Not all designs have an interesting story about how they came to be, but some are a great testament to the learning curve of being a surface designer. The cherry pattern is one of these and despite it's humble beginnings and the fact it's never been a strong seller in it's original version, it's still a favourite of mine, and still has potential, especially with the cottagecore trend that is so popular with the Gen Z.
Back in 2017, when I decided to take the plunge and explore the ideas of selling my art on Society6, I knew exactly NOTHING about pattern making and fortunately for me, Society6 and Redbubble did not insist on artists uploading a seamless tile. It was easy to just create a big file that would not repeat and call it a day.
While I was familiar with Photoshop, I still didn't quite go for the creation of assets that I would manipulate at will digitally later, beyond color correction that is. So, it should come as no surprise that I would draw every single items of a pattern on an A4 sheet of paper, and scan it at 1200 dpi so it would fit on most products S6 had to offer back then. I clearly hadn't learned to save time by creating just a few assets, and scatter them all over an art board in Photoshop just then, but I learned it quickly after that. Those cherries were one of the very first design I ever did with the intent of selling it on print on demand, I think I created it even before I opened the shop and still have no idea about...well...everything.
The original was just a bunch of cherries on a white background and is still available on Society6 as "cherry dream". I also created two stripes version around the same time, a green stripes, and a purple stripes. For some reason, I deleted the two stripes files but thankfully kept the original which I used to create variations on the theme over the years, including a medallion design with the quote "Have a cherry on top kind of day" which had quite a few sales over the years.
Recently as I was putting together the theme of the June Patreon rewards, I came accross a printable stickers set I had once created for Etsy (but no longer sell) and decided to go with the cherry theme.
After all, June is the month I always associate with cherries because my grandmother had tree in her garden and it was always loaded with fruits around my birthday (June 24 if you were wondering).
When the time came to create the tiers 2 rewards, phone wallpapers, I had to dig out the original file from my external drive to create them. That's when I realised the stripes files were nowhere to be found and had to create new ones.
One thing led to another and I found myself creating a cute pink stripes version and a navy blue one. So much so that I decided to make the pink one available as a full size artwork and sell it on Society6 and Redbubble. And since I think I'll plan on making more versions, I decided to apply my now greatly improved pattern making skills to make a seamless pattern tile as well...because I've got to stay current.
This pattern not only reminds me how far I got on my designer journey, it also is a classic pattern that will always have some popularity, especially now with my print on demand offerings tapping into the kitchen and dinning decor items with aprons, table cloths, placemats and more... It's also a great reminder to myself and all new designers out there to NEVER delete a file because you think it's sucks or is dated. You never know when you'll want to explore it again and give it a new breath of life.
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