I sometimes wonder if Spoonflower thinks they do not have enough floral designs on their site, as so many of the challenge prompts point towards creating yet more florals. The last challenge “Craft Maximalism” resulted in a good 70% of the entries being floral. I’d love a challenge where no florals are allowed!
This is what I came up with
I’d love a vote if you can bear to trawl though another glut of florals!
I also rustled up a little collection.
The first Spoonflower challenge of 2026 and the prompt is quite confusing- “energetic prints that appear to come from an artist’s sketchbook” . I have a feeling this challenge is going to be inundated with florals
I took a look through my sketch books and was inspired by what I saw to create a free flowing doodle type abstract design
I also created the design in a few different colorways.
I absolutely adore designing just using blue and white, so a delft tile challenge was right up my street.
When Spoonflower announce new design challenges I generally design and enter pretty promptly and with the Vintage Floral one, I’m glad I did. The timeline for this challenge threw everyone a curve ball with the entries closing a week earlier than usual and voting opening while the previous challenge is still running. Two challenges to vote for at once, that is a new one for me.
Floral challenges tend to attract so many designs with 20+ pages to wade through. Flower blindness ensues. But with the weird timeline this week there are only 13 pages!
I was inspired by the chintz type designs used to cover sofas in little English cottages.
It seems that the prompts for the spoonflower challenges are being written by AI, the images that accompany the prompts are certainly AI and they have been called on that. This is the challenge description
Retro Nouveau
“This mashup mixes the organic motifs and ornate shapes of Art Deco with the bold colors and geometric patterns of a retro vibe.”
Art deco and Art Nouveau are not even that same styles, so the whole thing is very confusing.
Even more confusing is what to design.
I ended up going with a stain glass art nouveau peacock and I actually had a lot of fun with circles in this design, can you see them?
Thrift Store treasures, what to pick as these shops sell basically everything! I decided upon fun kid themed musical instruments. Things to bash, shake and generally make a noise! With a bright color palette this would be perfect in a young child’s bedroom or decor in a school music room.
I have created quite a few stone and pebble designs over the years and have a whole collection of them. So to come up with something new and fresh is an extra challenge.
I played around with two concepts, rock flow and pebbles and have ultimately entered my pebble design. It was inspired by pebble designs I have created on the beach because I am incapable of sitting still when I go!
Here is the rock flow design I created which I absolutely love but I think the challenge will be chocked full of swirly type designs so I opted to go the pebble route
The calendar Tea Towel challenge can be counted on every year and this week is it’s time! I update all my calendars every year. Here is the entire 2026 collection
This was an interesting challenge to design for. I imagined myself lying in a garden meadow looking up to the stars! With all the light pollution we have in the Chicago area it never really gets very dark!
The palette of Jewel Tones is really up for interpretation so I think this challenge will be all over the place! I went for a patchwork sort of look which would really stunning made into overalls, or dungarees as us Brits call them!
