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?

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.

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.

There is a brand new collection on the block, just in time for summer, and all your tropical and beach inspired projects. Say hello to Beach n Surf by Home Cyn Home! This collection started from a design idea I had to add a fun tropical inspired graphic to my t-shirt designs on Teepublic: Beach Please. I had that vision of using a retro front surrounded by tropical flowers and that's what got me digging in my master files to check if there were some assets I could repurpose. My orange and teal surfboard illustration became a prime candidate because it had those big pink hibiscus flowers I could use, and use them I did. Not only did that surfboard illustration provide me with those gorgeous pink hibiscus flowers, it also ended up inspiring the color palette of the whole collection, waste not want not. After that it was just a matter of creating a series of pattern around both the Beach Please design and the surfboard illustration. The pink hibiscus flowers and cream colored plumerias lent themselves perfectly to create two floral patterns that mix and match effortlessly and in the spirit of keeping a beach / coastal vibe to the collection, I added a broad stripes pattern in 3 different color variation : orange and cream, turquoise and cream and a tricolor orange, turquoise and cream version. Along the way I realised that an older existing design matched the theme of the collection and I added the orange, pink and purple sunglasses to it along with the green fishes in orange and white seigaiha waves, which have enough similarities with the original color palette to make them work within the collection. I quickly uploaded all the designs featured in the Beach n Surf collection to Spoonflower where they are available as wallpapers, fabric and pre-sewn textile items as well as on Redbubble and Society6. All of them are of course available for licensing so if you read this and are interested in a partnership contact me to know more. Till date it's the most fun I had creating a collection. Im a sucker for tropical designs, florals and anything that has pink, mint and turquoise in its colorway. That collection has been so inspiring that there is likely to be a few more add-ons to it in the coming weeks which I'll be sure to share with you all. If you want to see more pictures of products featuring those designs, head up to the Beach n Surf collection page.

I believe in wasting no time getting things on track in the new year and this year I'm starting with a particularly big bang : my work is now available on spoonflower! For those who don't know it yet, Spoonflower is the leading fabric print on demand company there is out there and they have been on my radar for years. BUT! Unfortunately I couldn't join them sooner because they had policy going that made it extremely difficult for people based out of the US to make it worth their time, especially if you were based out of India like I am. This policy was that to make any designs available for sale, one had to purchase it as a sample swatch and proof it first. I'm not and never was against the principle, the problem was that on top of the swatches being priced in USD against a weak Indian rupee, there was a big shipping fee, and a custom duty fee to graft itself on it all upon delivery, which inevitably would take 3-4 weeks to reach...if all went well. This meant possibly paying 3 times the price of the swatches if you cumulated all the fees and then spent weeks hoping your package didn't get lost somewhere in transit before you could FINALLY check the boxes saying you proofed the design and that yes it was fine to go on for sale. All this is no more! Sometimes in December 2023, Spoonflower announced that fro December 31st onwards, they would do away with the sample proofing via paid swatches and replace it with FREE digital proofing. Yup! No more buying swatches, and waiting for them to reach you via post mail anymore! This is the kind of news I got to learn via the Facebook communities of surface designers I joined, which is why being part of a group is always a good idea. Otherwise I would probably have been totally oblivious to that change and miss out on joining Spoonflower for a while longer. Needless to say that the instant I read that news and got it confirmed, I took my pen and wrote down "Join Spoonflower" in my 2024 planner first chance I had last week. The catch though is that to compensate for the fact they no longer demand a swatch purchase, they limited the amount of designs you can upload each week to 25, probably in an attempt to still encourage quality uploads. But if you pace yourself, that shouldn't be an issue at all. The process to verify your account could take a day or two as well. You have to enter all your taxes information which is quite easy to do and once you filled all the forms they take 24 hours to validate those changes, you also need to validate your postal address and there are two ways to do it : Either buy anything from the website and your shipping address gets saved automatically, or contact their help desk and provide them with a residential address of your choice. I went with option B and it took a day and a half for them to validate it. You can still upload designs while you wait to be a fully verified account, you just can't make them available for sale until that part is done, so get cracking on it as soon as you join. I'm gradually uploading my work over there and started with adding the whole Tiger Safari and Mediterranean Patio collections, and am currently adding the Pacific Beach one as well as I type these words. I'm also working on entries for their design challenges which is something every designers should consider doing on this platform. All in all, I started the year strong already and I am super excited to see what comes next.

Raise your hand if you've been struggling with getting into the Christmas festive spirit as an adult! I think most of us have been there at one point or another and most of us probably tried to blame it on external factor when our expectation constanlty fell short. I know it's a recurrent theme in expat communities in India. But to be fair, I think we all have dealt with this feeling something isn't right with Christmas as an adult, no matter where we live, yes even if we stayed in our home town all our life! It's probably because we try too hard recreating traditions that made sense when we were kids but not so much when we are the adult having to work toward recreating that magic. There will always be a point in any adult's life when it'll be time to just make new traditions for Christmas. It's unavoidable, and the longer you resist it, the harder you are going to make it on yourself. Trust me I speak from experience. I moved to India in November 2003 at the ripe age of 24, and even though I experienced a few Christmases as an adult before that move, I don't think I really realised that the reason everything fell flat, was that I had unrealistic expectations of what Christmas should be. I spent years half mourning my childhood Christmases and half trying to recreate them at all cost, albeit with slight modifications. No matter how hard I tried to recreate fancy Christmas dinners, I found that all it left me feeling was being cranky and tired. Over the years, I realised that it's probably how my parents and grandparents felt planning a Christmas feast for lunch or dinner. As a kid, I just remember the table decorations, the party food, and the opening the gifts afterwards. I was blissfully unaware of the amount of work that went into making that day happen. And my grand parents idea of what goes into a Christmas feast was probably already a LOT different than my parent's, and they all had sets of social expectations to sort of abide to that fortunately I am free of in my neck of the wood. That said, you don't have to move half accross the globe to have a merry, uncompliocated, fuss free Christmas. You just have to make your happiness your priority and be brave enough to chunk all the festive traditions that no longer make sense in your life. Your kids will not know any better, trust me on that. They will just remember the fun and magic you deliver no matter what form it comes it. They have no way of knowing what YOU grew up with, they can't compare your childhood memories to theirs. What they will pick up on as they get older is how grumpy sticking to some traditions will make you. Honestly by the time I was 12-13 years old, I noticed that my whole family was really going through the motion of it all because "That's what you are supposed to do on Christmas day". I probably internalised this idea that Christmas is supposed to be work, that you are supposed to put tons of effort into it around that age. Let that go! All those crazy ideas that you need to sacrifice your own comfort and happiness for the sake of a festival. This year, dare to make new traditions for Christmas. Traditions that are fun for you, and make sense to you. The first step toward that epiphany for me was when we decided to go out in the evening to watch the pretty lights around our neighbourhood while drinking Starbucks Christmas coffee. Discovering I could feel relaxed and not have to cook! What a concept! The year after that the latest Starwars movie came out on Christmas day, it was "The Force Awakens" and that's when our new family tradition started and still goes on : Every Christmas, we go watch a movie as a family, there isn't formal gifts exchanged anymore, we gift ourselves a fun family outing and eat lunch or dinner outside, after or before the movie screening. I also go out to buy croissants and cake for breakfast on Christmas day and that's about it. Nobody is tired, or grumpy, there are no humongous amount of dishes piling up in the sink and dishwasher, and no pressure to be social at all. I'm not saying that's what everyone should do, but that it's what worked for us. Christmas doesn't have to be about a super fancy home cooked feast and tons of guests, and it certainly not have to be about finding the perfect gift for everyone in your family. It can be something completely different, as long as you are HAPPY and RELAXED! If you don't have the energy for anything but a Christmas "high tea" with store bought pastries, then by all means go for it! That will end up being the perfect Christmas for you and that is what matters in the end. But, you have to give yourself permission to set yourself free and make your own Christmas traditions as you go. They might also change over time, and that is ok too. This year we added watching Christmas movies all through December as a family and eat take out food in front of the TV while watching them, and yup! We will still go out on Christmas day to watch a movie.

Last year I had to close down my Etsy shop because it reached a point at which selling printables in it costed me more per months in listing fees renewal than I actually made in sales. That was when I started offering some of those printables as rewards to my Patreons but becoming a paid subscriber isn't something everyone is willing to do. So imagine how happy I was to learn that Patreon launched a new way for artists and creator to earn an income on the platform with their brand new Patreon shops. These shops are meant for artists and creator to sell any sort of digital content. There are no listing fees, and Patreon only take a percentage of the sale when a sale happens, which is great if all you are selling are instant download digital files. You now have an option beside Etsy. The shop is accessible to EVERYONE, this means if you don't want to become a subscriber and just want to buy the one product you want in the shop, you can do so. All of the purchases in the shop are one off purchases. As a creator, I also have the option to make shops products FREE for some of my subscribers which is exactly what I did with the Printable 2024 calendar. My tier 2 and 3 Patreons get it free as part of their pledge. I'm adding files gradually to that shop and I am excited with the potential it offers, including the possibility to offer videos and tutorials in the future as well. I found out today as I was uploading the Printable Christmas gift envelope and card that the minimum price I can set in my shop is 3$, so with that in mind, there will be a lot of bundle files rather that single files, expecially with things like printable stickers and postcards, which I plan to start uploading next month. Remember that Patreon is a great way to support independent artists either with a paid subscription to their content, or with the new Patreon shop that is now live for all to buy from.

This is it! In less than a month, we are kissing 2023 goodbye and stepping into 2024 with a renewed sense of purpose, new goals and for those who really do them, resolutions (I don't I prefer goals). Like every Decembers, I find myself reflecting on the year that was so that I can map my future and the new year ahead. This year, I used the last trimester of 2023 to focus on self growth and tie loose ends on what I really want to leave behind as the clock strike midnight on December 31st and what I will carry over the treshold. We all have some emotional baggage, fears, concerns and patterns we are all better off leaving at the door and I found that making space to assess that has been a great idea so far. 2023 has been an interesting year over here, with its own special sets of challenges and hurdles I quite frankly am really glad to leave. I spent quality time with my mom in January, but it's also the year we lost our cat, and my mother in law. We got to see our daughter performing the lead in a Snow White ballet production, and our car sustained a bit of damage in an accident (the humans were all fine). There were a lot of unforeseen expenses and several of the goals I had never quite happened. I also saw my best friend move away to another continent. This year was the first year I used a conventional planner over a bullet journal, because I realised in 2022 that I didn't have the time or energy to make BuJo spreads from scratch anymore. I outgrew the BuJo, and I don't regret it one bit. What I do sort of kind of regret though is falling to the pressure of 4 pages to set goals in my 2023 planner and filled them all to the max. I kind of knew then I was setting myself for a tad bit of disappointment, and this is something I am correcting in 2024. All this year I have been using this undated planner, but in an overzealous elan and this compulsive need to not waste any pages. I did fill them all in the first half of the year. All the goals, all the trackers...everything! The result? Lots of the goals weren't clear enough, and it ended up sounding, more like a wish list than an actual goal list. No human being should ever set a bucket list, a vision board, and goals across 6 categories followed by a 2 page spread of things you are comfortable and not comfortable with...before the year even started. Never mind the 3 pages each month to fill with bedtime and morning routines, trackers, mantras, to-do lists, and then weekly to-do lists, and at the end a goal review page!!!!! As much as I enjoyed having weekly spreads all printed already and using it as a planner. I really do think half that planner was over-kill. I think by June, I gave up on most of the trackers and log pages because I could feel the pressure and burn out. Beside that's when the year started to really feel loaded. So in 2024, I will use Alicia Souza's 2024 Wiro planner. It has less goals pages already, and now rich of my wisdom, I will not put pressure on myself to fill all the pages I don't really need like the "meal planning" ones. Setting just one big goal in 2024 Rich of this year's experience, I decided to just set ONE main goal for the whole year and work on the steps to get there throughout the year, bit by bit. That goal will be to take the step into art licensing, and approach companies to license my designs by the year's end. In a way, it's a continuation of what I DID achieve this year : building a portfolio of collections I believe it will be a lot easier if I focus on that one target, and make it happen by taking actionable steps toward it, rather than dilute myself in a million other personal and professional goals like I did this year. Rich of my experience, and writing months recap in the planner and in all past journals, I KNOW that there are two months where I'm inevitably going to be low energy : March and August. So I already put a disclaimer in the new planner about taking those months easy and not pushing myself. After all, the ultimate purpose of planners and journals is to help you navigate your future better. Like every year, I always feel excited with a new journal or planner. It starts blank, full of possibilities and promises, and as the year unfurls, this book become a witness to your story and growth. So which team will you be on in 2024? Team bullet journal or team conventional planner?

One of my goals for 2023 has been to put together a few designs and patterns collection for my portfolio and as of November, I've put 3 collections together and given them a feature page each on my website which you can find on the collections page. The latest of these collections is called the Mediterranean patio collection. I could swear I had a plan of writing a blog post about each of the collections and that I had done that already, at least for the first two, namely Tiger Safari and Pacific Beach, but it seems the plan is yet to materialise. So without any further ado, here is a bit more about this beautiful teal, orange and white collection that brings you to a warm seaside, sun kissed mediterranean villa and garden. The collection was built around this teal and orange minimalist citrus fruits and branches artwork which you can find as an art print and more on Society6. This illustration gave birth to a matching pattern, and it instantly gave me a mediterranean orchard garden vibe, so much so I decided to use the same orange, teal and white color palette to create companion patterns for it. As you probably have realised, I am a sucker for retro geometric patterns with an Art Deco influence and florals and botanical designs, no matter the color palette. I think the honeycomb pattern was the first companion pattern I created, quickly followed by a teal seigaiha wave pattern. At that point I didn't have a name for the collection at all, I just created patterns that could go well together in a fun mix and match way. It's when I created this orange and teal retro lilies pattern that I realised I had a warm garden theme coming together and the first words that came to my mind were "Mediterranean garden". I knew I was onto something. I work better putting collections together when I used a mockup file and start putting all the different patterns together so I went to Creatsy and decided to use one of their free mockup file called the Versatile fabric roll free mockup. Which had enough customisable fabric rolls for me to really put a solid collection together and see how all of them worked together. I had 4 patterns ready at that point : the teal and orange tree branches, the retro lilies, the orange, teal, white and navy honeycomb pattern and the teal and white seigaiha waves pattern, but the mockup had two additional fabric rolls to use. So I dug deep into my patterns archive to find a mid-century modern, 70s inspired geometric rainbow design. With two geometric patterns already this one seemed like a perfect marriage between the light and playful seigaiha and the more structured, patio tiles like honeycomb pattern, so in the collection it went and it worked beautifully with all the other fabric roll. I had a winner right away. The last pattern was a bit tricky, I had a navy blue and turquoise Art Deco floral motif that I used in the Pacific Beach collection that was a strong candidate as a filler pattern. But the navy blue did clash with all the other designs making that one stand out entirely too much. But the motif did feel right at home with my garden/patio theme, so I decided to recolor the background a dark teal to see how it would work. Turned out that move was the right move and just like that, I had my complete collection ready. All that was left at that point was finding a name for it. Because of the citrus fruit pattern, I knew "mediterranean" had to be in the name. I felt torn between garden, villa, patio and orchard when it came to names. Orchard got dismissed quickly, because with so many geometric patterns in the collection, it didn't feel like it was fitting the organic kind of vibe an orchard usually gives. The clear retro geometric elements suggested there was an architectural element to the collection, and the name needed to reflect that. This reasoning is what ended up disqualifying "Mediterranean Garden" as well along with the fact that it's such a generic, overused name I would probably not really stand out in searches with that one. So I was left with Mediterranean villa and patio, and both could have worked to be fair. I just got drawn to the patio more because the honeycomb pattern reminded me of mosaics found in Moroccan courtyard houses called riyads which are similar to patios. The Mediterranean patio collection got officially named! All the patterns in the collection are available as fabrics and wallpapers on Raspberry Creek Fabrics, and on several if not all items on Redbubble and Society6. They are of course all licensable which is exactly why I'm focusing on building collections, so if you are interested in licensing my work, you can shoot me an email.

One of the serious downside of making a living as an artist and surface designer is that art files add up and pile up very quickly on your hard drive and it can become very tricky to remember what you uploaded and where. Many artists will tell you how they swear by some sort of spreadsheet or planner that lives on their computer and how it's a great way to stay organized and stay on top of things. Some even include which descriptions, keywords and tags they associate with each design. The problem is that there are a LOT of us out there who are seriously spreadsheet challenged and keeping a list that way is the surest way to get even more disorganized. I'm absolutely famous for forgetting appointments and events that have been entered on Google calendar and for forgetting I even have lists in spreadsheets. Heck just creating a spreadsheet stress me out and I mess it up half the time which leads to my husband having to help me with it...I'm THAT bad with them. So what if I were about to tell you that it's possible to keep your art files organized and do so without spreadsheets? Two weeks ago I made my comeback on YouTube after a long hiatus showing you exactly how I do it : My method is highly visual and works for everyone who needs to see things to remember them rather than see a name in a list. I also show you how I make an habit of backing up my files regularly to avoid clutter on my laptop, and make sure everything stays safe. To do so, I use a 1TB Toshiba hard drive I bought a few years ago which unfortunately is now only available as a 2TB drive on Amazon but that I still recommend (it's an affiliate link by the way). The system is pretty simple : - Files that have been published on ALL my main PoD platforms are put away in folders with the name of the design inside a bigger folder I named "Cyn's art". Those are files I don't need to see as icons anymore, and I only keep the most recent designs on my laptop or those I might revisit in the near future. - Files that are yet to be backed up on my external drive are left out of a folder and do not have a red dot label (I'm on Mac) - Once my files are backed up on my external drive, they go in a folder if they have been published, or they stay in the open and get a red dot label which indicates that the file has not been published yet but has been properly backed up. - I upload all seamless tiles file in a whole different folder after I published them, it's easier for me to have them all in one place when I build collections and be able to sift through thumbnails image to get an idea of what works together or not. I have a number of "red dot" designs in my "Cyn's art folder" some that have been there for months. The reasons could be that they are out of season, like for example Christmas designs that I created all through December and make no point of uploading past the shipping deadline PoD companies set to get your order delivered before December 24th. Those designs will safely stay on my hard drive until it makes sense to publish them again. Then there are all the color variations of a design I often make in batches but will take a couple of months to be all up for sale as I don't like flooding my shop with 5-6 color variations all right after one another. These red dotted designs always come in handy when I am stuck in a creative block, that way I have something to fall back on to maintain my uploading pace on PoD and keep their algorithm happy. When I publish a design, I make a point of publishing it all within a day or two at the most to ALL my main print on demand platforms, this means Society6, Redbubble, Teepublic and Threadless. That way, I don't have to worry about remembering keywords and tags as I'm doing it all in just a few hours. The only catch is that with Teepublic being most a t-shirt platform, my patterns do not make it there, and it's fine. I have a few other smaller PoD and some of them are super specific like Raspberry Creek Fabric, so I upload separately on those and my content is often curated. If I find a new platform to try at any point, I start by uploading my best selling designs and go from there. For the highly visual person that I am, this system has worked pretty well over time. So if you are allergic to spreadsheets and can't register words as well as images, this is a system that might be a good fit for you.

Society6 just dropped the announcement they have been hinting at last April : the introduction of paid artist subscription plans. We were all expecting this change, and unlike other PoD who implemented changes in 2023, they have announced it early on. The question on everyone's lips now will be "Is getting started with Society6 still worth it?" A fair question because of all the big PoD introducing measures to flush low quality accounts, Society6 has taken one of the most stringent measure and it could keep many budding artists at bay. But first, let's dive into what those changes are. society6 is no longer a free platform As of October 19th 2023, every new accounts will have to choose one of the 3 subscription plans Society6 has to offer and they each come with a cap of how many designs you can have live in your shop : - The Free plan which as its name suggest is free but comes with MASSIVE restrictions. On this plan you can only have 10 designs in your shop and you will no longer be able to set your margins, so your earnings will be the default 10% of the retail price. Which could have you earn nothing on some sales as they still have the shipping fees announced last April going on. Society6 explains that this plan is ideal for artists just getting started and testing the waters. Bear in mind that even though this plan is free, you will still need to pay a 5$ PayPal verification fee when you sign up to sell with S6. - The Basic plan will cost you 4.99$ a month and your designs limit will be 100 and you'll be able to set your own margins on all products. With this subscription plan, you also will get access to trend reports emails and webinars. This plan is the one to go for the artists who already have some experience and a bigger portfolio of designs and those who have outgrown the free plan (which will happen quick). From my own experience selling on PoD in general as a genuine artist, I say you should be hitting the 100 designs limit after a year or a year and a half, so it's definitely a plan for the intermediate artist. - The Pro plan will set you off 12.99$ a month and you'll get a max limit of designs set to 10'000 which is a lot and will take years for a quality artist to reach, even with color variations on existing designs. I've been selling with Society6 since 2017 and I currently have about 400 designs in my shop if that gives you an indication of how a portfolio grows. The Pro plan of course offers the flexibility of setting your own margins and gives you access to the trend reports emails just like the Basic plan, but it also offers you access to an analytics tool to see which of your designs are selling the best. Then there is the additional perk of being able to purchase your own products at an additional discount. The Free and Basic plans will only get their artist margin taken off the retail price, but Pro account get an additional 20% off the base price taken off, which means they could order some of their products at a huge discount during a sale. Is getting started with Society6 still worth it? The appeal of Society6 and other PoD has always been that it was an easy way for artists to showcase their work, build a portfolio and make sales along the way. The problem was that over time it also attracted a lot of people who thought it was a way to make quick money and all you had to do was upload images. Many of those were pretend artist uploading stolen art, cliparts, and stock photos that weren't original in any ways. This lead to Society6 having to host an enormous amount of low quality designs, often with a low resolution that could potentially lead to dispute with buyers who would question the print quality. Not to mention that genuine, quality SERIOUS artists would often disappear in the mass of low quality cheap-ass designs that came flooding in. The new subscription price is pretty drastic, and it's clear that Society6 is intent on flushing a lot of dead weight with it which I think is a good thing, but it might impact new designers hard and for some, getting started on Society6 might actually not be worth it at all. The 10 designs limit on the free account is going to be really restrictive and I personally think they could have made it 20 or 30 designs and still been able to flush bogus accounts out. More than that, I agree would have been too much of a design allowance. I remember when I started back in April 2017, I did upload about 10 -15 designs in the first month alone, and I made my first sale at the 2 months mark. So if back then I had to decide to pay 4.99$ a month without a proof of sales I might have given up. That said, I also remember falling for the myth of quantity, believing that the more designs I had early on, the higher my chances of sales were going to be and I uploaded a few quite frankly cringy artworks as a results, which I have since then deleted. Society6's move is clear, they want artists who can pace themselves and upload quality over quantity. My advice to get started with society6 Despite all this, I think Society6 is still worth giving it a chance if you are a new artist, but know that the guidelines and advice of "yore" will no longer work on that platform, especially the idea you need a lot of designs early to be able to sell. - Focus on quality and set an upload pace of 1-2 designs a week so that you can go without having to switch to the Basic plan in the first 2 months. - Work on your marketing skills and building your own audience rather than worry about how many designs you need for that first sale. - Don't make selling on Society6 your only presence online. This is one of the common mistake many newbie make. They think they have to pledge allegiance to just one platform and pigeon hole themselves. Open a shop on each of the big PoD platforms out there like Redbubble, Teepublic, Threadless and Zazzle and see which one works best for you. Society6 is for now the only one which has designs restrictions in each tiers, so take advantage of the fact others don't to test your market and niche. - Treat the subscription plan as a business investment. Society6 is setting the tone about wanting a more curated, quality catalogue of designs and would rather work with artists who are in it for the long run and understand the importance of treating their work as a business and not just a hobby. The future of print on demand The fact that not one but THREE big PoD have been setting stricter terms to sell on their platforms in 2023 is no mystery and that was a change that was sure to be coming and will soon affect other platforms as well. What happened in the recent past that is pushing Redbubble, Society6 and Teepublic to introduce fees and membership tiers levels? The threat of AI generated art! It's as simple as that. AI art started making waves in the second half of 2022 and the threat that it will put artists out of business is a real one. On top of it, several text to image AI generators have been trained using stolen content. Then came the question of copyrights. As in who would be getting the rights to the AI image? The debate about intellectual property rights still rages on, for now a US federal judge ruled out that AI art cannot be copyrighted as the human role in the creation of said image is close to none. For PoD companies it is clear that as a result, AI images should not be sold as unique art on their platforms since the owner of the shop who is supposed to be an artist is NOT the owner of the image. Will that change in the future? No idea, but for now I can't blame print on demand platforms for preventing a flood of cheap AI designs on their platform considering the legal issues it could bring. In fact, Redbubble announced in an email to all their artists in December 2022 that they were working on catching stolen and non original images as they are being uploaded. Open AI who brought us Chat GPT and Dall-E is also working on a tool that can spot an AI generated image and it is said it can or will be able to detect these with 99% accuracy. All in all, it means that PoD platforms will have a shot at going back to what they were meant for in the first place : A platform for REAL artists to build a presence and build a business. If it means having to introduce fees, membership tiers and different earning structures to weed out the frauds, then be it. Being an artist is a real job, and starting a business always come up with a few upfront costs, in the case of Society6, they are still less steep than starting your own shop on your own website and having to worry about stock, inventory and shipping.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you must have heard about Generative AI and the world of potential application it can offer. If you are an artist, you probably read about the threat AI poses to creatives and the questionable ethics of some AI art generators out there too as some companies have been training their AI using copyrighted material. Wether we agree about AI or not, like it or hate it, the reality is that it's here to stay and sticking our head in the sand hoping it will vanish is probably not the best idea there is. Sticking to our old ways instead of adapting to the moving times never bode well in the past, and there is no reason to drag our feet when we could just take it as an opportunity to learn new skills that actually could benefit our creative business. It's easy to panic and let the doomsday prophecies eat us alive, but I don't think there is reason to worry too much about Generative AI, at least not yet. I'm all for learning to harness its power so that certain redundant, boring tasks of running my creative business become less daunting. Generative AI tools aren't going to replace artists At least not any time soon! There is a reason why big PoD companies like Society6, Redbubble and Teepublic have been introducing measures like membership tiers, extra fees and working behind the scene on algorithms and programs that can detect stolen pictures quicker. Right now AI art is in that grey area when it comes to copyrights and the general consensus at the moment is that you can't legally pass them as your own work since you technically didn't create the image/art. Those images are in theory free of copyrights as they don't have a human creator and I personally think it's going to take a while before clear laws are drafted around AI art and intellectual property ownership. In this light it makes perfect sense to see big players in the PoD industry wanting to play it safe and clamping down on people uploading nothing but AI generated art. The message is clear, for now at least, you are better off creating art using conventional mediums and hold the pen, pencil, paintbrush or stylus yourself. Harness the power of generative ai in your marketing strategy Every artist selling on print on demand will tell you that the most daunting and annoying task is marketing and building their brand. The process of creating content for Instagram or you portfolio in a way that stays cohesive with your brand identity can be time consuming. And often newbies tend to take the shortcut of posting their product pictures straight from their shop only to realise that half the Redbubble / Society6 shop owner are doing the same thing and lo and behold, it ends up translating into hashtags feeds full of boring products on grey background that never really stand up in the crowd. Until now, there was only a few solutions to that conundrum : Remove the background on those pictures and create a composite image using stock photos Buying some of your products and taking your own pictures (which I think you should still do) Using Photoshop mockup files to create your own mockups (but everyone is using the same free ones...) I still stand firm on the fact that your Instagram feeds should have a mix of everything including work in process and stand alone (watermarked) art images, but thanks to generative AI, I think creating composite from scratch using stock photos can safely go away. A few weeks ago Adobe finally made the Generative fill tools that were previously available only in a beta version of Photoshop available to the general public in their latest version of Photoshop CC. This means that with a little practice, you can remove the background off your PoD pictures like I have done for every single pictures on this blog post and generate a new background with the help of prompts. For example, the pink retro flower water bottle from Society6 in the picture above had a gray background that I removed and then using the generative fill tool, I wrote "mint and pink retro outdoor cafe" and waited for AI to generate 3 possible choices. If you don't like any of the options generated, you simply click on "Generate" again to get more options until you get one you like. I would say that about 95% of the time it comes with solid usable images, and then there are a few goofy ones thrown in the mix where the AI clearly struggled with things like proportions, shapes and perspective like in this picture : Watch it closely and you will see where AI is still no match for the human touch. If you only glimpse at it you would think the image is fine and it would probably just do well as social media content. BUT the generative AI did struggle with coming up with something matching the prompt here. On the left of the bottle, the pink chair is clearly behind the mosaic surface the bottle sits on, suggesting said bottle is indeed sitting on a table. Now, look on the right, and notice it struggled keeping with the idea of the mosaic surface being a table. One of the two pink chairs have two legs standing ON the mosaic surface suggesting that the surface is on the ground. AI also had issues figuring out what the cap of my bottle was, the original from Society6 has a handle and with this particular product, AI struggled constantly with what to do about it. In the photo above it simply turned the cap into a planted full of flowers, probably because it wasn't quite sure if the cap was to be in the foreground or background. It also changed the shape of the whole bottle a bit. But yeah, in general, you are going to get some pretty decent results from the Photoshop generative fill tools and that is going to make creating content for your social media marketing a whole lot easier and a whole lot more personalised, the key being in giving the AI tool the right prompt and be very detailed with what you want it to generate. Generative AI tools have other good applications for your creative business too A few weeks ago I started taking a Skillshare class about using chat GPT to help you come with a marketing strategy for your business. I am yet to finish that class, so can't really comment on it, but this is just one other way to streamline certain aspect of running a business where generative AI can come in handy. I also received a newsletter from another artist I follow who played around with Dall-E to help him come up with designs ideas. The big idea was to see how the AI art generator could turn a concept around and then use those generated images as reference pictures idea to create his own unique work from scratch. I think every artists, myself included can raise their hand when asked if they ever hit a creative block and struggled to find a usable idea to work with. This is possibly a way were relying on Generative AI can help a lot, you know, by just giving you that tiny nudge of an idea to get you going again. All in all, I think Generative AI is a tool, and in the right hand it can do great things. In a way it's like what the electric screwdriver is to the regular screwdriver. It makes certain tasks faster but it doesn't do the work on its own and there is still going to be a couple of idiots who are going to poke their eyes out with it, but you can hardly blame the tool for being dangerous. On the ethical ground, I know Photoshop trained their AI with images that already belonged to them so nothing the AI is using to create the prompt comes from a deliberately stolen source like it is the case with some of the free AI art generators out there.