Sketches, Doodles, & Cetera

In my quest to "find my style," I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I do and don't like in my drawings. One thing I've discovered I like a lot is the sketchy graphite linework in my initial thumbnail sketches, so I'm trying to find ways to bring that into my finished work.

I recently discovered an easier way to bring that into digital work, so I put together a tutorial to share it with you.

A few weeks ago, I went out apple picking with my husband and our dog. We went to the Hood River Fruit Loop, and it was a most idyllic day, with beautiful blue skies (a rarity in October in Oregon). I was inspired to make a new repeating pattern, which I added to the Spoonflower shop, and I wanted to share it here as a desktop background as well. You can grab the file at the bottom of this post. (I threw a pear, and Roofus thought it was a tennis ball. When he ran to catch it, he was...

I've been working on an embroidery of a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz. I knew I wanted to play with some fun stitches, and his fur and the embroidery on his outfit seemed like a great way to experiment with some new techniques.I learned a new stitch for this project called the Hungarian braided chain stitch, and I thought I'd share it with you as a tutorial. It creates a really lovely textured, raised line that seemed perfect to decorate the monkey's little cap. Start with a small straight stitch at the beginning of your design line.Bring your needle up...