Preparing for Cottagecore Design Challenge

The wildflower Salsify with trowel, watering can, and vase hero illustration on yellow gingham by Sheri42

Cottagecore Design Challenge

The above motif is the hero pattern for my entry in the Cottagecore Design Challenge on Spoonflower.

This has been quite a journey to get to this point, with help from one of my art communities, Jennifer Nichols Creative Journey Community [affiliate link]. We share our progress and offer suggestions to each other to help one another improve our designs. A member suggested a lighter green vine and a creamy background. At the last minute, I decided to add the gingham as suggested in the design challenge requirements. I really like the result:

Cottagecore Gardening Wildflowers on Gingham

Cottagecore farmhouse motifs on gardening the wildflower Salsify. Trowel the ground; water the seeds, grow and cut the flowers into your vase— a story in a gingham fairytale cottage pattern in sage greens, yellows terra cotta.

The Progress

I started out with a trailing pattern — a darker green until my friends in the community suggested to go lighter so the green didn’t draw attention away from the yellow flower, which is the wildflower Salsify that we see on our daily walking path.

trailing wildflower Salsify pattern by Sheri42

Then I decided to add in gardening to tell a story for cottagecore designs — caring for a wildflower garden with trowel, watering can, and a vase. Below is the dark stem version:

trailing wildflower Salsify with garden tools of trowel and watering can plus a vase for Cottagecore by Sheri42

Then I decided to make the hero illustration shown at top with the same background– this is the darker stemmed version, before being lightened.

Hero pattern in darker green stems on wildflower Salsify for gardening: trowel, watering can, vase by Sheri42

pattern in hero design for Cottagecore by Sheri442

Finally, after changing the color of the stem and recreating the pattern, I decided on the gingham background, which you see in the top two illustrations on this post. So it’s been quite a journey with these designs.

However, they all fit in with my Coulee Country Series, and I’ll be uploading each version of the lighter green stems to that collection on Spoonflower.

So now I’ll be off to enter the design challenge and share with mentor and friend MaddaMom who has a class on Skillshare on making better titles, descriptions, and tags for Spoonflower using ChatGPT and who has been mentoring members of Jennifer Nichols Creative Journey Community [affiliate link] members in improving our entries. Together, we are able to support one another on Spoonflower as well. Take a look at her website for more information: MaddaMom.

I’ll show the entry in the Wednesday WrapUp this week. See you there!