As of the beginning of March I am an entrepreneur – I quit my job as an application engineer and ventured out on this adventure to become a self employed business woman working as a surface designer. I also freelance as a CAD specialist teaching the 3D drafting program Solid Edge, so I have not totally detached all connection to my former career. 😉

So – a bit more than 2 month have gone by, and it has been fun testing my new surface designer wings, but now I feel it’s time to set a course for where these wings should take me.

During the weekend, I pondered about what I would like to happen with my new business as a surface designer. It can be rather overwhelming with all inspiration I get from reading about other successful designers on the internet, and I really don’t want to get caught up in trap of comparing myself with others; especially those who have already spent years of hard work and determination to be successful. Instead i want to think about where I want my business and career to be 5 years from now and how I can get there and enjoy the journey along the way.

I have watch my fair share of Pokemon cartoons when I was a kid, and I realized that the concept of evolving from a low level pokemon to a high level fully evolved one can maybe applied to my new career.

Today I am like a Charmander, but I know that with enough training, practice and life experience I can evolve into a the equivalent of a charmeleon and eventually the equivalent of a
Charizard and who knows maybe even mega Charizard!

So my journey of training and dedicated practice starts today. I am plotting out my path so I won’t be side-tracked and lost along the way.

First evolution goal is to become my equivalent of Charmeleon – earning some money from working with surface design and illustration while at the same time enjoying the process and having fun.

In my next post i will write about what goals I have set myself to eventually achieve this evolution and what steps I take to reach those goals.

I started this blog to write about my creations, be it sewing, cooking, baking etc. and now I have discovered a new and exciting thing to be creative with:

Fabric designs!

I have been sewing quite a bit lately, even though I don’t blog about it. Recently I was on the hunt for a fabric with crabs on it for my crab-loving toddler, but I didn’t find any so I wondered if I could make a design myself, and after some googling I had stumbled into the wonderful world of pattern making!

I will share with you some links to some of the resources and tutorials that I have found to be useful at the end of this blog post, but first I’ll show you some photos of the first fabrics with my very own designs and the t-shirt that I have sewn with two of the designs. 🙂

And here’s a close-up. 🙂

I have drawn the artwork on my Samsung tablet using some art apps . These are the three apps that I’ve been using so far. The one that says Design is actually called Infinite Design and is quite good. The full version cost a reasonable on time amount.

And here’s a look at the drawings that I made for the fabric design:

After drawing the pictures for my design, I used either the open office programs GIMP or  Inkscape to clean up the edges and make the background invisible.

For creating the actual repeating pattern design, I have two methods that are free. One is the program Patternshop and the other is using Inkscape. I will link to tutorials for both methods below. For those who are willing to pay for an Adobe Illustrator subscription, I will also link to a tutorial for how to make repeat patterns with that.

When my repeat pattern is done, I upload it to spoonflower.com where I am slowly building up a nice collection of designs that can be printed on a wide selection of fabrics. I plan to make my favorite designs available for sale in case others would like to buy them too. If you want to see public collections on spoonflower you click here:

Made by Nefermiw

Yesterday I received the fabrics that I bought with my first attempt at designing fabrics. I had also ordered some colour on fabric samples. Spoonflower also gives you the option to order several designs on a yard of fabric.

The last picture is of a yard of organic cotton knit with a kelp design – I am going to make a dress from for myself. 🙂

 

As promised I will link to some of the video tutorials that I have found to be useful:

How to make repeat patterns in Adobe Illustrator

How to make repeat patterns with Patternshop program

How to make repeat patterns with Inkscape

 

 

I bought some nice jersey and am going to sew a copy of an old skirt from it. 

It has been almost five years since I last used my sewing machine. I am now on maternity leave again and with my baby turning 9 Montestore old, I have dusted offentlige the sewing machine and begun creating again. 

I made the pattern myself, but based it off som bought trousers that I know fotted my boy well.

Here are some more pictures…

 

Pie:
Pie dough
Red tomato pesto
Stewed spinach
Eggs
Grated cheese
Salt and pepper

Dressing :
Creme fraiche
Avocado
Garlic
Salt and pepper

Salad :
Lettuce
Carrots
Red bell pepper
Cucumber
Cherry tomatoes

I had a huge head of Cauliflower, so I wanted to make a gratin and decided to try this one:
http://www.arla.dk/opskrifter/blomkalsgratin/

It is in Danish, but I can give you a rough idea of what to do. (I don’t eat meat, so I left out the smoked ham and used a bit more Cauliflower instead).

500 g Cauliflower
Water for cooking the cauliflower
Salt

90 g flour
300 ml milk
10 g butter
4 egg yolks
1 tsp salt
Pepper
4 egg whites

Butter and bread crumbs for the tray

……………

Set the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
Grease a tray with butter and line it with bread crumbs.

Divide the Cauliflower into pieces and cook in lightly salted water for 4 min.
Drain water.

Melt butter with milk in casserole and stir in flour while boiling.
Set aside to cool a bit.
Stir in egg yolkes one at a time.
Add salt and pepper.

Whip the egg whites stiff.

Add half of the whipped egg whites to the filling together with the drained Cauliflower and stir.

Fold in the rest of the whipped egg whites.

Spread filling evenly in the tray/form and place in oven to cook for approximately 1 hour.

……
Some photos 🙂

… and I haven’t blogged anything for a veeeery long time. My excuse is that life has kept me busy and that I haven’t had much time to do anything creative and interesting enough to blog about. But now Christmas is creeping up on us by slowly showing its “face” at the stores, even though it’s only early October, and his makes be think of all the Christmas related creative stuff I can do, because Christmas is the best season for being creative – you can bake, sew and do paper crafts which are all things I love to do.

To get me even more inspired I have been looking a bit around Pinterest and Oh My! the inspiration is enough to make my head explode with ideas.

But since Christmas is still a 2 months away I will start being creative with my favourite season The Fall. I just love the way everything around you changes colour and you can feel the weather changing from day to day.

I will begin by seing if I can find some of my old fall inspired decorations and then se I  can make some new ones too. 🙂