How to Upload Perfect Repeats to Spoonflower Using Adobe Illustrator

1. Introduction: and Danieal killing Ryland, a surface pattern designer and illustrator. In today's course, we're gonna talk about how to upload your patterns from illustrator into spin flower. The uploading process is a really important one in order to get your designs onto a print on demand site where you can start making profits. If you've ever uploaded your design into spoon flour, you think it looks good, the repeats perfect and you by your test watch and then you get it back and it's got that terrible hairline running through it and you don't have that perfect repeat. Then you understand how frustrating that can be. I'm gonna show you a way to make sure that that doesn't ever happen to you, and so that every time you upload into spoon fire, you feel confident that when you get a test, watch back that you're not gonna have any issues with the repeat and with the prince. So fire up, illustrator and let's get started 2. Uploading to Spoonflower with file that is the same size as your artboard: We're starting here with an eight by eight art board and a pretty simple, uh, repeat. So this bounding box here, the background color is an eight by eight square as well. So it fits perfectly into our our board. Um, my assumption is that you know how to make repeats, and this may be a way that you do it where you create the box the same exact sizes. The art board. Now we can do it where the art board is not the same size as the repeat that you make, and we'll go over that in the next video. But for now, they match up, and they are a perfect fit. So So I've made this repeat of these moons and stars, and I want to make it into a fabric I want uploaded into Soon Flower or a similar similar site. And so the first thing I'm gonna do is test the repeats. I'm gonna grab all of this, um, and drag it over. The assumption is that you know how to do this. This is just gonna be a really quick review. So I'm gonna create a box filled with that potter, and, uh, we'll make this a little bit smaller. So control, click transform scale. 60%. It's fine. And we're gonna go in, and we're gonna look at where that box would be in this repeat and make sure that we don't have any hairline issues. Right, So we're just making sure that it looks good. And then when we scale out that we like what it looks like, maybe this would be a baby blanket or something along those lines or some pajamas, maybe. Um and that'll looks get We made a perfect repeat, right. So, uh, normally, what you would go to Dio from here is going to file export and create a document that you can then upload into a spoon flour. But if you've ever had the frustration of uploading industry in flour, everything looks good. And then you get those hairlines in your samples that you order. It is extremely, extremely frustrating. So this is how I prevent that from happening. I'm gonna click on my background color here, um, and Onley my background color box. I'm not gonna click on any of my motifs, and I'm gonna make sure that I don't move any of my motifs. cause that will mess up my repeat. So I'm going, Teoh, make my box bigger all around my artwork. So let me turn this into a lighter color just so you can see it a little bit better. Eso there we can see the art board is this black line, and my background color is now far exceeding my art board so we can turn it back to the original color. There we go, and now it's ready to export. So what we did there is just ensure that that my art board is fully covered with color, that my background boxes and off by just a pixel where it's gonna create that hairline once it gets into spoon flour, that there's no way that's gonna happen because my art board is completely saturated with color. And because my, our board and my pattern are the same size. It's not gonna mess with the repeat because my repeat is set up for an eight inch by eight inch box, and that's what my my our board is. So, um, I'm gonna go to file now. Export export as and let's call this spoon flour movements use art boards. Export my resolution is either 300 or 1 50 pp. Eyes good aren't optimized. Super sampling. And okay, so now I'm gonna go over to spoon flour. And this is my home site. My assumption is that you already have an account that, um you're all set up on registered and all that. And if you're not, then go ahead and do that now and then come back to us and I'm gonna go over here to design upload, and I'm going to select a file. So they accept four different types of files. We created a PNG. So that's good. Shoes files spring flower on. You are choose on the copyrights. Great upload. And this will take a minute. Okay, so here's our preview and uploaded beautifully. It all looks good. Um, are repeat should be. Our lines should be going right through here so we can kind of enlarge and try to see where that would be. And it looks like there's no hairline. That doesn't mean there's not because I've had times before. Before I learned that trick about moving the background box out that it looks good in spoon flour because the resolution's pretty low. And then Once you get into an actual sample, you still have that line. And it's really frustrating, so But it looks good here. You can check it there and then what I like to do when I order a sample cause you have to order a test watch and you can order that in, um, in the Philly yard so you can save a ton of money by doing that. But when I when I create a sample, I like to make this small enough right where I can see if there's gonna be any issues with repeat. So because if you were to order, let's say a sample and it's this size, you're not going to know if you have issues with the repeat because this isn't where the repeat occurs, right? So I like to order it right around here, and you can save this layout, and then once you get that sample, you confirm everything looks good, Then you can go back in and you can actually change your your layout to something bigger. If you want eso, you always have the option to do that. But I like making sure that everything's everything looks good. So there we go now that it's a that lay out. I'm a scroll down. I am going. Teoh. Name it. Let's say stars and moons Super creative. You can write a description here. You can write extra details and then show what you want it to look like For potential buyers. You think Swatch looks nice? It gives you an idea of what it's gonna look like on a bigger scale. But you can also see the detail still, uh, tags these they're super important. Make sure you fill amount moons, stars and moon celestial night sky. Whatever describes this best if someone were searching for it is what you want to create as your tags. So once and you can also pick the colors down here that that match your fabrics. So then, from here, I'd like to include this into my public gallery, and then once you buy a proof, then you can start selling it. Okay. And then from there, it's it's in, so it automatically saves as I go so I can click on make public or can look at my design library and on that's gonna be set, and it is now in my design library All right. So we're good on that. My next video's gonna be about what to do when your pa turn background box is not the same . Size is your work. 3. Uploading to Spoonflower with a file that is a different size than your artboard: Now we're going to talk about what to do when you're pattern. Um, bounding box doesn't match. Your are bored. So we're still in that eight by eight art board. But now we have two different motifs. So these are motifs that I made for a different class. And to turn these into a really simple pattern, I'm actually gonna use the pattern tool, So highlight them, go to objects, pattern and make. And if you don't know how to use the pattern tool, it's pretty cool. And it's really nice for really simple patterns. You can mess around with all different kinds of layouts here, but we're just gonna keep a simple grid. We're gonna mess with the wit, so it looks even. Um, Okay, that looks good. And we're gonna click done when we hit Done. It's going to shoot our pattern over into this watches panel. Now, uh, when we bring it out, it's gonna have what's it's gonna all be grouped together. So we're gonna go to object and group, and it's only gonna have one box. It's gonna have the clear box that's used, usually in the back of our background color. So it does not have a background color. So to create a background color, I'm gonna click on that on that box right on the edge. And I'm gonna click some community, see command F, and that's gonna place another clear box in front of the hawks on Ben. I'm gonna fill that with color. I'm also going to grab my motifs. I'm just holding down the shift to grab all my motifs, and I'm gonna recorder them as well. So I think that I like this color. So I am going Teoh, highlight all of it and drag it right back into the swatches panel and create a colored virgin. So now I'm gonna test my repeat. It should be a perfect to repeat because they used the pattern tool. So be hard toe to mess up the actual repeat. And, uh, yeah, looks good. And so I can, you know, test it and see what it looks like. It at a bigger scale. It's cute. Great. Um and then once I am happy with this, I like it. I'm gonna go back to my original here, and I'm going to click on this background box. I'm gonna go toe object Art boards convert toe art boards. So that's gonna turn that green box into my art board. So now I know my our board is the same exact size as this clear box here. I'm gonna turn that box into the background color that I want and then on. And then I'm gonna do the same thing for it as they did in the last video for insurance to make sure that I don't have any of those hairlines in my final product from Spain Flower or some other site. So So now I have my, uh, pattern that I like in a new art board. And so I'm gonna go up Teoh file export export ass. And let's name this spoon flour. Uh, why no kitties use art boards and right here this is important. I'm gonna click on range, and I'm gonna go to because it's my second art board. My original art board was the one with moods. Now, my second art board is the one with the kiddies export. And this is what my repeat box is gonna look like. Um, same thing here, either 300 or 1 50 click. Ok, okay. So from here, we're gonna go, um, over to spoon flour. Were in upload. Choose file spoon, fire kitties choose, and I own upload. All right. Great. Looks great. So now we're gonna look at it, make sure we like the layout set whatever layout that we want and then put in all of our information about the fabric down there. 4. Thank you! and class project : Thank you so much for joining the course today. I hope it helped you with the uploading process. And I hope you're on your way to uploading a bunch of your design stress free.