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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.

Remember all those advices you got about not overdoing it with colors and patterns? Be it in your home, or your clothes, we've gone into the realm of boring beige, neutrals and solid colors for a few decades now. If you are old enough, you might remember the late 90s when grandmillennial florals were for wealthy people and considered old school, only to be completely phased out once we reached the 2010s and the depressing era of black, white and grey home decor that people deluded themselves into thinking it was prefection simply because that's how real estate agents showcased houses put on the market. Sure! Neutral sells, and attracts a broader market, but it's a real bore to live your days into. Sadly, people became afraid of mixing colors, or patterns for that matter. Stripes and flowers? Are you mad? Paisley and checkered plaid? Really? I'm here to tell you that this fear or color and pattern mixing is irrational at best, and all you need to get over it and infuse joy into your home is a comprehensive beginner's guide to mixing and matching patterns (and colors). So are you ready to dive in and kick the sad beige mom aesthetic out the door? Let's dive in! Start with a plan, and a color palette Refinement in home decor starts with picking a color theme for your room and make sure it's the right balance between minimalist monochromes and "help I think a paint factory exploded in there" My advice is to pick one main color for the room, include 2-3 shades of it and pick one complimentary color again in 2-3 variations and either a neutral or a contrasting color to use for accents. For example, in the first picture of this blog post where I feature The Maharani's summer garden collection . The main color is green, with a pastel mint green as the dominant color, a matching forest green and a mid-tone green. The complimentary color for green is red and since I'm predominately using a pastel green in that scheme, the natural complimentary tone is pink, I used a light pink and a dark pink. I added a sunny yellow and a few pops of white as my contrasting accent color. In the picture on the right I featured my Pacific Beach collection , I used a dark blue and turquoise as my main color, and instead of adding orange as a complimentary, I went with gold / yellow and used white as my accent color in an effort to keep it coastal. If you aren't sure about picking a color palette, I suggest you pick inspiration from Pinterest, if you search color palettes, you'll be shown a lot of aesthetic palettes of 5-6 colors each to get you started. Once you have your palette, start by deciding which color is going to be your primary color. To go back to my Maharani's summer garden bedroom, the primary is mint green, supported by darker green elements. These two colors are the hero colors. In that mockup you can see that the floral wallpaper is mint green, so is most of the bedding and the wood panelling is a solid forest green that is echoed in the fabric of the bed frame and the lampshades. The pink flowers and arches are here to brake the monotony of the green and add a bold contrast. The yellow is acting a tertiary color in this decor scheme and it's role is to provide a place for the eyes to ground themselves without the color dominating the space and competing with the primary and secondary colors. With accent colors, less is more in a maximalist decor scheme. But what about mixing and matching patterns? What's the rule? The key to mixing patterns is to find a good balance, and like with the color scheme work with one or two "hero patterns" and 2-3 filler patterns. Take my Sushi Party collection featured on the right. It features one big hero pattern which is the pink roll of fabric on top, and two sort of hero patterns in the sushi roll and nigir sushi patterns, along with 3 filler patterns : the white stars on a red background, the red and white sparks on a black background and the pink chopsticks pattern. Note that your hero pattern DOES NOT have to be the dominant pattern in your decor unless you are going for a really bold decor. For example, the pink hero pattern could be super overwhelming if used as a wallpaper (though not lying it would look cool). So if you were planning to decorate the kitchen or your dinning room with this pattern collection it probably would be a good idea to use either the red or black filler pattern as a wallpaper, and use the hero pattern for curtains, or chair cushions, and add accents like placemats in any of the other supporting patterns in the collection. Similarly, If you were to wallpaper your walls with a bold rustic pinecones wallpaper like this one from Spoonflower , you better go easy with other rustic patterns like a plaid , and keep your upholstery furniture in a warm neutral like they did in that mockup picture with the sofa. Remember this simple rule : If you are using a filler pattern as your dominant pattern, use a bolder hero pattern as an accent, and if you use a bold, large scale hero as your focal point, use a smaller matching filler pattern (or two) as your accent patterns. In home decor, you want to make sure that nothing steals the show away from your focal point, or main theme. The more patterns you mix and match, the more important that rule of thumbs become. If you are a complete beginner at it, rely on premade collections like the one I specially curated on Spoonflower and this website . I took the hassle of figuring out what goes well with what for you...to and extent. Always order swatches first Home decorating can get really expensive so take your time to make an informed decision about your fabric, wallpaper and paint. Do not go just by the image on the screen if you buy your fabric and wallpaper online, and if you go to a home decorator, do not make do with the stamp sized sample in their fabric collection book. Before becoming a surface pattern designer, I used to be an interior decorator specialised in upholstery. We ALWAYS encouraged our clients to place an order for a fabric sample swatch. They are usually about 8 x 8 inches big and will give you a MUCH better idea of how the fabric will look. We also encouraged our client to place it in the room they planned their sofa or armchair, or curtains to be and leave it there for a few days to get an idea of how it would look in different lights. Something that looks good on a sunny morning might look ugly on a rainy day or completely off in artificial lighting at night. You don't want to commit to buying yards and yards of fabric or 20 rolls of wallpaper only to realise much later that they look completely wrong in your room. Ditto with paint, do not go by that 1 inch big paper square to buy 2-3 bucket of the stuff. Paint companies sell sample size pots for a reason. Buy the colors you are hesitating between and paint generous swatches on your wall at home to decide what works and what doesn't. Still scared to go all out with patterns and colors? It's ok to start small, especially if you live in rental where you'll be limited as to what you can do home decor wise. Start by mixing and matching patterns on your throw pillows. You can buy as many as you want in your favourite colors and experiment with pairing them. You can mix things up by changing your bedding and get a new comforter or curtains . Then add a few artworks on your wall that match your color scheme and theme. Or go completely eclectic building a framed art gallery wall . There are absolutely no reason to shy away from colors and patterns in your home. You aren't living in a Pinterest worthy real estate show home. Bring some personality into your home sanctuary.

Raise your hand if you are glad to give the month of March the boot! Like every year, this month has been exhausting and it threw me a few curve balls I didn't particularly care for (more on that shortly). So this morning it's with a lot of happiness that I removed the March calendar page from my fridge and replaced it with the April 2025 calendar page . As hot and humid as this month get, April is usually a month I find my groove back and get productive again and this year I'll get a busy second half of the month as I volunteered to be teaching the basics of pattern making in Photoshop at a nearby school for a month. But let's go back to the month that was shall we? The month started strong with out 10 years old washing machine making god awful noises during the spin cycles on March 1st. We got a repair guy to look at it immediately and the verdict was that the whole drum assembly and bearings wear breaking bit by bit. He told us that while he could replace the whole drum, it would be a lot wiser to put the money toward buying a new machine as there was no guarantee something else wouldn't break a few months later. So the night before hubby was due to go on a weeklong business trip, we bought a new machine. Then the week went on fairly uneventful at the exception of relentless ongoing heat wave straight from the hottest pit of hell. Hubby came back from his trip with a cold, and a few days later I got it too, leaving me out of comission for almost 15 days! But WAIT! There is more! Just at the same time I got sick our BRAND NEW AC unit which the landlord bought and got installed to replace our old one decided to break. Thankfully being only 3 weeks old it was still under warranty but it ended up being an endless protocol with the manufacturer to get it addressed, one that left me without AC in the bedroom for 5 days. While having a cold, in the middle of a heatwave. Don't worry I made do with sleeping on the sofa bed in our home office, but still. March was also a slow month on the sale front, but less slow than January or February and thanks to my big cold, there hasn't been new YouTube videos going live, at the exception of one short one . The month did end on a positive note though. I had entered the Golden Coil planner cover contest and on March 31st it was announced that mine made it to the top 10 out of over 1600 covers! The voting for the number 1 spot is going on until April 4th so if you haven't yet, go vote for mine on this post , simply comment with the letter C to place your vote. I'm pretty stoked to have made it to the top 10 this year, last year my entry wasn't selected for the voting phase.

Massive disclaimer : This post getting searched a lot on Google I need to point that Symplico shut down their operations in December 2024 and while they said it was temporary, their website have been taken down too. If that every changes, I'll write another post. Good news if you live in India! You can now purchase some of my designs as fabric as they are now available on Symplico . Symplico is a new print on demand fabric based in Surat, India that operates like Spoonflower does in the US. Designers upload their fabric, and customer get the option to purchase fabric by the meter on different type of fabrics for all their sewing projects. They contacted me last month to know if I would be interested selling my designs with them, and after doing a bit of research, I was in and the prospect of selling fabric in India was very exciting. Their uploading process works a bit differently from all the other PoD I know which is why my designs are going to be taking a bit of time finding their way in the shop as they review everything before publishing it. This means all my work goes through their quality check team who then decide if the design is a good fit for them and will print well. Being a fabric printing company that can print in bulk, I imagine it's their way of making sure nobody gets any nasty surprise with designs not repeating well or colors not working when they order big rolls of fabric. I put them to the test The instant my first batch of designs went live, I knew I would order this orange and green fishes in seigaiha waves print to turn into a cute summer top. I selected the polyester based "Satin linen" option out of the 14 different types of fabric they offer because it was light weight and marked as a good choice for women's clothing. I placed that order on the 21st of May and it god delivered on the 29th. The Symplico team told me that most fabric orders get printed in 3-4 days with the exception of viscose based fabrics which can take up to 8 days, so if you plan or purchasing something bear that in mind. It should have reached me on the 28th, but BluDart revised the delivery date after one of their own transport got "delayed/cancelled" as per the tracking manifest. At this point though it's a courier company issue and not with the manufacturer. The quality of the print is superb and when you work with printing services like I do, it's something that is always the first thing I check. All PoD out there ask designers to upload RGB files instead of CMYK because nowadays printers are able to read and convert the embedded color profile in the files, but sometimes things still can go wrong. A good printing company will make sure their printing machines are well calibrated and run smoothly, but I have unfortunately encountered companies with poor quality over the years. So back to Symplico, their color matching is on point and my on screen design is translating perfectly to this fabric print. The printer also picked up all the small glitter accents on the fishes nicely and gave a nice rendering. The fabric itself is light and has a little texture which makes it visually interesting and less generic than your standard polyester. Being a thin, light weight fabric, it isn't fully opaque, but it's not super transparent either. You can partially see through in the the white areas of my design, but not in the printed areas. I sent it to a tailor right away to have it stiched as a wrap around top. We decided to go without lining because I wanted a light weight casual top. But with that fabric type, you might need some lining depending what you plan on turning it into. If you were to turn it into a dress, lining it would add some body to it and prevent the slight risk of being a tiny bit see-through. they have of course other fabric types that are thicker, and before placing an order, do check them all to see which one will fit best for the kind of project you have in mind. As for myself? I think I might later invest in a sewing machine and get into home decor projects. Sewing clothes is pretty much out of my wheelhouse but as former interior decorator, I'm very familiar with home decor items stitching. I might even figure out how to sew simple clothes down the line...who knows.

Trends come and go, what was in got, out and then in again. Live long enough and you realise everything can be made new again. We saw it happening with mid-century modern designs, 90s fashion, grandmillenial home decor, and the 70s mod aesthetic. Right now, paisley is making a comeback if we are to keep an eye on trends. Not that paisley ever really went completely off the grid to begin with, but it wasn't prominent a trend as it is posing itself to be right now. The first hint of the rise of paisley came last year with Cowboy chic aesthetic trending, suddenly cowboy boots and hats became a big thing and I think Beyoncé's country album had something to do with it. From then it's not far a stretch to include bandanas as part of that aesthetic trend and voila! The rise of paisley had its perfect storm coming. Spoonflower tend to organize design challenges around emerging trends and toward the end of 2024, they had come up with a wild west challenge along with a cabincore challenge. Those two trends already compliment each other well, but a few weeks back they also had a paisley revival challenge encouraging designers to play around with timeless paisley motifs and make them new again. Just this morning (as I type this) I sold this pink on pink paisley cushion cover on Society6 and a few months ago I sold the matching 2024 calendar tea towel on Spoonflower . Still on Society6 I also sold a few of these throw pillow with an older paisley pattern I created a few years back. The same pattern in a different colorway sold a few times on Spoonflower as well and I believe as a wallpaper swatch on Raspberry Creek Fabrics . And of course there has been multiple sales of this paisley pattern via Deny Designs for their whole sale partners : Safe to say that if you haven't included paisley pattern design in your portfolio, you should get to it and draw a few paisley motif right away. The beauty of paisley patterns is that they can be made in just about any style, so it shouldn't be hard to come up with one that fits your style and brand, and you can make it available in several color variations in just a few clicks in Photoshop. Plus paisley will always stay timeless, it's that designs that pops back at regular interval. It was a thing in the 70s, it did make a comeback in the late 80s and early 90s as bandanas and I sweat I had a magenta paisley and pink top during the Y2K years. I also remember having a Nokia 3310 orange paisley case (do I date myself at this point or what?) My advice if you are a bit lost as to what is trending is to start by paying attention to Spoonflower's design challenges, they are all made around what is starting to trend. You can view their current and upcoming challenge themes even if you aren't selling on Spoonflower yourself.

Spring is about to spring for many of you, and here in Mumbai we have entered the dreaded summer season (we don't get any transition season over here) March is always a month I tend to dread and each year I mark it on my planner and calendar as "Take it easy month". Speaking of calendars, we are the 1st of the month and this means the March 2025 calendar page is now up for download in the Freebie zone . The illustration on this page was the 3rd in my series of floral animal silhouettes which were released each month as Patreon rewards last year and are still available should you join Patreon today . Drawing a floral bunny to illustrate the month last year was because Easter fell in March, this year it's going to be in April, but I think we can all agree that rabbits have that kind of "spring has sprung" kind of vibe about them so it makes them a perfect animal to illustrate the month. This illustration like all the others are available on Teepublic as I make a point of uploading Patreon illustrations in that shop the same month I release them to my Patreons (yes that means this year's rewards are already live on Teepublic). Now back to the month that was and the month that will be shall we? February has felt like a kind of extension of January : slow, sluggish and a bit of boring. Sales were slow, but then they always are for the first quarter of each year because people are still hungover from the Holidays shopping frenzy and the fact that in a lot of countries the financial year ends around March, and tax returns are due in April in the US. Still February had a few surprises, like Society6 announcing they would restructure their whole approach to selling art and decided to delete a lot of accounts in the process of becoming a more curated platform. I wrote a blog post about it and made a YouTube video elaborating a bit more about it. The plan in March is of course to take it easy and favour self-care, and with the heat being on, spending lots of time at the pool. I resumed my 3 times a week swimming routine 2 weeks ago (that's how insane the heat has been this year). I'm also very excited to see what will happen with Society6 as I am one of the artist that made the cut.

The first business day of February brough in a massive surprise/shock for many artists in the community with Society6's biggest move to date. A move that is leaving artists very divided at that. If you have been selling on the platform, you must have received a special email on February 3rd either announcing that your account will be terminated or that you will be part of a smaller, curated number of artists that get to stay on the platform. The change is due to occur on March 18 at which point they will also introduce a vetting system for uploading new artwork (for the artists who made the cut) and the permanent suspension of all accounts that weren't selected for the big move. Before I go on, let me announce that I made the cut and will be part of the curated selection of artists to continue selling on Society6. A move that brings a huge relief as I was facing the third round of subscription plan renewal not going through and the prospect of being demoted to the free plan for the 3rd time. So what is going on with Society6? What is that big move all about? Society6 made the decision to delete a great number of artists' account to move toward a more curated approach to selling art. In their announcement they explain that the move was decided in order to keep on providing their customer with the best service and on trend products. The move will come in order on March 18th, until then, all accounts meant to be deleted will continue to operate as usual, but as of February 3rd the uploading of new artwork has been frozen and all subscription plans ended. Those who had just gone for a new cycle on their plan will be refunded and no new payment will be deducted after the 3rd. By March 18th, the shipping fees will be cancelled and the royalty earnings structure will change for all the accounts that have been cleared to move forward with all markups set at 5-10% of retail price. This move is to ensure that all products regardless of the art printed on them will have the same price and be more accessible to customers. Society6 announced that the artists who will be continuing with them will have their portfolio reviewed and some of their work might be removed from the platform to align better with their curated collection. New artwork will have to follow a curation guideline and submission process they haven't shared yet. the reasoning behind that big move All print on demand websites have become EXTREMELY saturated and plagued by fraud / spam accounts uploading low quality artwork, often relying on free stock photos or worse stolen art, then came AI and some people have been uploading AI images after AI images by the dozen in order to flood the platform and hope to be seen. This has sadly led to many genuine artists disappearing in the mass of low quality and low effort designs. All those PoD platforms started with the intent of giving artists a chance at getting seen, and they have all evolved to become attempt for bogus designers to get rich quick (which doesn't happen). Some blatantly steal the art of artists like myself, I had to report quite a few over the years because these bogus accounts will stop at almost nothing. Back in 2023, Society6 first introduced shipping fees on all sales earnings, and then paid subscription plans in an effort to weed some of those fraudsters of the platform. They weren't the only ones coming up with measures to deter bogus "artists" then, Redbubble introduced membership tiers and fees on entry level accounts and Teepublic came up with two different earnings structures depending on the quality level of the account. Society6 is now taking it a step further and decided to narrow down their pool of artists and designs in order to cater exclusively to their target audience. This move will give the remaining artists a better chance at getting seen and making sales, which I think is a good idea. What to expect moving forward? I personally think it's going to be interesting to see how things will develop starting March 18th, especially with what kind of curated content they will be going for. I'm not too surprised by the whole move to be honest, they really hinted at a serious change of direction when they introduced the whole new look of their website in October and their marketing strategy going forward, not to mention their blog posts hinting at upcoming trends. It's clear they are moving toward catering to a clientele that is into specific trends and design aesthetics and want to do away with anything that does not resonate with said audience. I personally think that while this move is a bold one, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Society6 is a business after all, and they are protecting their own interests. This is also allowing them to stand out in a crowd of PoD platform. With artists usually uploading the same designs on several platform, and most PoD selling the same type of products, there wasn't much that made Society6 stand out. It's not just artists facing fierce competition in this industry, PoD feel the burden too. What to do if your account has been marked for suspension? As I said in December in my " Don't put all your eggs in the same basket " post, if you haven't diversified yet, now is the time. New PoD shops are created all the time, and many die as quickly as they come, and you never know when something will affect your business, so the wise move is to never rely on just one platform. Too many artists make that mistake and it severely impact their chances at building their business. It's something I keep on saying on Quora as well : what sells on one platform won't sell on another and there isn't much logic to it most of the time. When I started selling on Society6 back in 2017, the trend of the hour was boho abstract art, followed by watercolor hand lettering and watercolor patterns in bold colors. The succulent everything trend was already starting to decline. Fastforward to now, the trend on the platform seems to be retro florals, grandmillennial aesthetics, and retro seasonal trends like the après-ski trend and the vintage coastal elements like the ones in my recent collection . The Matisse inspired art is still having its moment too, but I have seen a shift away from it going on. All this to let you know that when you plan on selling your art on PoD or anywhere for that matter you essentially become a commercial artist, and paying attention to trends is something you should always keep doing. It doesn't mean you have to hop on all of them, just pick the ones that resonate with you, and in the end make peace with the fact you might not be doing well on every platforms. If you were among the artists that were marked for suspension, as much as it hurts, do not take it personally. It's not that you weren't good enough. I've seen many excellent artists not making the cut, the quality of their art isn't the problem. It's just that Society6 made an executive decision to only go with a certain style and didn't feel your work was part of their vision for their brand. This kind of things happen all the time in the art and design industry, rejection is part of the game. I'll say that though, Society6 is at least giving you over a month of warning before the big move occurs. I've been on PoD that didn't give that kind of courtesy, several I had a presence on simply shut down their operation one fine morning without as much as an email or a plan to pay artists their dues. So make the most of that month to clear everything, change all your links and let your audience know what is going on. If you haven't signed up for another PoD platform yet, go ahead and open an account on another. There are several options out there and I encourage you to try a few : Teepublic Threadless Redbubble Spoonflower Zazzle Framer Art Pixels Just to name a few! Also keep an eye open for any other PoD out there, especially new platforms where you will probably have more visibility. Also look in the possibility of licensing your art directly to companies, or entertain commission work. You could also set up a shop on Etsy if that is your thing, especially since they now allow drop shipping services to be listed as your production partner. The point is when it comes to creative businesses you never know when the wind is going to start turning and it's better to try new things and say yes to opportunities coming your way whenever they come.