What I brought home from Amsterdam

DSC06578_Cathrin Gressieker _Amsterdam* latest Dutch issue of flow magazine

* Indian paper

* a new bell for my bike

* a postcard and papers from the excellent Matisse exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum (the coloured paper comes from the children’s corner where they could cut and be their own little Matisses)

* more crafts paper from made by me – voted best craft shop of the Netherlands in 2014

* inspirational postcards from the Art Unlimited Store

* a canvas from at a painting workshop at the Van Gogh Museum  (which I took together with my older daughter, it was free and you could choose from different Van Gogh still life motifs, totally great museum service)

PS: I found some more!

Cathrin Gressieker_DSC06597

* “the only real colouring book for grown-ups” – lots of inspiration for patterns and an uni-ball pin pen 0,2

Pattern 13/52

Stoff’n is a German company similar to Spoonflower – I did my first printed pattern design with them and was really happy with the quality. They are not as big as Spoonflower, but they also do pattern contests, on a monthly basis. “Faith” is the theme of the current contest and it took me some time to come up with an idea for this. But you know, as a yoga teacher, I went into that direction with prayer beads called malas.

om yoga pearls

The colours inside the malas come from paintings of mine (you know, still enjoying my new favourite Photoshop trick of filling a shape with a pattern with just one click). The purple backgrounds makes the malas pop and is also the colour associated with the highest chakra, the crown chakra – your bridge to the cosmos, your spiritual connection and through it you can reach your higher potential.

What about some yoga props?

Cathrin-Gressieker---om-yoga-beads-collection-mock-up

If you like my design, I would be honoured if you voted for me. Alas, the voting process is not as easy as Spoonflower’s, you have to be signed up with Stoff’n for it – here is the link to the contest gallery. Om Om Om.

Pattern 12/52

My pattern of the week comes from week 2 of the Make Art that Sells course, where Baby Apparel was the featured market. The warm-up drawing exercise was “seahorses”. I must say, I have always loved seahorses since I was little. Did you know that seahorses are the only known species in the world where the male has the babies? That could make a cool daddy & me baby T-shirt, but who would get the meaning? So this was not such a good concept. Another thing about seahorses that I found out is, that they do a very beautiful mating dance, for hours and days (you can see a video here). So I went with the love thing (didn’t I also do “love” for last week’s assignment, but you know, LOVE is my word for 2015). So the main assignment was to create patterns for baby apparel using our seahorse sketches.

seahorse love collection

 

I designed a main pattern, coordinates and also did some onesie mock-ups. Not bad for one week. There are so many talented people in this course and you can learn so much just by seeing their work (and doing your own, of course!). More LOVE next week!

Pink Moment of the Week

My yoga students continue to surprise and amaze me. Not only through their practice. Especially in my prenatal and mama- and baby yoga classes, where I see my students grow and change during quite a wonderful and intense time, I sometimes get lovely cards and presents. Like this week:

DSC06486 Cathrin Gressieker b-k

A sewing book for yoga clothes and accessoires and a self-sewn bag – how did they guess my favourite colour 😉 – and some kind words of thank you. Danke!

Pattern 11/52

Yes, spring is here! At last! Sunshine, birds and flowers! And you know what the assignment for the first week of MATS B was – to design a winter holiday card … featuring toy trains … That’s business, I guess, you never know what you are assigned to do and then you start working to work up a mood, a Christmas mood for instance. As my illustration skills are still about to be developed and I am not such a fan of cutesie motifs like animals and quirky characters, my Christmas card turned out quite minimal and toned-down:

CATHRIN GRESSIEKER_LOVE EXPRESS_4B_WK1

I used gelli prints from last November, when I really was in a pre-Christmas mood (blogged here) and put the card together in Photoshop using a new favourite trick of mine – filling a shape with a pattern with just one click (58 seconds youtube tutorial here). The ultimate question for the card is – would I send it to friend? I would.

This card was created for the paper market, obviously, and I mocked it up on a placemat to see how this would look like:

xmas placemat

And now, back to spring, and thanks Lilla Rogers!, the next assignment is something cute for summer. More about that next week.

Messages to My Self

Two little collages came together yesterday.

Cathrin Gressieker-you are not alone-k

I haven’t done collage in a while (even though my collages got very positive feedback at my recent exhibitions). Feeling low energy and vulnerable at the moment, I thought playing a bit with paper couldn’t hurt. I took two painted backgrounds and started tearing paper and arranging it randomly. Then I remembered those little girl drawings from a doodle session with my real girls. And throwing in a doily is always fun.

grow wings 20x30cm

Quite different from what I usually do, surprising and a healing process.

Paint Together

We do yoga together, we have an exhibition together, so why not paint together, we thought, Doris Reske and me. And that’s what we did this weekend – our first collaborative painting session, in Doris’ beautiful new studio, drinking Tulsi tea and with strange music on. We made up the rules up as we went and the main rule was, that everybody worked for ten minutes on one or two paintings and then we switched pieces. Everybody could paint what she wanted.

DSC06456-k  DSC06458-k  DSC06464-k  DSC06468-k  P1180267-k

P1180281

A wonderful lesson in play, letting go, trust and fun. To be repeated soon.