It seems the preppy look never goes out of style but the look and feel of it has definitely morphed a bit over the years. Preppy is the prompt for this week’s Spoonflower challenge and went full on coastal preppy with my entry with palm trees, lush tropical foliage and of course yachts what is more preppy than a yacht!

Hide and seek, such a fun prompt for this week’s Spoonflower challenge.

I went for a totally kid orientated approach and created a maze for some funky little robots and hid numbers along the way. As a kid , I would have loved to have this on my bedroom wall and lie in bed solving the maze and finding the numbers! It would also make a great print for table placemats.

Spoonflower recently started offering two new metallic substrates for their wallpaper, so it is no surprise that we now have a challenge specifically gears to one of those. First up is the gold version, I am sure a silver challenge is in the works too.

So the prompt for the challenge is Vintage Glamour and with that in mind I was instantly transported back to the 1920’s and the fashions it conjured up

Art Deco Sepia Glamour

So part of the challenge her is to design to make the most of the metallic effect.

Here is my design

and this is what it will look like printed on metallic gold stock paper

I created a whole collection around lobsters and tidepool friends last year, so when the theme of this week’s Spoonflower challenge was announced, I was not particularly thrilled. It was a subject I had already explored and here I was trying to approach it from a different angle again. And boy did I come up with some completely different concepts which then left me with the tricky decision on which to enter.

My first go came up with these delft inspired crabs… my love of blue and white lies deep.

It was a design concept I love but as I started seeing other designer share their take, I thought my design would not stand out enough.

So then I went the Bauhaus approach

but wasn’t totally in love with that but I really liked some of the geometry of the shapes, so was spurred on to explore that a little further.

After fiddling around with just basic circles, Happy Round Crabs popped out!

and it is this design I finally decided to go with but it was really down to the last minute whether to switch it out with one of my delft designs. Too lates to change my mind now, the deadline has just past.

I went back to basics with oil paints and a big old fat palette knife for this week’s Spoonflower challenge – Tonal Texture Wallpaper. I knew what I wanted and there was no way to digitally create the effect I was going for so time to break out the paints!

Daubs of Oil Paint

It makes stunning wallpaper, especially in small areas!