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Of all the Print on Demand shops I have, Threadless is the one I more often than not forget to mention. It's also one of the big one that I never ordered from until recently, but now that I have, I can give you all my Threadless shopping review. From ordering to shipping to reviewing the print quality. I placed my initial order late April using one of the vouchers they give to artists from time to time to buy samples. That particular one was a 30$ voucher and I decided to put it toward getting myself a t-shirt since it's their most popular item. I went with my retro surfboard design on an extra soft t-shirt and went with a 2XL size so I could have a loose fit. The t-shirt at retail price is 24.95$ but because I was buying from my own shop from my artist account, they deducted my royalty from that price which comes at about 4$ and then 11$ were added for International shipping. Having me pay 1$ out of pocket. I usually take advantage of promotions and discounts to buy my products from PoD sites because shipping to India costs a bomb, and then there is always the threat of having to pay custom duty hanging in the balance. Once my order was placed I got told that it would take 3-4 weeks for my t-shirt to be delivered, so the long wait began. In general all the orders I placed with international partners in the past took 10-15 days so I did expect it to reach during that time frame. Threadless uses DHL to send their orders to the last border point within the US and then the regular postal network takes over. Nothing unusual there, most PoD tend to do it and I was fully expecting India Post to do the last leg of the delivery. Things unfortunately did take a different turn when at the 3 weeks mark the parcel tracking said "reached destination country" but didn't specify where in India. I waited an additional week with still no update, at which point I contacted Threadless for help. They were very quick to reply and asked me to wait for the 5 weeks mark before letting them know if it had been delivered. With that deadline passed and still no t-shirt, I contacted them again and they immediately initiated a replacement, which is their standard policy for lost or damaged orders (free of cost might I add). And the new t-shirt went into production to be shipped on June 4th. The weeks passed, and a few days before I was set to take a vacation with my family around June 20th, the tracking placed my order in Indonesia which seemed odd because I never got a country update with the first parcel, but in the face of me about to take off for a holiday I didn't get into it further and made a mental note to check upon my return. It's by July 6th that my order finally reached me with a stamp saying "wrongly delivered to Indonesia" or something along those lines. The big bonus is I didn't have to pay any custom duty. Normally parcels originating from the US do but this one didn't. No idea if it was because it came in via Indonesia or not. They didn't even open the parcel to check what was in it. At this point it's entirely possible that the international mail dispatch center tossed it into an Indonesia bound bag rather than an India bound one. Probably a case of human error at this point, most likely from the US postal services who took over by that point. It was a bit uncanny to have a delivery mishap twice for the same order though. The t-shirt was exactly what I was expecting in term of quality, the fabric is soft, the cut is good and it is indeed the loose fit I was expecting. The print is good and the color matching perfect, what I get on my t-shirt is what I also see on my screen, down to the tiny details. The reason I didn't write this Threadless shopping review sooner was that I wanted to see how the t-shirt fared after a few washes. I'm proud to announce that said t-shirt has been through multiple washes and hasn't faded or lost shape, the print is still as good as new on it which is a huge plus point in terms of quality. All in all and in spite of the rather funky delivery, it's one place I would be willing to order t-shirt again from in the future.

Another month bit the dust and we are now 4 months away from kissing 2024 goodbye. Scary huh? This means that the September 2024 calendar page is up for download in the the freebie zone . September marks the first month of autumn for many and the return of pumpkin spice lattes. Kids are usually back to school or about to get back to school and parents get a breather. In India, it's usually the start of the festive season. This year Ganesh Chaturthi falls on September 7th, then it's a spiral of festivities with Navratri, Durga Puja and Dusshera before celebrating Diwali and finally Christmas and New Year. This means that if you are a designer, you need to get your Christmas designs out now! Ideally for fabric designs you should have started uploading them on Spoonflower and other fabric PoD all through August because people are buying seasonal fabric for their crafts and sewing project now. But the time to upload to other PoD has also come if you want them to be indexed and showing up in searches by October/November. Plus people shop for the holiday season quite early. I usually get most of my Christmas designs sales in September/October. If you have been working on designing Holidays designs in July and August, now is the time to assemble them into collection and focus on other things like starting to assemble winter non-holidays collections and start thinking about spring designs. I for myself am working on a collection around a floral pattern I created in July and has a lot of potential, Stay tuned!

Unless your are a casual user, you might have noticed that things went completely crazy on Instagram these past few months. People's reach went down the toilet, and it became impossible to grow on that platform. Big or small, content creators all reported a massive dip in impressions, reach, and engagement that started in May 2024 and reached ridiculous proportions by July. Many of us who also have an account on Threads were all complaining about it. A bit of reflection on it all, and I think that while there is definitely something wrong and broken with Instagram, it's not all a bad thing. It's a wake up call for many to not rely on social media alone for marketing and become a bit more creative about how we connect with our audience. So what works and what doesn't with Instagram in 2024? All hail the mighty algorithm! Instagram changes its algorithm all the time and sometimes so much that it causes the kind of craziness we see happening right now. People all try to crack it, and beat it? If you ask me though, it's a lost battle and if your sole goal is to beat the algorithm, you are going to fail, and burn yourself out in the process. I attended a webinar at the beginning of the year where we learned that AI pretty much controls the Instagram algorithm and even the people at Insta aren't entirely sure how the monster they created really works. The only thing that people know is that the algorithm will randomly push content that they think will perform well. And as of 2024, contrary to what people still believe, it doesn't need to be a reel anymore. That was very 2022 and by early 23 they had corrected their stance on reels. If I remember well, even the Kardashians were fed up and that ended up motivating the Instagram team to try to fix it. But instead of trying to figure what to post and when, only to have to rethink your whole strategy 6 months later, focus on the audience you already have. Seeing posts in chronological order again People keep begging for it to happen, but guess what? That option DOES exist. It's just that Instagram isn't really eager for people to know about it because they have less to gain from it. How do you set your feed into chronological order your may ask? It's deceptively easy really. Simply tap on the Instagram logo in the top left corner on your app and it will bring down a menu where you can opt to see "following" and "Favourites". You need to select "Following" and it will take you to a feed where all the posts of ALL the people you follow will appear in chronological order. The reason Instagram isn't very open about telling people about it is simple : There is NO ADS on that feed. It's just the content, all the content of the people you chose to follow in one place, just like it was in the good old days. If you want to increase your reach among your followers, you'll have to tell them this option exist, I guarantee you that more than 90% of them have no idea it exist stop relying on the regular feed as much Here is what will happen after about a week of you making a point of liking all the posts on your "Following" feed : The regular feed will start showing you content from people you follow you might have missed, up to a week old Once you run out of old content from people you follow it will show you highlights from hashtags you follow or have used recently Once you went through the weekly hashtag content highlights it will start showing you suggested posts from accounts you don't follow The key is to keep checking what's new on Instagram using the "Following" tab and then spend a few minutes here and there scrolling through the suggested content on the main feed. The instant I started doing that and regularly was met with the "You are all caught up" on the main feed, my posts' reach started improving and I started seeing more engagement. Heck I even gained a few new followers in the past week. In the end, remember, Instagram is only interested in keeping people scrolling, and if you do that, they seem to reward you by showing your content to more people because they know you'll be back for more scrolling. hashtags or no hashtags... The jury is still out as to wether hashtags are still useful in 2024. I did run a little experiment and found out that they aren't as useful as they once were to grow your audience, but they aren't entirely dead either. Especially if you make sure to be all caught up with your feed to the point of IG showing you hashtag feed content. That said, keep it to 3-4 hashtags maximum, and from my experience keep using the same ones all the time. It was once upon a time raising red flags but these days using new tags all the time will ensure your content will never be seen. The tags you use the more often are the tags that will highlight your content the most. social media fatigue is real People are over solicited 24/7 with content and hooks to buy, buy, buy. We all have had ENOUGH. What once felt authentic is now a drag, for consumer and content creator alike. So my advice is to not stretch yourself too thin trying to have a presence everywhere, focus on one or two social media handle and then grow your email list or blog audience. I'm a firm believer blogs will be making a comeback. Right now my focus is on Instagram for image content and Threads for fun discussions and random tid bits. Gone are the days a huge follower count mattered In fact, scratch that, it NEVER mattered! The high follower count was something that was only relevant to brands wishing to partner with influencers. For small businesses it was never that important because a large audience doesn't necessarily means all of them will buy your products. It's better to cultivate a smaller audience that will stay loyal and engage with your content. When I started selling on Society6 back in 2017 I made my first sale after a little under 2 months on the platform and I think I barely had 400 followers. What I had was a blog that was doing well, and a lot of friends offline and online ready to spread the word about what I do. And guess what? This is all you need to get started. Sure, keeping a presence on a social media platform is important, but don't make it your whole life. If it reaches a point at which you put more energy into taming the algorithm and chasing likes and impressions than you are creating art, you are doing something wrong. People are done with phoney posts I said it for a a number of years on Quora : DON'T turn your Instagram feed into a Redbubble / Society6 product catalogue, people never found that kind of content fun or inspiring, and they like it even less in 2024. In our era of mass consumerism, Instagram has become the place where content creators keep on pushing products after products on people. So stand out and post unique content without making people feel like you are pushing something onto them all the time. The rarest commodity on social media is authenticity. People want to be able to relate to what other post. Death to the curated grid! Remember back in 2015 or so when having an editorial grid that looked perfect with all your posts being matchy-matchy and having the same aesthetic? That's gone...thank god for that! There used to be a time when if your account was all about your art it had to display nothing but your art and the odd picture of you enjoying a Sunday brunch was going to be terribly out of place and "ruin it". Nowadays posting a few more personal content will add to your authenticity factor and nobody will care what your grid looks like unless it's really all over the place and they can't figure out what you are really about. So post that occasional pictures of your nails or selfie with your pet, that makes you more human and more relatable. All in all, treat Instagram as just one of many of the marketing strategies you should have in your arsenal and not put all your energy into making it work. What the algorithm wants today is going to be completely different in 6 months, and then what? Save your energy for better things.

There is a new collection in town and it's cute, quirky and fun. Say hello to the Sushi Party collection ! I created the whole collection around the one pattern I entered in Spoonflower's "Yes Chef" design challenge using many of the elements of to make companion patterns. From a busy pattern I created 2 sushi themed ones : the Nigiri sushi lines and a sushi roll which features salmon roe rolls. I singled out the cute chopsticks to turn them into a delightfully pink pattern called "Kawaii Chopsticks" and took the mid-century modern diamond and stars filler elements to create two filler patterns to complete this collection. Sushi Party was first uploaded to Spoonflower as a collection because it translates extremely well as fabric that can be used for table decor projects like napkins, placemats or table cloths. Or can be used into fun kitchen decor and or kitchen accessories such as oven mitts or tea towels. The red and white "Mid century snowflakes" filler pattern can be used in a retro kitchen decor as well as a Scandinavian Christmas pattern while the red and black diamond pattern gives some serious casino vibes. All in all it's a fun collection that can also be used to create party decor element should you have a Japanese themed party. After uploading it to Spoonflower, I uploaded it to Society6 , Redbubble and Teepublic as well. And good news if you live in India, it's also available as fabric prints with Symplico . I'm entertaining the idea of getting some of that fabric to turn into placemats and table runners myself.

Bye bye July, hello August! This means only one thing for all of those who opted in and became a member (don't worry it's free) : The August 2024 printable calendar page is live in the Freebie zone ! In my neck of the wood it means that we are going to be slowly falling into the festive season with India's Independence day on the 15th and Raksha bandhan on the 19th. The monsoon is for now as I type these words taking it's usual slow down period, but not before leaving Mumbai more than wet in the past 2 weeks. Hopefully we will get a bit more rain toward the second half of August because I am not ready to sweat just yet. I use the monsoon months to get working on the fall and winter / holidays designs because a good, cool and pleasant rainy day puts me in the mood to create cozy designs. It's hard to get in that mood in a tropical climate, I need all the help I can get. Speaking of what you should be doing if you are a designer like me : - Promote : summery and tropical designs on your social media feeds but start hinting at back to school content. In several countries kids go back to school during the month of August and college kids start shopping to decorate their dorm room around that time, especially if this is their first year of going to college. - Create : Keep on creating cozy fall/winter and holidays themed illustrations or abstract geometric in a warm color palette. - Upload : Christmas and Fall designs! You must start uploading all your holidays themed now. By September it's getting too late to upload new fall and Halloween themed fabrics in particular as sewists and crafters will be wrapping up those projects and start working on the Holidays projects they might have. For PoD like Redbubble and Society6 you can still keep on uploading them until the beginning of October because they have a faster production and delivery process and they are dealing with finished products, but with Spoonflower, you want to factor in the fact people will need that fabric with plenty of time to turn it into a project BEFORE the season kicks in I myself have been working on a Winter Holidays collection I am about to wrap up this week, I made the greeting cards of said collection available for sale in my Patreon shop as printables already. Next on the agenda is finishing up a Christmas collection I have on the back burner for now. How is your month of August going to be?

You may not know it, but Home Cyn Home did once upon a long time ago start with a blog, that wasn't even called Home Cyn Home. Let me take you back to a time were blogs weren't much of a thing and people would just write about anything for the sake of writing. Back in 2004, a few months after I made the insane move of relocating to India, some of my friend suggested I start a blog to tell everyone about my "adventures". I signed up with the platform blogger, and launched "Cyn's adventures in India" which I think I kept under that name until 2013 before going for Home Cyn Home. It was still pretty much a lifestyle blog back then and I wrote about my daily life in India, being a parent, and shared a lot of recipes and crafts project ideas. One thing led to another and it became more about crafts projects and home decor, and then I started selling my art on Society6. That blog started on Blogger back in 2004 stayed up until 2022 when I decided to shut that door once and for all and wanting to focus on building my design brand. Back then the blogging world had been loosing steam for a while and we were all trying to leverage the power of social media. If you were a content creator or an artist trying to make it, Instagram was where you should be and when I really started focusing on it back in 2014, it was all about curated feeds and pretty pictures. We now all know how that went and how Instagram lost it's lustre. It's now cheap entertainment, lousy reels and abysmal engagement galore! With the recent series of events that include Meta being able to use any user's content to train their AI without our consent. This has lead many artists such as myself to rethink how I share things online and what I share on social media. Here we are, trying new strategies, many of us joined Cara or focused on growing their newsletter or Patreon page , but honestly what I see and feel is a general social media fatigue affecting us all. Yes! I am really feeling the exhaustion of constantly being bombarded by content, drama, controversies, idiotic pranks and the occasional artsy stuff I care about on Facebook / Instagram / Threads (I don't even bother about Twitter / X anymore). Posting a picture on Instagram just so 20 people can see it isn't exciting, and i really feel like I have to force myself to create pretty pictures these days and I know I am not the only one. Ironically I came upon a Thread where another artist was wondering if we were going to witness a blog revival recently. This got me thinking, and thinking real hard and I have been asking me that question a lot in the past few months. Will blogs become popular again? In the light of everything that is going on with Meta, I think it's worth a shot, it's not like engagement on Instagram can sink any lower than it does when you are close to zero already. Maybe, just maybe, it would be time to go back to the once golden age of blogging which hit its sweet spot circa 2009-10 and use that seemingly "old fashioned" way of connecting with our audience once more. It worked back then, I can see it working again. In a world of social media saturation and fatigue, spending a few minutes a day reading content rather than watch a grow man fart in water in a 15 seconds reall might actually just what most people need. What do you guys think? Should I focus on making more blog content? What would you be interested to read about?

I'm happy to announce that my artwork can now be found on a new Print on Demand platform! It's now selling with Shutter/Speed which is the new kid on the block when it comes to art prints selling. The contacted me a few weeks back asking if I was interested in selling with them and I agreed. Their only focus at the moment is art prints and photography prints which is pretty awesome if you ask me because it's one place that makes it easy for me to upload to. I don't have to worry about creating multiple files format of the same work and know that anything that was intended as a stand alone illustration can be uploaded there and grab some eyeballs. Them being new to the PoD scene also means the platform is not yet saturated and I get to be found a lot more easily in their internal searches, meaning my work can reach more potential buyer on their website. I started by uploading my Art Deco ladies series, and the mint and pink flatlay illustrations you see in this year's printable calendar, because they are the ones that are probably the most on brand with my signature style at the moment, but as we go, I'll be uploading more and more of the work. Go have a look at my shop already!

Preppy! That word is probably going to evoke visions of Lacoste polo t-shirt, plaid skirts and smart knitted sweaters and vests to anybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s. But did you know that the new preppy definition is anything but all that? The Gen Z has redefined the aesthetic in many ways and what's more, the preppy trend is a thing these days. I first came to know about it a few months back when Redbubble sent a newsletter to all their premium / pro tiers about trending keywords for which they needed more designs to show up in searches. Preppy was one of them. So I did the smart thing back then : Googled it. Why? Because I had an inkling of intuition that told me that what I defined as preppy was probably not what was trending nowadays. having a teenager helps a lot on staying current with terms too. And boy was I right to Google it! Preppy in its new definition is anything girly and pink and cute according to Gen Z. A far cry from all the 90s girls in my school who were sporting polo t-shirts in pastel tones and wearing plaid skirts or well cut jeans. I had the privilege (or misfortune) to be assigned to a middle school that was also catering to the super posh suburbs in my town, the class divide was very clear in who lived where based on outfits. Middle class burbs kid were embracing the 90s grunge trend, the posh gang was all clad in well cut clothes, and came winter, this whole lot seemed to be dressed in Togs Unlimited puff jackets by Chevignon (I kid you not it bordered on preppy uniform) and girls were carrying their books in an Hervé Chapelier tote bag, while the rest of us made do with backpacks. The whole aesthetic back then was also quite muted when it came to color palettes, it was a fest of beige, pastel pinks and blue, navy blue, forest green and earth tones. It was like the preppy gang of yore was allergic to bright colors. The new preppy girl by contrast is now a girl who wears pink a lot, or other cheerful bright (or pastel) and prefer girly clothes and accessories, which seems to also include a pink Stanley Cup. The aesthetic is cheerful, fun, high in colors, full of girly girl stuff like hearts, bows and fun coastal elements. This is throwing lot of Millennial and Gen X designers off as I found out in the super recent (still ongoing actually) Spoonflower Preppy wallpaper design challenge. Which version of preppy is the correct one? Personally I think it's a lot safer to go with the new preppy definition. The Gen Z is the new generation entering the work force with the oldest members of that cohort entering their 30s and the youngest like my daughter being well into their teenage years and soon to be in college. The Gen Z is the generation getting their adult independence and getting the purchasing power to boot. I think it's worth listening to what they like and how they define the world, especially if you are in the design and aesthetic business. It doesn't mean that what we called preppy as their age is gone, far from it, it just got relabelled too. The dainty florals, pastels, plaids and beigey - navy blues of the 90s is now part of what is being called the "Grandmillennial style" or as my daughter said when it comes to fashion : 90s vintage style. Grandmillennial is used more to define home decor, and if you grew up in the 90s you might recognise it as the kind of decor your wealthier friends might have going in their parent's home or in their Laura Ashley florals inspired bedrooms. It was basically preppy but for homes. I actually like seeing that trend coming back under that name, especially after years of boring minimalism that went into rather extremes with white, black and grey everything. The versy same way I like what the Gen Z defines as preppy today. Anything to kill the sterile minimalism is good in my book. What's your take on it all?

The summer hopefully kicked in for several of you guys, even though it seems to be playing hide and seek in Europe. When I drew this illustration last year, I thought of summer vacations and gave it a beach theme knowing it would go on illustrating the July 2024 printable calendar page. Printable page which is now up for download in the freebie zone . I just came back from an almost week long vacation to Goa where I celebrated my birthday. I did get some beach vibes even though the monsoon has properly kicked in on the west coast in India and I brought back half the seashells found at our hotel beach to decorate my place. Now it's time to get back to work and get creating new designs ahead of the festive season and winter...yes! WINTER. I already uploaded a few Halloween themed patterns on Spoonflower , and the first Christmas one for the season, with more to come as I let the rain put me in an autumn kind of mood. If you are a designer, here is what you should be doing in July : - Promote : Summer themed designs, especially on PoD like Society6 and Redbubble because people are still in the mood to buy them now (less on Spoonflower where people are buying fabric for autumn and Christmas projects). You should start promoting a few more generic and geometric designs with fall colors as well because people are going to start shopping for back to school. College students are also likely to plan decorating their dorm, so anything Gen Z is into is worth promoting. -Upload : Halloween and autumn/fall designs! People are starting to plan ahead, especially crafters and sewing enthusiasts who buy fabric by the yard. You can also start uploading Christmas designs as people tend to shop early for the holidays not the be caught off guard at the last minute. -Design : Christmas and winter themed illustrations should be your focus right now, along with fall designs you can whip up quickly outside of a collection, or as add ons to an existing collection. I personally find it a lot easier to design for the festive season ahead when the monsoon kicked in, it's hard to draw Christmas stuff and pumpkins when it's 35+ degrees celsius outside and the sun is out to roast you alive in your flip flops. I tend to work quickly on designs, so I can afford myself that luxury of starting late in the season. But if you are a type A overthinking machine, this might be better to start earlier and focus on winter and Valentine's day in July. In other news, there are a few more designs of mine that made it to my Deny Designs gallery , so if you are a wholesale business, you might want to check them out.

Unless you've been of the grid, chances are you heard about social media and the AI threat it poses to artists in the past few weeks. Heck if you are a creative and artist yourself, you probably have at least reconsidered what you share on Instagram, or made a move to Cara ( or have been wondering if it is worth migrating). For many of us artists, the AI threat is getting more real and is starting to strike a little too close to home, forcing us to reconsider several things, including our marketing strategy which quite frankly was already an ordeal thanks to Instagram's ever changing algorithm. So what is the new social media threat? I'm glad you asked! Meta, the group that englobes Facebook, Instagram and Threads has announced that they will use content posted publicly by users on their platforms to train their AI model and in most countries will do so WITHOUT your consent, or even allowing you to opt out. As I type this, the only users who can opt out of having their words and images used are those living in the European Union, and even then, they are made to jump through hoops to get that one basic copyright honored. Living in India, I don't even have the option to opt out or anything, Meta can and probably is using all the content I have been posting on Instagram to train their AI model. It's something that as an artist I find HUGELY problematic, like many artists do. Why? Because this means it can give birth to an AI image generator that can create images in your style that anyone will use as their own, with the original artist not being compensated for having their work used to train said AI in the first place. The rise of AI "art" (don't be fooled it's not art) has been concerning for a year and a half or so and has already pushed several PoD platforms to act on it and enforce fees on artists in an effort to keep the bogus "AI artists" off their platforms. A federal court in the US has ruled that AI art cannot be copyrighted and nobody can claim ownership of a work generated by an AI because copyrights is a privilege only a human creator can enjoy, not a machine. The EU has drafted the first set of laws to regulate the use of AI in what is called the AI act which is why Meta has been forced to comply and offer EU users an "opt out" option. At this point, we quite frankly need worldwide regulations for AI and its applications, INCLUDING images generated by an AI and how AI is trained. Unfortunately, it seems people don't quite understand the urgency, or what the big deal is, because they still don't really understand art as a CAREER. How many of us artists have been told "Get a real job" like spending hours to create illustrations and elements that can be printed as a pattern isn't a job but a fun hobby? How many still believe the starving artist myth is a reality that artist must content themselves with? How many of you reading this post have had dreams of being in a creative field as a child but where pushed by your parents toward a more "sensible" career choice? How many of you purchase items with designs printed on them without thinking about the work that went into creating that design or wether or not the artists/designer got paid? The sad sad truth is that there is very little awareness about what it is that artists do. People are still stuck with this romantic idea of an artist painting flowers and landscapes on a canvas with oil painting and trying to make ends meet selling their paintings for food and never really get much recognition if any while we are alive...thank Van Gogh for that! The truth is that artists are part of a huge career field and you'd be hard pressed to find anything in your daily life that hasn't had an artist or designer involved in the process. All your tech gadgets were first designed by a concept artist and then a tech team went on trying to make it happen. There isn't a movie out there that hasn't a team dedicated to CGI special effects and animation artists. But did you know that there also are artists working behind the scene on elements you will never directly see in the movie? Like storyboard artists? And all the work of concept artists and costume designers who worked months on ideas for props, sets and costumes? We artists are everywhere and the job we do mean your home and life are a little bit less boring, you could be drinking out of a boring white coffee mug and it would still hold your coffee just fine. Drinking your morning cup out of a cute mug with fun colors and a sassy quote is something that should come as a bonus, it's a privilege you should pay for. So! Where does that left us? How do we go about the future? As an artist I am for one really rethinking my marketing strategy and what I share on Facebook and Instagram. I've noticed in the past few months that posts like flat illustration or pattern swatches get more reach than product mockups and finished products like that water bottle on the left. It's clear that Instagram was trying to incentivise me to post more content they can really use to train the Meta AI. Knowing what I know now, I decided to stop posting too clearly usable images on Insta and focus on product mockups and behind the scene snapshots of my life as an artist. Some artists have been using the softwares Glaze and Nightshade to render their images unusable by AI models. I tried making Glaze work but it kept crashing. I decided to reserve the art content for Cara where they aren't training an AI model with it and for my Patreons. I have been posting a lot more content that is free to read if you sign up as a free member and a few more public posts (viewable by all).I know some artists who've been working on growing their email lists, and quite frankly it's something I have always been struggling with. I'm also not really good at writing newsletters and I know half of the ones I subscribed to has gone unread. I'm more a fan of interaction with my followers which was what was great with Instagram before they decided to only show my posts to 10-15 of them.So I'm hoping we can get that sense of community back on Patreon somehow. One thing has become clear, the AI threat is real and if people don't start questioning it and asking for regulations we are going to end up with a completely out of control tools. The SAG - AFTRA strike last year was just the beginning. People, we artists need you! Believe in us, support us, say no to AI "art" (again it's not art), spread the word, help us advocate.

We've officially made it to the 6th month of 2024 people! It's now half time. We are as far from its beginning as we are from it's end. This means the June 2024 printable calendar page is up for grab in the freebie zone and time to get ready to plan yet another month. I'm looking forward to this month of June for several reasons : It's my birth month and I have no problem getting older, 45 trips around the suns and more fun with each rounds. The monsoon is coming soon, June is the month we see the monsoon make a comeback in Mumbai and when you've been suffocating in steaming heat for 4 months you dream of nothing but rain and cooler days My mom is coming over for my birthday and we are planning a trip. I'm happy to have May behind us, this year has been pretty BRUTAL on the climate front and the last two weeks of the month have been downright debilitating thanks to off the charts heat and humidity. So much so I spent the past week in bed with a giant viral cold because my poor body just needs a break from this insanity. But all not was lost and I have a few achievements under the belt. First I joined Symplico, an India based fabric printing company, you can read all about it in this blog post. I ordered some of my fabric and it's with a tailor as I type this and will be turned into a top in less than 2 weeks (another thing to look forward to in June!). I also created a brand new, fun collection called Cactus Fiesta (detailed blog post coming soon). So if you are a designer, what should you be paying attention to in June? You should be promoting summer designs on social media, because people buying on PoD like Society6 and Redbubble are still going to be interested in purchasing all the tropical, beachy and summery designs you created and uploaded over the past few months. You should be uploading fall and Halloween themed designs, and start uploading a few Christmas designs too. ESPECIALLY on fabric printing websites like Spoonflower, because crafters, quilters and seamstresses are all stocking up on these in the Summer to be ready to create festive projects. Remember that for a lot of Fabric PoD the turnover to print an order can be quite long and take 7-8 days or more, so it pays to be ready with all things festive right away. This applies to Diwali designs as well, as this year the festival of light falls early November, in fact the first Day of Diwali falls on October 29th and the last day on November 3rd. Last but not least, you should start focusing on creating, late fall and winter patterns or patterns with more muted winterish color palettes. If you are really on your A game, you can start designing Valentine's day designs as well. Not going to lie here, designing winter patterns and illustrations isn't on my radar yet, It's even harder to get into it than it is fall designs when you live in a tropical climate. My hack for all those seasonal designs that I feel disconnected from is to create them closer to the season in question, upload them during said season but knowing that they will not get fully indexed for this year and be more searchable the next year. Things like snowflakes, Christmas trees, and winter animals are evergreen trends and something people will start searching for at the start of each season. I see May and June as the time to start uploading evergreen geometric and floral designs, but in less summery colors, which is why I tend to pay attention to color trends more than actual seasonal motif trends. On these wise words, I'll leave you all to it...happy month of June!

I know, I know, we are in May and the summer vacation period is just starting to be something that can be called a near future reality for many. But, when you are a surface designer, you tend to live your professional life a few seasons ahead of time, and right now, is the perfect time to start spotting fall 2024 trends and use them as creative inspiration. After all, people will start buying fall and festive season everything sooner than you think. And this year, there is one hot color trend for fall 2024 you should pay some serious attention to because it has started to pop all over the place already. The world is still in love with yesteryear and all things mod and 70s are still something people are into and along with it, the bold saturated orange, pink, and magenta tones that go with the groovy decade and disco era. Pantone was not completely off mark picking an orange tone as the 2024 color of the year, even if in my opinion they picked the most boring one they could with peach fuzz. Orange has been a color that has popped more and more in the past year alone, and is being mixed with other bold tones like yellow, pink, magenta and purple. Think late 70s and early 80s disco era which where the inspiration for my Disco Dreams collection. Those bold tones have started to show up everywhere and if you need a clear example, look no further than Louis Vuitton's pre-fall Voyager fashion show which took place a few weeks back in Shangai. Love it or hate it, but don't ignore it! Vuitton isn't the only fashion house tapping into those bold colors, several designers have or are tapping into it right now. I got to watch Society6's webinar about upcoming trends which is a perk paid members will get regularly from now on and they also narrowed in on that color trend along with bold colorful mod designs, the rise of Art Deco trends, and colorful bohemian vibes. And their homepage and curator's picks have been reflecting that a lot recently. Not so surprisingly, the Pink and orange tiger design that started selling really well last year on Society6 is still one of my best seller almost a year later. This trend of going for bolder, more saturated colors has been going for a few years already, and my theory is that the 2020 pandemic has changed how people view their space. we've all spent a fair chunk of time stuck at home 4 years ago, and in some countries like India, this dragged well into 2021. I can get how living in beige, white and grey when you are on house arrest can wear thin quickly. Vintage maximalism suddenly became a trend around that time too, people want to have fun with their space...and lives and it shows in all the current trends. I'm all for it as a color lover, I never quite understood the playing it safe with neutrals and nothing else and my whole brand is pretty built on colors. After all, Home Cyn Home's tag line is "Be bold and colorful" I remember my younger days working as an apprentice decorator between 99 and 2003 and about 95% of what we worked with were boring neutrals : brown, grey or navy sofas upholstery, beige curtains galore, and if it was going to be a sheer curtain, you bet the client would pick a white, with the most conservative border. The 90s and Y2K years weren't the most exciting in term of home decor trends and I hope that people never think of reviving those in the future. Give me all the extravagance of the Art Deco era and the 60's and 70s and make it last! By the way, Art Deco is another trend you want to pay special attention to, it's rising right now, and I will write more about it in another blog post. For now, go and have fun exploring the fall 2024 colors and start uploading them now as retro geometric patterns and florals are evergreen motifs that can be used in all seasons.