Free Printable - Christmas Wreath Lineart

I felt like doodling a Christmas wreath today, and decided to offer it up to anyone who wanted to use it in their Christmas crafting. Feel free to download it for yourself and colour it in, put it on a Christmas card or a scrapbook page, whatever floats your boat. 

Click these links to download the full sized image or download a page with four smaller images. I hope these links work, because I'm using Dropbox for the first time to put these up. Also, if you don't have a Dropbox account already, I get some bonus space if you sign up using this referral link. So I'd really appreciate that, because it makes it easier for me to post new free printables for you in future.

I hope you have fun with this free printable wreath lineart. Merry Christmas, and Happy Crafting.

"Succulent Christmas Fern" - Christmas Themed Repeating Design

One thing I've learned about Christmas designs is that the best ones in my opinion are the ones that aren't necessarily that Christmassy. There are plenty of designs that look like Christmas decorations at the time, but don't look out of place for the other eleven months of the year. That means you get a good amount of use out of them, without having to find somewhere to store your decorations. That's what I was thinking when I came up with this design.

"Succulent Christmas Fern", November 2015

I think this would make lovely place mats or napkins for a Christmas place setting with red and white accents (such as plates, napkin rings or table runners). Or if you want a non-seasonal place setting, it would still look nice with neutrals such as cream or white.

"Succulent Christmas Fern Repeating", November 2015

I'd like to think more about designs that can be used outside of Christmas time, especially since a lot of people like to change their Christmas decoration colour scheme every year. If those people can resell or give away their decorations to people that can use them straight away rather than waiting until next Christmas, the decorations are more likely to be reused rather than thrown away.

"Ditsy Daffodils" - Colour Throwdown CTD364 - Repeating Floral Pattern

The running shoe seems appropriate because I'm in the middle of a marathon of shifts at work. My blog posts for the last few days have been scheduled and updated automatically, which is good because I've hardly had time to touch them. Unfortunately that also means I forgot to upload this one in time to add it to the list on the Color Throwdown website. Aah well.

I miss drawing at the moment, but in a couple of days I'll have a day off, so hopefully I'll get something done and won't be too tired to work on the ideas that have been floating around in my head lately. Today, here's a ditsy daffodil pattern, 

"Ditsy Leaves" - Color Throwdown Challenge - Digital Repeating Pattern

Time for another colour palette challenge from Color Throwdown. I always intend to do these, but I rarely get around to them in time. I spend too much time trying to decide what I'm doing, and suddenly a week has gone by. This week's theme is green, yellow, black and white.

I wanted to make sure I submitted something, so here's just a quick ditsy leaf pattern. I'm starting to practice patterns where I have to arrange different elements and make them look like a balanced repeating pattern. This is a lot easier now that I have a Wacom tablet and can draw in additional elements to fill spaces rather than sketching on paper and scanning them in as I had to do before.

"Ditsy Leaves", Digital Repeating Pattern, September 2015, 15x15 Inch

It's still a bit rough and I might go back to clean it up later, but I'm pleased with the technique and look forward to doing it again with more complex pattern elements. Look forward to some paisley and floral patterns in the near future. 

Mallard Ducks - Color Throwdown Challenge CTD307 - Acrylic Painting Portrait of Two Ducks in Green, Blue and Yellow

I finished painting my pair of mallard ducks and thought I'd submit them to this week's Colour Throwdown challenge.

The challenge seems to be geared towards stamping and cardmaking, but I think this is okay. I plan on printing my small artworks onto greeting cards anyway, so I guess it still counts as card making, in a way.

"Mallard Ducks", CTD307, Acrylic Paint on Paper, 6x6

Getting the green right was pretty tricky. There's another shade of green under this one that was way too dark. It's still not quite the shade from the challenge, but mallard ducks are a little bit darker than that anyway. Hopefully doing these colour challenges will be a good way to practice colour mixing, rather than just mixing up something I hope will go with what is already on the page.

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook at Renee Dillon Art or look up ReneeDillonArt on Instagram.

Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge - PPA 195

Getting in just in time for this challenge at Pals Paper Arts. I liked the colour scheme so much that I couldn't quite decide what I wanted to do with it. In the end I went with some bunny silhouettes and a cutout rectangle Happy Easter banner. I like the cutout words technique over patterned paper and will be using it again. Probably with a smaller print next time.

Pals Paper Arts

I've been finding that I like using simple card designs and letting the patterned paper speak for itself, but I'd like to get into a bit of pattern mixing. Maybe next time. As always, you can find my papers at Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. These bunnies might be up in the next couple of days.

Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge - PPA 194

I'm not much of a cardmaker, but I like the idea of challenges, especially colour palette challenges. I thought I'd have a go at the Colour Challenge at Pals Paper Arts.

Pals Paper Arts

Above is the colour palette I had to stick to. Not my usual cup of tea, but I guess that's the point of a challenge. It can be good to try things that aren't in your comfort zone.

My friend has a birthday coming up and his favourite colour is blue. The flowers might be a bit girly, but hopefully he won't mind. So that works out nicely.

If you'd like to see the rest of this scrapbooking paper set, have a look at my Etsy shop or look at the previous blog post. Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Overlapping Flowers

Finally opened a Twitter account today. My opinion that I would not like Twitter has not yet changed, but apparently it's pretty big in the scheme of social media and reaching new audiences. You can find and follow me @6thFloorStudio (apparently typing "Sixth" made it too long). As a known rambler, having an arbitrary post size limit bugs me. I don't like changing the grammar in a sentence so I don't have to remove content, but that's what needed to be done to fit my first tweet within the limit. What was the problem with blogs, anyway? You can be as long-winded or brief as you like, and people can follow you and see what you have to say. And you don't have to figure out this ridiculous hash-tagging business. I sound so old.

Anyway, here is my new scrapbook paper set. I'm still playing with ways to make tiling images. Spacial thinking isn't necessarily my strong point, but I'm getting better. It gives me one of those special headaches that mean you must be growing new neural pathways in your brain.

I've made one of these papers into a digital card for Pals Paper Arts Colour Challenge. That can be found in the next post. If you'd like to purchase these papers, take a look at Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking.

Watercolour Butterflies

These butterfly designs were the first series of images I made for my Etsy shop. They were coloured with watercolour pencils and altered digitally. There are 14 pages in total and the previews below show the assortment of colours.

If you're interested in purchasing these printable papers, you can find them at my Etsy shop, TheSixthFloorStudio, which will go live shortly.

I'm rather pleased with how this pattern turned out. Hopefully there will be more traditional media papers in the future.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy

Autumn Forest

After some amount of fiddling, I finally have an art space set up. Most importantly, I have the scanner in my room where I can use it at any time without bothering anyone else in the house. It's nice to be able to upload a design and play with it digitally as soon as I'm inspired. 

Today, I've been playing with some tree doodles to make this tiling pattern. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to arrange my scrapbook paper packs in my Etsy shop, but this will definitely be one of them. This image is reduced quality to stop people from saving and printing this version without paying for it. I might offer some free printable images after I have the shop set up.

Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy