fooled though, it's WHITE. It's lazy, boring and quite frankly disturbing on so many levels. Like many creatives in the industry I think their decision was extremely tone deaf in the current political climate in the US and the rise of extreme right in several regions of the globe. Worse is what they associate this white with In their words, here is what Cloud Dancer represents : “a billowy, balanced white imbued with a feeling of serenity.” In other statements I read by the guys at Pantone it also signifies a clean slate, a breath of fresh air, and tranquility in a noisy world. The picture they chose to represent it which you can view on their website portrays a person wearing white and having their face turned away from us, suggesting that this color is clearly not about individuality but conformity. As I said, pretty tone deaf in the current political climate prevailing in the US where minorities are feeling even less safe under the current regime. But if racial discrimination wasn't enough, the erasure of colors signify the erasure of individuality and cultures. Between Mocha Mousse and Cloud Dancer I feel like we are looking at a post apocalyptic future where we all live in gray bunkers and dress in boring neutrals because the goal is survival, not frivolity. It also gives massive rise of fascism vibes, where having an individual voice is a threat to the system. Everyone must blend in, compliant or silenced. Neutral are also a strong indicator of recession periods and the more we move ahead, the clearer it is we are heading toward a major recession. Here is what I said in last year's blog post about Mocha Mousse : I watched a reel  pointing to that trend towards neutral everything that points out that colors evoke emotions and neutrals sedate people into a world of no emotion. This is very dangerous, having no emotion, no distinct personality is going against diversity. I stand by that statement, possibly even more fiercely and what I find disturbing is that I don't think Pantone chosing this boring white is an accident. The very fact they associate white with serenity, tranquility and a new beginning implies that the idea that white represent purity is still very much alive. I think they knew what they were doing and as a creative I think it is time to fight back : with colors, because the moment a kid's toy company signs a deal to have kids play with "Cloud Dreamer" modeling clay we have a big problem on our hands! Pantone isn't the only Color system company out there! I learned today that Pantone isn't the only big name in the color industry, and Coloro, in partnership with WGSN a trend forecasting company has come up with what most of us creative expected with a color called " transformative teal ". What's more, WGSN has a really good track reccord when it comes to accurately forecast colors and design trends while Pantone quite frankly missed the plot quite frequently. I think the only time Pantone was right on the money was in 2016 with Rose Quartz. Most other colors, including one of my favourite: Viva Magenta didn't get the traction it was predicted to have. But here is what is interesting with WGSN and this beautiful teal they chose : It's exactly what a number of designer, myself included predicted would happen and apparently they called it 2 years ago. The designers and creatives who weren't on team teal this year are all unanimously in favour of Phtalo Green or an other deep green. Why? Because we are all seeing it gain traction right now. And so has WGSN who is forecasting it as being a key color of Autumn/Winter 27-28. With the transformative teal of 2026 they also came up with another bunch of key colors that work with it, and are ALL colors that I have seen trending in the past few months already. Remember my prediction of teal/mint and orange becoming a thing ? While I was slightly off mark on the orange, I wasn't completely off base either since they predicted a amber tone to go with it. Since Pantone insists on being tone deaf and in the business on offering conformity maybe less stock should be placed in what they want to push on the design world. There are clearly more accurate forecasts out there, and if enough of us refuse to bow to the sad beige existence, maybe humanity and diversity stands a chance? What's clear with this Cloud Dancer choice, it's that Pantone is heavily criticised and their political stance is severly questioned, rightfully so.

As a surface pattern designer, part of my job is watching for trends, so what I am about to say is ironic but it has to be said because this whole overconsumption mania has seriously gone out of hand and it is becoming especially problematic when it comes to urging people to discard their holiday decor every year...like Christmas will ever become outdated! This is why I am saying it out loud : It's time to say no to Christmas trends! Every year it's a new fad, there was the pink Christmas trend, the Scandinavian Christmas fad, which disturbingly was also a sad beige aesthetic thing where people pretended that a Christmas without colors was the way to go. There has been the mid-century modern Christmas with stores selling you vintage style looking ornaments at a premium when in reality thrift stores or your grand parent's attic had them all along. This year the trend is "Ralph Lauren Christmas" which as a late Gen X I find hilarious because that's really just the stuff that has been part of Christmas all through my childhood and teenage years : lots of red, green and gold, some plaid in those colors, and a vintage feel to it. Except that once again, in the name of consumerism we are going to get people to buy it all new. Influencers are all up in arms on TikTok (which is thankfully banned in India) and Instagram giving you tips to get your Ralph Lauren Christmas together. Some apparently even encourage people to hide the gifts that do not match the aesthetic at the back of the Christmas tree as the very excellent Kiki Chanel denounce in this YouTube video . All in all, it's just one other trend destined to get Gen Z to buy, buy and buy some more, while missing on the whole point of Christmas decor : story telling and nostalgia. Let your Christmas Decor be a family story Growing up, I remember our tree having lots of ornaments coming in all colors. I was born in 1979 and my parents had been building their collection of ornaments in the 70s and 80s. We also had lots of tinsels and I mean LOTS, the tree was almost drowned in it. We still used to light real candles on a real tree (a bit of a fire hazard). The nativity scene had store bought figurines but the manger was hand made by my dad. Toward the end of the 80's a lunatic lit a fire in the storage basement of our apartment building and we lost the vast majority of all that Christmas decor a few weeks before Christmas! My parents bought new stuff, a mix of glittery 80s stuff and the emerging now dubbed Ralph Lauren Christmas stuff. The Christmases of my 90s were pretty much was is trendy now. When I moved out of my parents' home into my very tiny studio all I had space for was a wreath hung to my window, and I decorated it with orange, pink and gold ornaments and bows. That was all before moving to India in 2003. The first few years in India were the hardest when it came to Christmas, I dealt with culture shock and the fact that the very few Christmas ornaments and trees I could find where all pretty cheap looking and didn't do a good job at evoking the memories of my childhood. Ask any immigrants from any culture in any country and they will tell you that they will ALL struggle recreating the festive spirit of their home country. Not faith, no culture is spared. For me, it was Christmas that was the most brutal. I remember decorating a small potted Juniper tree we had with tinsel one year. Each time I found an ornament I liked I would buy it, and the first few years it went to decorate the grill (iron bars) in our living room's window. I got excuited the first year I found a potted poinsettia. And after a few years we finally found a decent looking Christmas tree and bought a few semi-decent ornaments to go with the few quality ones I had been collecting, it was the year I was pregnant, 17 years ago! Fast forward to now, we are at our second tree, which also has a very fun story that started 11 years ago when our cat destroyed the old one bringing complete panic to my then 5 years old who was convinced Santa would skip our house because the cat destroyed the tree. Our tree speaks a story, the story of my moving to India, the story of our multicultural family and every single ornament on it, bought or made over the years has a story. EVERY SINGLE ONES! I am not joking here, because even the generic plastic baubles speak of a time I learned to make peace with Christmas being different, or the fact I needed more filler ornaments after our cat killed the older, smaller tree and I bought a bigger tree in a rush. The tree bear ornaments made with my daughter which we made with other European friends over the years. Then there are all the ones I made with the kids attending my art classes and continue to make every year. There are the special store bought ones I bought too, all with a story, all keeping with a tradition of building our family memory tree, and family holiday decor, like this little guy : We bought this one in 22, the year we bought a new car and the the year I decided to give driving in India a go and got my Indian driving license. The advent calendar which is no more was a DYI project I made out of cardboard tubes and re-used every year. my daughter outgrew the concept and the cardboard tubes having seen better day were retired after 7 or 8 Christmases. The tiny white tree with beads on the left? That's a gift from my daughter on Christmas day, she bought it one year when she went shopping with my husband. Trends have no space in our holiday decor, I tend to stick to red, white and green because I like those colors for Christmas, but I have several ornaments that do not match that color theme at all, and they are as much part of the story as the one who do. If we like something any given year, we buy just that one piece and it becomes part of our family, ready to be displayed year after year, trends be damned! For the record, I remember exactly ONE Christmas when my mom insisted we do an elegant pastel pink and white tree when I was a kid, it was before the storage basement fire and that was the year I hated the tree. It sparked no joy to my I think 6-7 years old self, it was refined, probably trendy at the time, but it was also very sterile and said nothing about family. There was no Instagram back then, but the vibe it gave was the same half of those super curated Instagram posts give nowadays. It was too perfect, too polished and at the complete opposite of what Christmas really is all about.

2 years ago I suddenly found myself pulled to create more teal, orange and turquoise designs, which led to the creation of the " Mediterranean Patio " collection. Now it seems I might have been onto something as I have noticed those warm 70s colors making a comeback this year. So, is the orange and mint combo going to be a thing in 2026? My vote goes for yes, there have been several signs it's trending. Not only has burnt orange been a color used by fast fashion brands like H&M this autumn/winter season. It's also the color scheme of Taylor Swift's latest album : The life of a showgirl. Then there has been a number of design challenges on Spoonflowers on the 70s retro theme like the 1970s geometric/floral challenge or the current thrift store treasure challenge. Social media has been full of posts condemning fast fashion recently, especially in the wake of Shein making its way into brick and mortar stores in Paris. The push for buying second hand vintage stuff is growing and the 70s aesthetic and its color palettes is getting popular with the Gen Z cohort. I see it as a sign people are ready to move away from the sad beige aesthetic and the Mocha Mousse horror Pantone tried to pass as trendy in 2025. It also looks like the western world is entering a period of recession, which according to some experts has lead to people making more conservative and sober choice with fashion but that in my opinion has also pushed people to buy second hand a lot more. Another trend on the rise is the Art Deco one. People are revisiting the past and as aesthetic goes Art Deco is pretty timeless with it's geometric designs, gold and jewel tones and it can easily be adapted, and has been recently. My prediction for Pantone's 2026 color is either a orange, teal, or dark green. I hope I'll be right on the money this time. Last year many designers and artists were dead sure forest or emerald green was going to be it but Pantone gave us chocolate on valium instead. A color I am happy to report has not been used as much in design all this year. Not the way people went CRAZY for the 2016 Rose Quartz and Serenity combo or the Viva Magenta in 2023. So let's all root for happy colors in 2026 people! I'm partial to mint green and turquoise and I'm totally here for bright oranges and yellow, because just because the world is going insane doesn't mean we have to dress like post apocalyptic survivors living in concrete bunkers.

Let's face it, AI is here to stay, and yes there are concerns about it in the art and design field thanks to Gen AI images being used WAY too liberally on an audience that doesn't have the necessary skills to spot it. Heck! As a designer with an eye for it, I am finding it harder and harder to spot AI. I am at a point now where I really need to look at it twice on some images. That said, AI is a tool, and we would do better to know how to use it...the right way! Not to create images for us, but by guiding us into creating art. If you want to stay on top of things as a creative, it's time to let AI be your assistant. And by assistant I really mean the unpaid summer intern kind of assistant. You know the one that you can delegate the most tedious, boring, non creative tasks to or send on errands. Gemini and Chat GPT can't go fetch your coffee or dry cleaning but you can use it to get creative ideas WITHOUT generating an image, or uploading any image of yours might I add. See that "Groovy Vibes" design above? It's 100% my hand that created it from assets I drew myself in Procreate holding the stylus with my own right hand (yup I am right handed). I created those quatrefoils and viny records assets myself with the goal of creating a 70s inspired patter which you see in the background of that Creatsy mockup . My patterns do well on Spoonflower, but are less succesful on Redbubble and Teepublic where t-shirts and stickers tend to sell a lot better, yet I wanted to use those assets to make a t-shirt/sticker design. As I was playing with my assets, I realised it would work great with some text and a retro font. The retro font I had sorted out already. The text? Not so much, I tend to struggle with puns and quotes because I overthink A LOT. I go on tangents, I complicate things, loose the plot, to the point I often end up completely lost with way too many either too cheesy ideas, or long complicated ones and possibly both. With words and lettering, I struggle keeping it to the point and simple enough. That is exactly were AI can help me and save me hours of overthinking and frustration that my ADHD brain can get completely exhausted with. I have in the past asked Chat GPT to come up with collection name suggestions, in fact Disco Dreams and The 70s Shuffle are two of those names I came up with using the help of AI. For this groovy vibes design idea I did use Gemini, because between Chat GPT and Gemini, I find the answers and suggestions I need a lot cleared on Gemini...personal preferences I guess. This is how I more or less went with my prompt : "I have created a retro vinyl records illustration with a quatrefoil flower and I would like to turn it into a t-shirt design. Help me find groovy 70s puns and quotes I could use to add text" From there Gemini gave me a list of different puns and quotes all arranged in categories, and I ended up liking a category with shorter quotes but none really resonated with me, so I asked it to give me a few more suggestions in that particular category. In the end I used none of the ones it suggested, but got enough inspiration from the ones it generated to create my own : Groovy Vibes. I immediately got to work in Photoshop trying to make it fit with my quatrefoil record, but I got completely way over my head with ideas and layouts to the point I started hating it all, and in true ADHD self made it all super complicated. In need of a starting point I turned to Gemini again, again describing my design in words with no image upload and no color suggestion. I asked it to give me pointers on text layout that would work with my illustration and ig gave me a few, again, all in text. It was just enough to give me a direction while still letting me be in charge of all the designs decisions. I ended up combining two layout and style suggestions it provided to create my final design and filled in the gaps in my original vision which had only one record inside the quatrefoil by adding two smaller vinyl records on the side. this is what ai is meant to be doing for you guys! It's not supposed to take all the creative fun away from you, it's not supposed to be used to generate slop that you can't own and copyright. It's supposed to make you life easier by helping you think more clearly and kickstart your creative mind when it start acting like a cart of wild monkeys running while in a candy store. It's supposed to to help you overcome your weaknesses. Let it be your assistant, let it be there to help, not take over. And if you need Gen AI images just because you heard selling on PoD is easy money, then stop! You are clearly not on the right career path, leave that to the artists and designers, not a computer.

Once upon a time, there was a new business model emerging where a company would launch a catalog of products, and ask artists to upload their art, open a shop and get paid a royalty made on each sales. It was new, it was exciting and it gave a platform for emerging artists and designer to showcase their work with a chance of making money with zero initial investment of their part. It was free to join, free to upload, and it was, at least in the early days easy to get found in searches. Then the word got out : "There is a new way to make money with passive income out there!" and it attracted a lot of scammers, people stealing images off Google, using free vectors and cliparts and slapping them on t-shirts to capitalize on this new model and it ruined it...FOR EVERYONE! So is the story of the early days of the Print on Demand industry. And then, AI and it's generated images came to the scene, forcing the PoD platforms to have a hard look at their future, as if Ali Express and Temu weren't enough of a threat already. So they tried to weed out the bad apples by introducing new drastic measures : Platform fees, shipping fees, subscription models, upload limits, membership tiers, and curated artists' base. All with various degrees of success and it keeps on going, and I believe it'll keep on going. The Print on Demand industry is changing, and as artists we all need to learn to adapt. This blog post come after I received yet another email from Society6 announcing changes that include getting rid of even more artists from the already reduced pool back in March. Don't worry, I made the cut once again, but if anything this should teach anyone selling on PoD to be careful and a LOT more mindful about how they interact with the platforms they sell on. Society6's announcement came just a few weeks after Redbubble announcing that platform fees would extend to Premium tier accounts . Is it all shocking? Yeah a bit! But honestly I don't find it all that surprising. PoD's are in the business of printing designs on fairly standard products that one could get printed anywhere, or buy on Temu. There was no originality in the products at the exception of a few on each platforms : The furnitures and cutting boards on Society6, the A line dress on Redbubble (and the now gone pet bowls), the shoes on Threadless... Their real originality was to offer designs to customers that couldn't be found anywhere else until a few idiots started pairing random stock images with cheesy text like "Live, Laugh, Love" in free cursive fonts that all look the same. Basically trying to make a quick buck off something ANYONE can put together and send to Vistaprint to get printed for cheaper. Those generic designs started propagating like invasive weeds on all platforms, saturating them all and making it harder for genuine artists and designers to be seen. The only talent from those scammers was keyword stuffing in an attempt to crack the SEO code which led to search results being confusing for potential customers. Sadly, it seems the new measures with fees and curation process seem to have had lukewarm results. PoD companies aren't as profitable as they either once were, or were expecting to be and ALL OF THEM without exceptions have seen changes happening in the background, with downsizing their staff, purging their product catlogs, and reviewing their overall strategy. Society6 is the most drastic in their measures right now, but honestly I expect their stance to influence other platforms in the near future. So as designers and artists, you want to pay attention now. Here is what was in the last paragraph of the email I got from S6 : I shared that screenshot on Threads already which is why "active artist" is highlighted. But this is the key takeaway for all to remember, not just on Society6 but ALL PoD. Since 2024 Society6 has made a point of organizing 2 trends forecasting webinars a year, one for Autumn/Winter and one for Spring/Summer, all way ahead of the season for people had time to plan their strategy. They share 3-4 trends each time, along with a color palette and mood boards along with the tags they want artists to use so they themselves can see the work and curate it at the appropriate time. I have suspected all along that they keep a log of who registered and attended those webinars, and that email paragraph strongly suggest I was right on the money. And, it's not even new information, years and years ago they had a blog post on their website pointing to the fact they not only curate what is trending but pay attention to which artists are doing more than just the minimum which is to upload art. They always stated in one way or another as far as 2017 when I joined that they want ACTIVE artists. They aren't the only one with that stipulation, look at Redbubble's criteria to move from Standard to Premium tier : They want their artists to drive high quality traffic to their shop, which is something they have been wanting long before the tiers kick in (they need your audience to grow) and on top of uploading quality and following trends, they want their artists to positively interact with the platform, which is code for "No uploading 300 designs in a week and then ghosting for months/years". Regular interaction is the key to keep those pesky algorithms happy. And while Redbubble isn't organizing webinars, they do send monthly artist newsletters with upcoming trends, sales and sometimes even lists of low yield search results to tap into. Time to put in the work! All those PoD did start with optimistic good intention : giving artists a platform to be seen, but capitalism caught up with them and so did all the hopefuls with dreams of getting rich overnight with no work. The new reality that need to sink in for all is that when you sign up to sell on those platform, you become a commercial artist, and commercial artists need to pay attention to trends, and follow briefs. Unless they build their own e-commerce platform and do all the work, including the heavy dose of marketing. There is, and actually never was a shortcut to making money and getting your name out there. If you read that far and like me, you are a Society6 artists that survived a second cut, you need to step up your game still. It's clear you can get cut at anytime. Attend those webinars whenever they announce one, even if it's the middle of the night where you live. Take note of the trends, and screenshot the key slides because they take a long time sending the recap. And finally start working on those trends as soon as the webinar is over. In the last 2 they did mention they start planning the content for the next few seasons very early as they get their favourites printed way ahead of the season to plan their marketing content. Case in point, a design I uploaded days after they announced the Autumn/Winter trends last April got picked for a campaign : That cushion on top of the pile? The one with the tulips...that's mine. It's not the first time they ever curated my work for a post or an email campaign, but that is the first time they got it printed for a photoshoot. The reason was that I uploaded it quickly after the webinar and uploading of new artwork resumed, and it was fitting the trend forecasting brief. The new strategy with Society6 is "Less quantity, more quality" they want to keep their platform less cluttered and give their customers an easier time finding what they came to look for. Going forward they are also getting clearer on who their target audience is and what to offer them and I personally think it's a model many other companies in the field will be adopting in a way or another. I've said it quite a lot in Quora answers over the years too : Not everything you create will be popular on all platforms, and what sells on one might flop miserably on another. The Society6 curated model is in a way making my life easier. I no longer have to upload everything there like I once did.

In yet another example of Print on Demand changing all the time : Redbubble announced a a change in fees structure in an email today. It's brand new, and it's bound to create a few waves in the artist world, though I am not as surprised as some might be about this change. But first things first... What is going on with Redbubble? If you've been in the PoD world for a while, or are a regular reader of this blog, you know that Redbubble did introduce account tiers and fees on some accounts back in 2023. The whole thing was affecting Standard tiers accounts and the fees depended on what earning bracket you were in. Basically the lower your earning threshold was the more fees you were paying if you were an entry level account aka "Standard". If you need to refresh your memory, I wrote a blog post about i t back then. So what changed or rather is about to change? Redbubble is going to extend platform fees to Premium accounts starting September 1st (the account tier I am in) and they announced a simplified fee structure : 50% of your earnings will go in platform fees if you are a Standard tier account regardless of how much you earn. 20% of your earnings will go in platform fees if you are Premium tier account No fees if you are a Pro account But wait! There is more! Any items sold with an artist markup above the recommended 20% will incur an additional 50% fee, so if you have any product category margin sitting above 20% you might want to go an lower that right away. They also announced that they will review accounts before September 1st and move some from the Standard to Premium tier and from Premium to Pro and that those who will get promoted will know by email. Along with that platform fees bomb of a news, the also mentioned they are working on improved marketing, tag matching and discovery, hopefully leading to being able to grab more eyeballs if your artwork is quality enough. My opinion on all this might still be unpopular As you all know if you read this blog or watched my YouTube video on Society6 and their big change, I'm never against those changes. Why? Because let's face it, all these companies are businesses making decisions that work for them, and I am in the business of selling commercial art. It's not my place to grab my pitchfork and protest paid fees, curated platforms and whatnot. When you join a PoD platform you agree to their terms and conditions and the fact they might change said terms and conditions. If it no longer align with your values, you are always free to leave and it seems there are already a few artists on Threads who announced their intentions to do so. I personally don't think accusing them of corporate greed is the solution. They are a for profit company, they have seen a decline in sales in 2024 according to the Articore financial report and they have had issues with their board of directors recently. The PoD industry has been saturated for years and with the arrival of Gen AI images, the amount of people thinking they can make a quick buck with the least effort required has increased as well, costing these PoD company dearly in term of quality and in terms of hosting fees. To me it was never really a surprise to see the big players in the industry try to ramp it up to prevent an overflow of bad art, stolen design, and AI slop from hitting their platforms. Unfortunately for the genuine artists putting in the work, it has lead to fees on earnings, subscription models and curated platforms like Society6 did earlier this year. Am I happy to potentially be charged 20% on my earnings if they decide to keep me in the Premium tier? Of course not! But I am also making my peace with it. Redbubble has never been a consistent money maker for me, it's one of my least profitable PoD platform but I don't see a reason to call it quit either because those fees are only going to be levied on sales made, they aren't going to be out of pocket like the old Society6 subscription plans were. I personally think Redbubble could have avoided having to levy fees by simply capping the margins of artists the way Society6 has done after their curation model because the end result is the same : less margin paid to the artist. The only thing that I think Redbubble needs to be working on is making sure that artists producing quality work and upload it regularly should show up in searches before all the stock vector art graphics, AI slops and those who flood the platform with "Live, Laugh, Love" t-shirts written in Arial or Helvetica. It's something Teepublic managed to tackle elegantly with their Apprentice and Artisan accounts where apprentices only get to earn half of what artisans do on each sales without any hidden fees. It remains to be seen if the improvement in searchability Redbubble is proposing will bear fruits. A reminder to not put all your eggs in the same basket I said it before, it's never a good idea to bank on just one income stream, and I've always been a strong advocate for joining several PoD platforms at once, especially in the beginning. You never know when a PoD company will go bankrupt and shut down (happened to me 5 times) or change their business model on you like NeonEarth did or like Society6 did with their curated platform model. You can't expect things to always stay the same, these companies are going to adapt to the ever changing market to survive, and so should you as an artist. It's ok to call it quit when something no longer works for you. I did it with Etsy a few years back. What you want to avoid as an artist is finding you in a sticky situation where your income could be gone overnight with no backup plan. If you haven't already, I urge you to read my blog post " Don't put all your eggs in the same basket " And remember, the only way to stay afloat in a sea of changes is to make sure you keep yourself current on what is going on, and be flexible enough to learn new skills and future proof you career.

The hot trend of the season is everything mediterranean, from sardine tins to juicy tomatoes and summer food and I couldn't let this trend unexplored. Call it mediterranean riviera, Italian riviera, dolce vita core. That trend has been taking the surface design world by storm. I created a fun sunny yellow lemon and blue leaves pattern a few months back and with the market exploding with rustic stripes and gingham I decided to build a fun mini collection : The Dolce Vita collection It transports you to a mediterranean cottage with it's sunny yellow gingham and lemons and cool blue rustic stripes. As home decor or apparel fabric, this collection is super versatile and I had fun playing along with it on various mockups to showcase it in different product categories. It's available on Spoonflower , Society6 and Redbubble on a wide range of products, you can see the portfolio page for that collection here on the website too. It is of course licensable, so if you are interested in working out a partnership, for this collection or any other, feel free to shoot me an email.

We rang the new year in with a big ticket upgrade and I can't believe I haven't blogged about it earlier. Especially when I did make a fairly low key YouTube video about them as soon as they arrived to replace or very old and tired old dining chairs. So since the video exists and is all about my experience with the brand Finch Fox (usefull info only if you live in India), I'm going to just let you all know how easy it is to revitalize your dining space with stylish new chairs that work for you home and lifestyle. But first a trip down memory lane shall we? The dining set I have is quite OLD, we bought it in 2010 we we were living Navi Mumbai and our living/dining area was finally big enough to have a dining table after years of living in a tiny flat in Bangalore with no space whatsoever for such a "luxury". The set was a lovely hardwood 6 seater dining table with carved chairs and I really had to dig DEEP in my photo archives to find this gem of a picture : It was back in 2011 after two cross country moves in our first Mumbai apartment, the set was still look fresh, and yes it was VERY brown. As we found out over the years, the padding on the chair was low quality with poor density foam and elastic webbing that struggled to do its job after a few years, but as a former upholsterer, I managed to give them a quick fix and at one point I even reupholstered them with old curtain fabric, because you know, waste not want not. Sadly I don't have a surviving picture and that fix didn't hold long without me having to buy chair pads to place on top of the seating area. It did the trick for a short while before I completely gave up and bought chair covers because at the time buying new chairs or even re-padding ours was way out of budget as we went from crisis to crisis. Here can can see said chair covers (Amazon affiliate link) in action and yes, the table got painted white, this was in 2021 when plagued with cabin fever after 1.5 years of being home all the time (pandemic joy) I just couldn't stand the sight of our old dark brown dining table standing in the darkest area of our current flat. I needed light, so I took matter in my own hand and yes I will make a blog post about painting your furniture in the future. Those chair covers were a blessing, because they hid the dirt spot and ugly cushion underneath, and because I was. (and still am) teaching art class in my home, it protected the chairs from paint splatters. If you are on a budget but your dining space needs a refresher, chair covers is 100% the way to go. You can change the look of your space in minutes and they can be tossed in the wash when they get dirty, it's a big win. The pandemic years brought more financial hardship so those chairs had to stay, and they stayed until I started planning to get new ones all through 2024. We were sinking through them, some were wobbly and reupholstering them made zero sense in every way : style and cost wise. They REALLY had to go, and quite frankly after 13 years, they had a good life, they were really not worth trying to salvage considering they were mass produced and the whole assembly was coming apart. If I had still been in love with the color, or the wood carving, yeah sure, but I wasn't. Plus my students had a VERY bad habit on rocking on those chairs giving me a fright a few times. I really didn't need anyone breaking their back and skull falling backward on those old chairs. I wanted nicely padded chairs that were sturdy, and in a more mid-century modern style. I also wanted them in a blue or teal color to go with my urban coastal aesthetic that I have going through my whole home, and last but not least I wanted them to be un-rockable and easy to wipe clean without them being plastic or PU leather that would be uncomfy as soon as the heat and humidity hits. I still conduct art classes for kids in the evenings, and I needed chairs that wouldn't break or topple easily. A lot of research going, I found that for my needs a chair designed for a public space like a cafe would be the best option, so I skipped looking at all the home deco and furniture stores websites meant for residential use and went straight with websites catering to commercial and public space. There are several in India and as I said above I went with Finch Fox which I can 100% recommend. I've had these chairs for 6 months now, the microfiber velvet wipes clean easily, minus a few glue stains courtesy of one student that couldn't stop rubbing their hand clean on my chair (grrrr). When I do a painting activity I use the old chair covers to protect them and all in all I'm sure I'll be able to get the glue off with a hot water compress. I just need the time and patience to do it, or I'll hire a cleaner to come do a deep clean around Diwali. Honestly, from my experience I would recommend ANYONE to skip the dining chairs meant for residential use, they are often low quality and will wear out rather quickly and they aren't even cheaper than going through a company that caters to corporate offices and restaurants. Most of my possible options from furniture stores like IKEA or Urban Ladder were all a lot more expensive than what I paid for these chairs from Finch Fox. Having worked in the uphosltery industry, I also know that chairs and sofas marked for heavy duty use in a commercial spaces all have a fabric with a much higher Martindale abrasion test score, they are meant to endure repeated heavy usage that no regular home upholstery fabric ever will.

The one thing you ABSOLUTELY want to avoid when promoting your work on social media is being boring. Yet, that's the mistake maby a newbie artist/designer selling on PoD is doing. Heck I am guilty of having done that a few times back in 2017 when I didn't know any better. Fortunately, the Instagram algorithm was a LOT more forgiving back then than it is now, so for all the eyeballs I was not catching in hashtag feeds, at least my followers were seeing, as boring and bland as it was. You know what I'm talking about, the joining a PoD like Redbubble and thinking their product mockup images are so cool you can keep on sharing them everywhere and that promoting your content isn't going to require more effort than downloading them and putting all over Instagram, Facebook or Threads. And yeah, they are kind of cool, well at least a few of them are, like this one : The problem is that every single artist/designer on Redbubble has access to the same range of products to display their art on, and the exact same mockups to use as promotional images. This means that the only thing original in those mockup is your art, and in a hashtag feed populated by Redbubble products, yours has no chance of ever standing out. If you constantly use them and nothing else in your own grid, it will turn your Instagram feed into a very salesy product catalogue rather than position you as a professional designer. It doesn't mean you should stay away from those mockups and never share them, but you need to up your game a little and show a bit more range with your content strategy. I already wrote about using the Gen AI tool in Photoshop and more recently about using professional PSD mockups in your portfolio. Today I want to let you on another little trick that is free and easy to pull using using eye catching stock photos to create a composite image with your PoD mockup image like I did above with the Society6 pouch . In it's original avatar, that pouch looks like this on the Society6 website: I think we can all agree that it's pretty generic and boring. It does a great job at showing you what the product looks like which is something people who are already shopping on S6 will want to see. But it doesn't make for a great image to use on Instagram. Why? because you are not in the business of being a sales catalogue on IG. Your mission on social media is to sell an idea, a dream, a feeling. You need to start treating your social media pages as a shop window rather than a display shelf inside the shop. This means your content needs to be eye-catching, and composites are a GREAT way to do that. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't if you have a tiny bit of Photoshop knowledge, which at this point I assume you have being a surface designer. All you need to get you started is one of your PoD mockups and a stock photo from a free website like Unsplash or Pexels which offer free to use images under the creative commons license. For my pouch composite, I used this lovely one from Pexels : This stock image is from Tara Winstead , it's free to download on Pexels and there is no attribution required when you use it. When I look for stock photos to use for my composite, I usually run a search for a flatlay image, in this case, I simply entered "white flatlay" in the search bar as I knew I wanted a neutral background that didn't compete for attention with my bold teal and brown Art Deco carry-all pouch, but also still gave a sense of luxury and refinement. My selection criteria for a flatlay is always to pick one that has a significant amount of blank space so that I can place my product in it without too much of a constraint. Once I have both the product and the stock photo, I open them both in Photoshop. The first step is always to remove the background from the product image. If the art on the product is dark enough and has no white/grey/beige in it that task is pretty quick as Photoshop has a "remove background tool". It becomes a bit trickier if the design on the product is light and I might need a combination of magic eraser and regular eraser to get it just right, or play around with the mask the background removal tool used. The second step is to resize the stock photo around the size of the product image. Society6 mockups are usually around 700 x 700 pixels at 72dpi so I tend to resize stock photos to around 1000 pixels wide knowing I will use the negative space along with what is in the image. Once that is done, I simply drag the product mockup into the stock photo and position it the way I want : Here I tilted it a bit, and made it overlap the dry flowers and the terrycloth towel so that it looks like it belongs there. Last but not least, I double click on the product mockup layer to select the drop shadow option and add a bit of a drop shadow that matches the natural shadows in the stock photo's scene, just so it doesn't look like it's been just pasted on top of another image but really belong IN the image. Even though Instagram now favours a 4:5 ratio I still do a lot of my content as squares because it looks better on my blog, on Threads and FB and quite frankly the whole super curated and aesthetic Instagram grid fad died years ago so I don't care how my grid really look there, once a person open my pictures os see them in the main feed, they still see them square. Notice how I cropped the image above in such a way that the pouch is also slightly cropped, this accentuate the idea that this pouch belongs in that stock photo since all the elements in the photos aren't centered themselves, it would look off to have the pouch as the only element that hasn't a bit of it off frame. Of all the ways to create eye-catching content with my product mockups, the stock photo composite is my favourite and I use it regularly, especially with my printable calendar blog images or my Patreon printable illustration.

This is a short blog post to let you know that the July 2025 Calendar page is up for grab in the Freebie zone as well as on Patreon . This month I have focused a lot more on sharing personal updates on Threads and Patreon and I am plotting some content ideas for my blog, and possibly YouTube. A long summer break and a few minor health concerns have kept me from keeping up with the blog or the website. This is the thing about being a small artist, you are a one person show and don all the hats : artist, marketer, content creator...and anyone who dipped in that industry knows that the online world is a demanding one. One where it's too easy to forgot about self care and stretch yourself too thin trying to do it all.

This is a short and sweet blog post to announce that I just uploaded the June 2025 calendar page in the freebie zone . I will follow with a newsletter going to my subscribers pretty soon announcing a few changes in how I run things going forward when it comes to the blog front. The stats show that people check blog posts less and less if they are the generic update kind, and as you know I have been doing away with more personal content on this website for a few years now, at the exception of these calendar page posts, which generally receive the least engagement or views. What I am doing more moving forwards is sharing those weekly, not necessary art related updates on Patreon, where you can join as a FREE member to read them. It's my plan to also move away from Social media and their rather moody algorithm that change every few weeks. Simply put, I would love to no longer talk to a wall, on the blog, or on Instagram. So if you stumble upon this post, thanks for reading, and please do join me on Patreon . As for new blog posts, they will still happen, they will just be art specific as they have been so far. It's just that I get some people might want to connect on a more personal note, and Patreon is where it's happening.

I'll keep this post short and sweet this month because I've been so busy these past few weeks that it's either write a novel to cover it all, or give a brief summary that only begins to cover it all. So before I dive into the short version of everything, know that you can head to the Freebie zone to download the May 2025 calendar page. So here is how April has been going in a nutshell : It's been blistering hot and I can't wait for the monsoon to come, it seems every year is getting worse and worse on that front. My husband has been travelling a lot for work around the same time I was heading to school every afternoons to teach a surface pattern design crash course to 11th grader. I'm still at it until mid-May and adding those 2 hours (plus set up) everyday just before teaching 2 hours of arts and craft classes to 7-8 years olds in the evenings have left me feeling exhausted. Society6 made good on both their promises to delete a lot of old designs and offer the remaining artists more visibility and I'm looking forward to be able to upload new work there soon. I have neglected YouTube for 2 months now. I just don't have the energy to film content with the school workshop going on, I hopefully will get back on track in the second half of the month once everything settled a bit and before my daughter get's her summer break after just one month of "back to school" after a 3-4 months break. I'm too self conscious about filming when people are around at home. So unless everyone is out the door, I don't feel comfortable talking in front of a camera. On these words, I'll wrap up this blog post and let you go get your calendar page.