Top ten at Spoonflower!

http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/928483

I got in the top ten! Talking Spoonflower again.. The contest theme was "Cityscapes", and the entries were fantastic. This theme was of course right up my alley - featuring lots of houses! I love architecture (that's what i went to college for, for you who don't know me so well), and I love designs with houses.
I had the hardest time deciding what city to feature in my design, but knew I HAD to enter with something.. I debated Portland, Vancouver, Minneapolis and even any well-known big city. In the end, I decided I love Stockholm the best. Its "Old Town" would work for great designs, with awesome colors. The design started out as sketches..

The sketches were scanned, straightened a bit, imported to Inkscape & traced to become vector paths. In Inkscape, there is a "Trace bitmap" command that I use for almost every design. Unless I start designing in the program itself. When you trace a bitmap, you generate a vector path from your drawings. This makes the design endlessly easier to change -  in size, color, detail etc. I love this in Inkscape.

After adding some color in Inkscape (used the "fill" command for this one. Wanted it simple), making a good repeat, and exporting it to a good file format, I uploaded it to Spoonflower. This is the end result of my design - how it shows in SF!

I am pumped so many of you voted for my design, delighted to get in the top ten, happy to see the colors printed awesome, and relieved all the work wasn't for nothing! (I started this design 3 hours before the deadline last Tuesday! Talk about stress work..)

The Old Town in Stockholm is seriously worth visiting - for all you deprived fellows who have yet to experience this cozy cobblestoned area of Sweden's capital. I lived close to Stockholm for a few years of my life, and my favorite thing would be to go there (by commuter train, of course. Never needed a license there!), visit a nice coffee place to get my latte & bagel, then head over to the book store to buy a few post cards & nice pens. Then I'd walk along the cobblestone streets to the waterfront, sit down & enjoy my lunch & write cards to friends. I LOVED this city. I walked so many miles around the town. If it wasn't just to shop or for personal enjoyment, it would be to guide American friends around town. They would always wonder how there could be 5 (or was it even 6?) H&Ms within a mile of each other. And they would wonder why people didn't ever say "sorry" or "excuse me". And why do Swedes do anything they can to avoid eye contact?
Haha... the memories..

This post went from Spoonflower to houses to design process to Swedish customs! I have the gift of gab...

Here is the awesome scene that inspired my design.
(Image from http://www.mota.ru/en/wallpapers/view/id/15589)

This week's contest (voting starting today) is themed "Outdated Technology". I have an entry with old payphones (http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/940774).

Click here to go to Spoonflower's contest page.

GOOD LUCK everyone who enters the awesome Spoonflower contests!!