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Pattern 1/52

I am happy to announce a new year-long project today!

As my three 365-day-projects have ended with the end of last year, I first felt some relieve for a while this month. Carolina has stopped taking her afternoon naps coinciding with the end of the photo-project and I can declutter now only when I feel like it. But I must admit, that I am not able to spend my two-Euro-coins anymore, I am collecting them again this year. Yet this doesn’t challenge me enough on a creative level, of course. Not that I could complain about too little creative projects in my life … I draw, paint and design on a daily basis and I am taking a couple of art and design e-courses this year again. There is A Year of Painting II with Alena Hennessy, Assignment Bootcamp with the Lilla Rogers Studio School and The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design with Rachael Taylor.

And surface pattern design will be my year-long-project – I will create (at least!) and post one pattern each week of 2015. My pattern-design-passion has started last year in October when I took Jessica Swift’s excellent weekend-intensive-workshop Pattern Camp (she is re-running the course february 7-8) and further developed my new skills with Rachael Taylor’s and Lilla Roger’s classes and hours and hours of burning the midnight oil.

As we are already the fourth week into January, I will be catching up posting patterns over the next days.

Here is my first pattern 1/52 – Flower Crystals:

Cathrin Gressieker_flower crystals mock-up-blog-pattern

Purely created in Illustrator and mocked up on a notebook.

I have recently discovered while designing that I am very much drawn to geometrical patterns and perfectly timed print & pattern’s new book has just been released:

Cathrin Gressieker_DSC06188-k

So much eye candy and inspiring designs!

I must say, I am very excited about my project of 2015 which will be great for experimenting, having fun, staying motivated and further building my pattern portfolio.

PS: Here is another Pattern Camper, Stephanie, who had the idea first.

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15 Minutes

More often than not I get this question – how do you do it all? Having a family with two young children, being a self-employed yoga teacher and then all those paintings and the crafty stuff like sewing and knitting (and blogging about it).

There is no secret. We are all busy. We all have 24 hours in a day. And we all have creative dreams, that often get lost in the net of everyday. But what I often say – you can get a lot done in 15 minutes. 15 minutes a day add up to nearly two hours of creative time a week.

And because long stretches of creative time are usually unrealistic, I was very happy about the first lesson of Alena Hennessy’s painting e-course A Year of Painting II (I took the first year-long-course last year and this is the follow-up where we dig deeper). Painting your word of the year in 15, 10 and 5 minutes. No room for perfectionism in this short period of time. Just play, intuition and fun (even though some frustration might occur). These small imperfect paintings became some kind of meditation for me this week.

Cathrin Gressieker 15 minutes

And I also found out this week that I am not the only one with this little-15-minutes-of-creativity-theory. I listened to an interview with creativity couch Samantha Beckett and she even wrote a whole book about it. Her advice: discover which of your projects matters most to you, spend 15 minutes a day on that project, every single day (before checking your e-mail). Magic will happen. Or in my words:

15 minutes of painting a day keeps the muse from going on a holiday.

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Business Cards

My new art business cards from London were delivered yesterday.

Cathrin Gressieker art & design

I used a floral pattern from the MATS-course for the front of the cards and part of a painting for the back/contact side. They were printed by MOO and I just love that the business cards come in squares and that you can have a “green” option – printed on recycled paper and using wind energy for the production.

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Suzani Skirt

Here it is,

my first pattern design on a piece of clothing.

Cathrin Gressieker suzani skirt DSC05998-k

My go-to-sewing-pattern-for-a-simple-skirt is

Caprice by Mamu Design.

I can wear it in summer,

and with leggings for the rest of the year,

I even wear it in yoga classes.

I sewed a similar skirt last January

(and wrote a similar-looking post about it)

and this time I am happy to say there was no obession involved,

just fun sewing it.

Quick and easy.

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Now I can be a living advertisement for my designs.

Cathrin Gressieker DSC05942-k

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Pink Moment of the Week

Cathrin Gressieker DSC06084-k

… getting myself a mouse. From all the computer work since summer I got a hurting right upper arm. And all the yoga doesn’t help. I think, it comes from the motions I make with my hand on the touchpad. And I hope, that different montions with a mouse might relieve the pain. Plus it glows in the dark.

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Two Euros

Besides my two 365-day-projects I blogged about last year – 365declutter and Carolina’s naps – I had another little year-long-project going on. I collected all the two-Euro-coins that landed in my purse.

Cathrin Gressieker 2 euros

And now was the big day to count the cash. Especially my 8-year-old-Clara was very interested in this as she is in all financial matters.

Cathrin Gressieker 2 euros DSC06065-k682 Euros.

This money will be for splurging.

Spoiling myself.

Something I wouldn’t spend money on normally.

I still have no concrete plan for it.

But I will find one – or one will find me.