Milvia on Pinterest

For those of you who have been following my blog for a long time you will be familiar with my interest in Milvia vintage tea towels. I have written a few blog posts about these wonderful creations which I was lucky enough to come across at my Mother-in-law's house. My collection stretches to a mere 4 tea towels from the set called 'Days in the Week' but I have since discovered that Milvia did numerous collections for Zucchi such as the 'Hours in the Day' and many more. All of these tea towels are difficult to come by and I have yet to see one for sale on Ebay or Etsy. However I have recently become quite addicted to Pinterest and to my delight have found images of lots of Milvia tea towels. My new Pinterest board called 'You wash, I'll dry' enables me to pin images of any tea towels that take my fancy. At least I was able to complete my 'Days of the Week' collection by Milvia even if only virtually! I am lucky to possess Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and below you will find images of the the missing tea towels.

Tuesday - sewing

 
Thursday - cleaning

Saturday - shopping 

You can visit me on Pinterest here where you will find lots of boards with lots of interesting stuff on them! 

Kekacases update. Available to buy in Turin!

Probably you already know about my licensed Kekacase designs but I will just give you all a little update on recent developments. Firstly I have received some finished cases and am amazed by the quality of the product and the reproduction of my designs. The colours are wonderful and the cases finished beautifully. Finally the cases are sturdy and shiny and fit perfectly on the device. Also I particularly love the insides where my name is printed... soooooo exciting, see photograph below :) 

One of the advantages of helping out in a 'posh' gift shop means that maybe you can persuade the owners to stock some of your Keka designs to sell to the public! 
So we have chosen four designs and five devices and are selling a selection of them with our Christmas gift offerings this year. On the first day we sold two so I am hopeful that they will be a great success! You can see the four designs available at the 'posh' gift shop in this post (I apologise in advance for the poor photography but I am so excited and wanted to share this news with you all). Check out the whole collection of cases for the family of iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Galaxy smart phone devices directly on the Keka website.

P.S. Spoonflower news, my design Autumn Carpet was placed 27th out of 380 entries with 220 votes in the final voting for the Fall Leaves contest... needless to say I am very VERY pleased with the result. :) 

Spoonflower Competition 'Fall leaves'

Hi all, bouncing back from my little set back this week I was amazed to see that the next Spoonflower competition seemed set up especially for me! With the title 'Fall leaves' what more could I do. Taking inspiration and using 'MY' leaf designs (which were so lovingly copied by a lady last week) I have put them together again to create an entry called Autumn Carpet. 

Please feel free to vote if you have a Spoonflower account or just take a look at my design here. Thanks to all who gave me support and comforting words over the last few days. The only thing to do is keep creating original artwork and beat the shallow people who think it is ok to copy!

BIG NEWS FROM SPOONFLOWER!

My design for the 2014 Tea Towel contest organised by Spoonflower was placed 68th with 128 votes out of 195 entries. Not bad considering it is quite a while since I took part in one of their contests and it would be true to say that 'I am a bit rusty'. Pleased with the result I will make an effort to contribute to their contests more often and get back in the swing of things.

However the BIG NEWS FROM SPOONFLOWER is quite something else. Whilst voting in the 2014 Tea Towel contest I noticed a design which was strikingly like my entry in the same contest from last year. Well, strikingly is really a bit of an understatement, it was almost identical and looked like it had been just 'traced' over. The lady had'nt even bothered to change the colour palette but had lovingly added a few different birds (instead of my owls) which were also copied from Charley Harper's designs! (no less)

I immediately contacted Spoonflower and pointed out the dirty deed, however this morning I got another shock to find out that the copied design had been placed 11th in the final voting. So here my philosophical laughing now turned to rage. I contacted Spoonflower again and also left a very sarcastic comment for the lady who was already celebrating her success! Above you can see the two designs and decide for yourself. I asked some of my Surface Pattern friends what they thought and not one disagreed with my opinion that 'YES' my design had been copied. There can be a fine line between inspiration and plagiarism and I think this lady definitly exaggerated and just plain copied. The stupid thing is to put the design back up on Spoonflower in a contest where it is quite easy to be found out!
Spoonflower have not replied to me yet and I find this a bit disconcerting, but the lady's design has mysteriously disappeared from the Spoonflower site this afternoon and I believe her account too! I hope this will be the final outcome as it is what I requested Spoonflower to do in the first place. This will not stop the lady copying someone else but at least it may make her think twice next time.
I take it as a compliment that someone should like my design so much to copy it so blatantly and it has certainly made for an 'interesting day'! 

November - 2013 Designer Calendar Project

A little bit late again but here I am reminding you to download the month of November in the fabulous freebie Designers Calendar Project organised by my friend the lovely Maria Jose Bautista V. November has been designed by Tina Devins of Dreaming on a Star she is a surface pattern designer who is based in Ireland. You may remember Tina was featured on my blog HERE a while back as a guest on Dream designs!

The project  - 12 surface pattern designers each to create a month using their unique style, the only guidelines being the format and the colour palette! The result is a very different calendar full of fun designs and patterns.  

This month's fun design can be downloaded directly from MaJo's blog where you can also read a great post about Tina Devins and Dreaming on a Star. Download the full version HERE.
Such a shame that there is only one month left to download and then 2013 has whizzed by us all. I do hope that Majo will consider doing the project again next year, and of course I hope to be invited as a guest designer.