The Online Service That Budding Textile Designers Need
Editor Kaylei McGaw takes Spoonflower.com for a spin—and couldn't be happier
Have you ever dreamed of creating your own print designs, but don't know the first thing about textile production? Now you can, thanks to Spoonflower, an online service that prints your original motifs onto yards of cotton, silk, linen, wallpaper, and wrapping paper, right from your computer.
Here's what you do: scan hand-drawn artwork to your computer (or create art using Photoshop or InDesign) and upload it to Spoonflower.com. The site gives you alignment options so that you can make a checkerboard repeat or reflect it for a kaleidoscopic effect. There are also options for stripes or centered, engineered prints.
Any print that you design will be saved to your very own e-shop, where you can keep them private or make them public so that others can purchase them. Bonus: when someone purchases one of your designs, you'll receive a 10% commission. As a designer, you'll also receive a 10% discount on your own purchases.
Lonny editor Kaylei McGaw had her first motif printed, intentionally using a full box of colored pencils to test color accuracy. "I wanted to use a very common material for my first run to see how well the printers could reproduce the saturation and grain of the pencil marks," she says. "The sample swatch is basically identical to the art I submitted." She also notes, "An 8x8-inch swatch on the basic combed cotton only costs $5, which is a total steal for testing out your own designs before committing to a larger purchase." Try it for yourself and tag us in your creations.
