30 Days to a Collection

At first I felt afraid to really lose momentum when I took, you know, a step away. But then I realized that stepping away actually really helps. Give me some time to just think about the collection and where I want it to go. And as they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder. So I dove in a few days ago back to pattern creation, full of excitement, and I'm now working solely in Adobe Illustrator on the desktop. I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest, biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer.

Fast forward to today.

I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success.

I'm here to help you spend your

life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's

lives, gives you all of the freedom

you want, and is wildly profitable.

Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

This past summer, I spent much of the time designing a new fabric collection. Now, it's been a little while since I've done this, it's been about a year, and I have been dying to get back into what I love doing most. And so I thought it would be a really, a really fun time to also journal for my audience about the process and what I do every day. Now this is interesting because when I design a new fabric collection, I'm not actually allowed to share any of the actual images or any of the actual design. And so my focus was simply to share the process. What was it that I was actually doing every day and then some behind the scenes of maybe some inspirational photos and things like that. But I actually love that I don't share show any of the real time designs because that's really not the point of the journaling. It's more about inspiring your process and giving you a sneak peek as to what it looks like and what it takes to design a collection. Now, for me, this is, I think, my 15th collection and when I work on one, I typically do about 10 to 12 prints and I color them in two different ways and so each colorway will be cohesive and different than the other one. And so I shared these moments in real time, one by one with you over the summer. But for today's episode, I thought it might be fun to just have me read them to you to give you a fuller picture of what creating this collection was like. And so I'm recording this in October of 2023, and you may not actually see this collection come to market until spring or summer of 2024. I'm not sure even what the timeline is yet. So let' again with day number one. Even though I've officially starting the collection on this day, I've been thinking about it and the story that I want to tell for months. I call this the incubation period, where an idea really simmers and I kind of get to wrap my arms around it before I even begin. I've also been gathering inspiration for the collection ahead of this day by taking lots and lots of photos. And so by this point, I have about 200 photos that I'll be referencing as I begin to sketch. But before I begin to sketch, I have to do what I call a vision storming session. So with this, I sit down, away from all technology, and I just begin to heartstorm. Just me and a big sheet of paper. And I begin with the story that I want to tell with this collection and why I'm telling it. So next, I dream up a big list of about 25 words that support this story. And then this is kind of fun and new. I took that list of 25 words and my story to chat GPT and I asked it to give me 25 more words. And she nailed it. So these words will serve as a reference and a foundation for me as I come back to specifically when I'm struggling. I know that there's going to be a messy middle. And laying the foundation now with all of this will really help me when it comes to remembering the overall foundation and direction of the collection. Finally, I do what I call a quick jot. So I draw 12 squares and create thumbnails of my ideas for patterns. This is so helpful to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper. And it also really validates that you do have enough ideas to start, which really helps take the pressure off from experience. I know that some of these ideas will work out and some of them won't. And for whatever reason, I just won't be able to get what's in my head to really work how I want it to on paper. And that's okay, because I know that through the creation process, I'll also have new ideas that I could have never imagined. It's. It's really a beautiful thing. So at this point, it's time to start sketching, and this day took about an hour and 32 minutes. Day number two. I've started sketching, and I think there's nothing quite as terrifying as staring at a blank piece of paper. No matter how long I've done it, it is still terrifying. But I've trained myself to just dive in and begin making marks. So it always takes really several pages before I feel like I've arrived at making marks that I actually like. But on this day, I marked up 12 pages with pencil sketches and some gouache paint. For every piece of reference material, I try to draw it as many times as I can so that I end up with more work to work with than I even need. I'll draw it with pencil and sketch it from different angles, and then I'll try to paint the shape with watercolor or gouache or something like that, just so that I have a lot to go with. Creating art is supposed to be slow. So slow I go time logged 3 hours and 45 minutes. Day number three. Each collection takes on its own personality, and I'm really still getting to know this one. Once I get acquainted with it, I'll carry it through as faithfully as I can. But it's really just taking inventory and asking myself what's working and what's feeling difficult, then letting the difficult go. Sometimes sketching flows, and other times, painting, you know, feels better. Sometimes a very textured brush in Procreate is just right for something I'm drawing, and then other times, a smooth one fits. So I'm testing all of it out to just see what is right for this collection's personality. I spent a lot of time on the iPad on this day, working from a set of photos that I took during the inspiration phase. And I'm working in layers so that I can import them one at a time and vectorize them. But I won't move on to that step until I'm entirely done with the sketching phase. And, oh, by the way, I'm having so much Fun Time logged 4 hours and 25 minutes. Day number 4 and 5. I have been on the search for this collection's personality, and today I started in Procreate with a new set of brushes and worked through some highly textured outlines, but ended up landing on a smoother one that really feels like it fits perfectly. That makes me want to go back and rework the 30 motifs that I've already done, but I'm going to try to avoid that for now, we'll see what happens when I get things into Illustrator now. I'm working more on the iPad now, and I love it for the flexibility. I can do it on the sofa or in the car. And side note, thanks to recently discovering a little medicine called Bonine, I can actually work in the car without getting super nauseous. Okay, so I'm still not convinced that I'm doing the right things with this collection. I'm really worried that my vision won't come through, that my motif ideas aren't strong enough, and that I might be wasting too much time trying to figure it all out. But then again, I've thought this every time I've started a new collection, and I know that I must trust the process. Time logged 4 hours and 15 minutes. Day number 6 and 7 motifs are really humming along now. I'm still working on paper or the iPad, depending on the motif, and just really in general development of the different illustrations, but I'll likely move into the next phase by early next week. The last two days were heavily spent on Zoom, 16 hours in total, as I've been hosting the summer Virtual Intensive for my mastermind, the Mark Makers. But when I wasn't presenting, I pulled out my iPad and just did some mindless outlining. And so it was nice to have work that could be done. While I was also listening and learning. I also started playing with a color palette, and this will surely change approximately 1 million times, but it's nice to work in color at the stage that feels fresh and fun. This particular palette is very springy. Time logged 9 hours and 32 minutes. Day number 8 through 10 I took a pause from sketching to look up some illustration skills that I had been wanting, wanting to brush up on. Nothing too formal, just like general googling and some youtubing. I find that refining my techniques can really breathe life into the process and inspiration and really boost my confidence. I then promptly returned to drawing and finally felt like things really began to click. My marks on paper started to more closely resemble what it is that I had in my mind, which was a relief. And I'm still working on paper and in the iPad and general motif development. But this is where I'll spend the majority of my time, because the foundation is truly everything. The more work I put in here, the easier the rest of the process will be. I'm going slow and I'm trying to be really intentional with every mark that I make. So a couple of updates. I now have 37 procreate documents and I have 42 paper sketches and paintings and I have logged another nine hours and 47 minutes. Day 11 through 13 I've finished sketching, drawing and painting and I'll be ready to scan in a big old stack of beauties into the computer very soon. This initial development stage of motifs takes the longest for me, but having a strong foundation is everything. It will make it all so much easier from here on out and so much fun. These beginning concepts also take the most mental bandwidth. I've really focused on whether or not I'm capturing the vision and telling the story like I want. Oftentimes, I'll take one motif concept and draw it three or four different ways, maybe very sketchy, then painterly, and then finally maybe very realistic. It's so important to draw the same object from multiple perspectives. That's so when I get to pattern development, it doesn't look like I've just got one good motif that I stamp all over the pattern. Having the same concept represented from different angles makes the pattern flow and really becomes more of a story. I can't wait to get all of this work scanned in and transferred into vectors so I can begin the gorgeous work of pattern development. Time logged 14 hours and 35 minutes. So total time and initial drawing phase is 49 hours and 55 minutes.

Are you tired of spending hours crafting the perfect email only to be met with crickets in your inbox? Or worse, having your emails end up in your subscribers spam folders? I know that feeling, which is why I switched to ConvertKit as my email service provider many years ago. ConvertKit is the email marketing platform built by creators for creators. With ConvertKit you can easily create and send beautiful personalized emails that your subscribers are not only going to open, but also love. They have a drag and drop email editor that makes it easy to design emails that look and feel professional without any coding. Plus, their powerful automation tools make it easy to send the right message to the right person at the right time. But that's really not all. ConvertKit's tagging and segmenting tools make it so easy to send targeted messages to your subscribers based on their interests and behaviors. So for example, you can imagine that on my email list I have people who are interested in buying my fabric to use in their projects, and then also people who want to learn how to design their own fabric. And so through ConvertKit's tagging system, I can communicate to those two different groups of people so that I don't ever have to worry if I'm bugging the other group with something that they're not interested in. You can also use ConvertKit to actually build out a page and a form so that you can easily grow your email list and turn subscribers into customers. So you know that we always want you to be growing your email list and I can tell you that if you dive into ConvertKit, you can start adding subscribers to your email list within a day of focused effort. It's not that difficult. It's super easy to set up, build a landing page, put an opt in and then start start getting people on your list. So if you are ready to take your email marketing to the next level, I want you to head on over to bonniecristine.com forward/resources and sign up for a free trial on ConvertKit today.

You can go ahead and dive in

and get familiar with the program. Their support is amazing and see what you think. This is truly an email service provider who can grow with you from one subscriber to 500,000. So again, head on over to bonniecristine.com resources and check out ConvertKit today.

Day 14 and 15 I'm happy to report that everything is officially transferred into the computer. A big part of staying inspired is also staying organized. So I use Dropbox for everything and it's always fun to begin a new collection folder. It begins with a working title that's not finalized yet and three folders, one for paintings and sketches, one for found and foraged items, and then another one for anything that I've scanned in from a photograph. And then actually there's four another one for all of my iPad Pro files, usually from Procreate. So I currently have 32 scans in my Painting and Sketches folder, 106 scans in my Foraged and Found folder, and 352 scans or actually PNG format from Procreate. So let me explain these numbers a little bit. Painting and sketches are the lowest because there's often 10 or 20 plus motifs on any given single page. So this includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. Still, at this point, foraged and found items are things that I've collected and I've either scanned or photographed. And there's usually just one motif on a single scan or photograph. And then procreate files are so many because this includes all the layers. I mean it is 352 separate images that I have to image trace, but a single motif can sometimes include, you know, five or even 10 layers. So I'll be using Image Trace in Adobe Illustrator to convert these 490some images into vectors over the next week. It's a slow but oddly satisfying process. Now, here's a Procreate tip. Image Trace works off of contrast, so the more contrast, the better. So even if I design in color, I always transfer each layer to black before I export it. So that image trace has the most to work from. And then I can just undo it in Procreate so that my Procreate files are not all black. So time logged is 4 hours and 32 minutes of scanning. So total time so far is 54 hours and 27 minutes.

Minutes.

Day 16 to 18. I'm officially in Vectorland. Let the magic begin. This marks a real turning point in the collection creation phase. I'm moving from having ideas to taking those ideas and really turning them into a vision. For this phase, I keep three illustrator boards, one for painting and sketches. There's 446 elements on this page. Forged and found, 113 motifs. And iPad. And procreate is now down to 103 motifs because of all the layers. Now they're all combined and grouped. That's a lot of illustrations and likely more than I actually need. But there's nothing worse than having to go back to the drawing board. Literally, I'd rather have plenty to choose from. So I use Image Trace to turn every scan, photograph, and procreate layer into vectors. Then I group each motif and organize them on a board. And I'll be pulling from these three documents as I begin building patterns. So let's see if I can work out what I have in my mind and bring it all to Life. Time logged 15 hours and 17 minutes. Total time so far, 69 hours and 44 minutes. Day 19 to 21. I took some time away from the collection. Actually. I needed to focus on some stuff with my team and some very exciting business things that are coming up. And then I took my daughter on a long girls weekend. So I'm really vlogging these days as days working. So there's about 31 days, I think, in total. And for the record, that was really spaced out around 60 days. So it took me about 60 days, 32 days of actually working on the collection. So that's just a side note. At first, I felt afraid to really lose momentum when I took, you know, a step away. But then I realized that stepping away actually really helps give me some time to just. Just think about the collection and where I want it to go. And as they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder. So I dove in a few days ago back to pattern creation. Full of excitement, and I'm now working solely in Adobe Illustrator on the desktop. I always start with the simplest idea that I have, and I often want to start with a complicated hero print. But I've learned over time that starting with a simpler idea helps me warm up. It also builds confidence before heading into the more important, important pieces. So I've created six patterns so far. My goal is 12, and I'm currently really not worried about color, other than making sure everything is colored in the way that I want it to be. Later, for instance, I might make sure that all of the leaves in a set of motifs are in the same color. It doesn't matter what color, as long as it's the same color. That way it's easy for me to recolor them later on. So I'll finish all the pattern work before I start finalizing color choices. Time logged 7 hours and 23 minutes Total time 77 hours and 12 minutes Days 22 through 25 as I dove deep into the most crucial part of designing this collection, I really let much of my tasks fall to the wayside as I give 100% of my focus to bring my vision to life. I've completed all pattern work and I'm so very pleased with them. I had three ideas come to life by happy accident, So I have 15 patterns in all. This, of course, is too many. I'll have to kill a few of my darlings, but I'll save them for using elsewhere or later. So for now, I'm soaking in a feeling of accomplishment that the pattern work is finalized. I'm still in a single colorway, and I'll have two eventually, and even this one is not quite cohesive. So the next phase will be all about finalizing the work. I'll explain more about that once I've done it, and then color, color, color. Time logged 9 hours and 32 minutes. Time so far is 86 hours and 73 minutes. Day 25 through 27 I've let this collection rest for a few days and have been really surprised at how helpful it's been to just let things simmer. Even if I'm not actively working on the collection, you can bet that I'm thinking about it. In fact, I dream about patterns and colors nearly every night. It's all consuming and I love it. Before I move into finalizing color and adding a secondary colorway, I want to re enter every single pattern and ensure that it's been built properly, that it flows pleasingly, and that each motif is grouped and colored in the way that I want it to be colored. Like I said last time, for instance, all stems of a flower collection are the same color, and all the petals are of the same color as well. So I'm doing this now as a favor to myself, so that when I get to the coloring and recoloring phase for the second colorway, it flows much more easily. In other words, if I fix it now, I only have to do it once. So, as part of this phase, I study the patterns. I zoom way in, like, super duper way in, and then I zoom way out. And I look for inconsistencies. I look for rivers in the patterns, and anything that kind of nags at the eye. I turn them upside down and sideways, and I think about someone cutting pieces of it for a quilt and making sure that they can still work their magic. Time logged, 4 hours and 18 minutes. Total time so far, 91 hours and 3 minutes. Now that the patterns are flowing just the way I like them, it's time to curate the color palettes. I've been working in one colorway this entire time, but I've been thinking and dreaming about the second one. So first things first is that I have to finalize the first one naturally as I check the patterns together. All 15 have slight variances in colors. For instance, I may have five of nearly the exact same color. So first order of business is to eliminate and streamline these. So I take all five and work them into my favorite favorite one. Visually, you literally can't even tell a difference. They were that close. So if you work in Illustrator organically, things like this just happen as you tweak things on the fly, and you've got to kind of come back and. And wrangle it. So most patterns have only two to four colors in them, while four of them have about 10 to 18. The entire collection together consists of 18 colors in total. Once I have this first colorway buttoned up, it's time to crack the second one. I start by pulling in images and building out the potential set of colors, working off of those photographs that I pulled in, focusing on having similar amounts of contrast to the first colorway so that recoloring each pattern is easier. I brought just a few of the most dominant colors from colorway number one over to the second colorway to be complementary colors. I want them to be related, but I want them to look like distant cousins, not twins. I'm also trying to sneak in at least one element of surprise in every colorway. This is very bonnie, but I didn't See that coming, and I'm having a lot of fun doing that. So. Time logged 8 hours and 52 minutes. Total time so far 98 hours and 54 minutes. Day 31 to 33 the story has come to life. My vision has come together and I'm basking in the feeling of I did it. All of the patterns and colors are complete, and so now it's time to set the scale of each pattern and submit this collection. My process is this. I do my best to scale each pattern to my liking. Then I look at them all together to ensure that as a collection, there's cohesion and enough variance. I want there to be room to breathe and a place for the to rest. I want some patterns to feel dense and others to feel light. Once I'm pretty sure I've nailed it, I take each pattern and save it on its very own Illustrator document. So up until now, I've been working in a single doc with about 15 squares in it. So I'll fill an 8 and a half by 11 inch artboard with the pattern and save it and then move on to the next one. Then once I'm done, I'll open the entire collection in my finder with which is, you know, the folder on my Mac, and increase the thumbnail size and then sit back and look at them all together. I always go in and make changes to the scale after that because I'm seeing things in a different way. So then, even though I really think I've nailed it now, I'll print them out on paper and I'll look at them one by one. I'll tape them to the wall, put them on a pillow, lay them out on the floor. And after this step, I yet again have to go in and tweak the scale. This time I changed it on five more patterns. Now it's time to submit and I'll sit back and wait for feedback and critiques from my art director. This is honestly my favorite part. Time logged 6 hours and 36 minutes. Total time so far, 106 hours and 50 minutes. My friends, I hope you enjoyed this little audio diary of the process behind creating this collection. I'm really excited for you to see it as we release it over the next few months or seasons. And though I can't share the visuals until the collection really comes to reality, it's been such a joy to document the process with you. Along the way, I hope it inspires you to set aside some time to create the beauty that you want to see come in the world too. Remember, there's room for you.