Things in grids

Two contests to catch up on! First, "girl power." Out of all the entries, my favorite was this Mary Blair-ish fantasy that came in sixth. I also liked this Athena fabric. In terms of designs that are more usable for crafts or home dec, I liked this floral and these girl faces that came in ninth.

For my part, I made girls holding potato clocks, welding irons, and math books. Easter egg - find the one who looks like Chihiro from Spirited Away!



The background is the smartphone check I created for the baby hats design. This design is not all that successful - not very dynamic, and the details are hard to see. It came in 93 out of 224 with 73 votes, which was actually better than I expected.

Speaking of Easter eggs, the next contest was for painted eggs due to the proximity to Easter. This entry was due right in the middle of us moving, so I had very little time to work on it. I needed an idea that could come together very fast. It dawned on me that the "street art" I had made was mostly based on famous paintings - so I could just put those on the eggs!

I replaced the white backgrounds with a nice cream, and blocked out the egg shapes with a speckled pattern in robins' eggs colors. These colors (though I lightened up the cream from this initial idea):


Color by COLOURlovers

The speckles were formed from the same repeating pattern as the ones I used on the pomegranate cookies. Then it was just a matter of placing each of the designs, extending a few of them to more gracefully meet the edge of the egg shape, and adding color to a few that were stark black and white.



Of course, after I submitted I remembered that the contest was actually for a smaller print, with an 8" square preview instead of a fat quarter. So I had to reduce the scale and re-upload. (I left the larger scale up here.) Then I found that there was a flaw in my speckle background repeat and had to futz with that a bit. But after all that, I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I thought this was a great idea for the original street signs, but I didn't manage to get it in an appealing design. This is much more appealing. I think eggs are an inherently appealing shape, since they correspond nicely to the golden ration in a couple ways, plus I really feel like the background colors soften it and pull everything together. This came in 69 out of 272 with 127 votes.

There were a ton of really good fabrics in this one. It just turned out to be one of those contests with lots of strong entries. This one best captured how I remember dyed eggs turning out at home. This was my favorite of the dip-dying type (and here's the second-favorite), and this for pysanky. I also really liked the gems, cute bunnies, and lush floral.

A final Easter egg for you - my "street art" design had representations of thirteen different works, but there are only twelve on the eggs. Which one is missing? (Well, that's not really an Easter egg, more an exercise for the reader.)