Unlocking Opportunities : How to Sell your Surface Patterns Effectively on Spoonflower

1. Hello and Welcome!: Okay. Whether you are new to surface pattern design and seeking guidance on using spoon flower or you are already selling your designs there. This class is designed for you. Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm Gangel, an artist, Illustrator, surface pattern designer and Tanka painter, based in the beautiful coastal State of Bova, India. I joined Spoonflower back in 2016, but it wasn't until 2020 that I really started getting involved. As of today, my shop boasts over 3,000 designs, and I've had the privilege of being featured in their artist Potlight Craft Friday series a few times on their blog. And I have won the weekly challenge twice. In this class, we will dive into the exciting world of spoon flower and explore how as surface pattern designers, you can leverage its features to showcase your creativity. Connect with customers, and monetize your designs effectively. Whether you create your patterns using iPad applications like Procreate or desktop software such as Adobe Illustrator, photoshop or affinity designer. Spoonflow provides a platform for you to start selling your designs. This class is suitable for both beginner and intermediate levels. If you are new to surface pattern design, consider starting with our classes in the fundamental series before embarking on your spoonflow journey with us. Let's dive in and discover the endless possibilities that await you on this exciting platform. 2. Overview and class project: Hi, everyone. Welcome to my class. For those of you who are new here, I'm excited to share that this class serves as an update to my previous spoonflower lessons, which were initially part of my introduction to surface pattern design class in the fundamental series. In the past few months, Spoonflower has introduced multiple changes and the information shared in my previous lessons may no longer be entirely relevant. That's why I have created this new class, specifically focused on effectively selling your surface patterns on Spoonflower. In this class, we will cover navigating the spoon flower website and understanding its importance, exploring the opportunities available for patent designers. Learning effective methods for uploading designs, and discovering strategies to maximize visibility and sales. Here is the breakdown of our lessons. We'll start with getting around Spoon flow's website, preparing yourself, the artist corner, setting up your Spoonflower account, customizing your shop front, uploading your first design and choosing the right repeat and scale. Marketing and selling your designs. Understanding digital proofing, Design library and batch editing. Physical proofing with filed, designing tea towels and wall hangings. Creating themed and curated collections, uploading multiple colorways and sizes, Designing for metallic wallpapers, participating in design challenges, exploring trends and finding inspiration, saving high resolution product mockups for social media, and initiating action. For the class project, you will have the exciting opportunity to kickstart your own spoon flower shop and share your inaugural pattern. Even if you're already a spoonflower artist, you're encouraged to join in. All you need to do is upload a pattern tile or switch to Spoonflower. Adjust the repeat and scale of your image, craft a captivating title and description. Utilize relevant tags to enhance the visibility of your artwork. Select one or more mock up photos from Spoon flowers website to showcase your art. Finally, share one or more of these product mock ups in the students project gallery. I'm also sharing a spoon flower markup of one of my patterns to give you an idea. I'm really excited to see your creations. Let's dive into our first lesson and get started. 3. Getting Around Spoonflower's Website: When you open spoon flour, you'll find a diverse array of offerings, including ongoing sales promotions, product categories, best selling wallpapers, customers choices, collaborations, artists testimonials, and more. Let's take a closure look at each section, starting from the top. Firstly, you will notice the login or sign up icon. If you already have an account, you will see a small person icon representing your dashboard. Next to it is the heart icon at the top right, which serves as your favorites. Whenever you like a design on spoon flo, click on the heart icon to add it to your favorites. Below that, you'll find the spoon flour logo and a search bar. You can use the search bar to find designs by theme or artist's name. Next is the spoon flaw header, which includes inspiration. This section is for both buyers and designers. It offers ideas for your next project, showcases what's trending, best selling, and various classifications. Clicking on the categories such as top and trending, styles, animals, nature, and more allows user to further explore subcategories, helping them narrow down the search results. For artists, it serves as a guide to see what's popular and trending, best selling, and to gather ideas for creating new designs. Similarly, users can find design based on specific colors further classified by fancy color names. Curated themes. Spolar offers specially curated design collections. These collections are based on best selling designs on site search data, and emerging trends. They bring together favorite designs in one place, serving as an inspiration for your next design collection. Under the gift stab, users can discover amazing DIY project ideas and tutorials for creating perfect handmade gifts. Users can also check out spoon class blog where detailed posts cover collaborations, projects, artists spotlights, and more. Under the fabric tab, select all fabrics to explore a wide variety of fabric patterns available on the platform. These patterns are further categorized based on themes, colors, projects, fabric types, and more. Take your time to browse through these options. If you want to view the available fabric choices, navigate to the next tab. Additionally, to see how different colors print on these fabrics, you can order a sample pack from this section. With fill yard, you can choose from basic yard templates or project templates and select the designs you want printed. This tool is especially useful for previewing how your designs will look once printed and ensuring that the colors and details meet your requirements. I will cover the process of creating your own file yard in our upcoming lessons. Finally, using that last tab shop fabrics, you can search for fabric designs using filters, such as style color, best selling, rending, and more. The following four menu items, wallpaper, living and decor, dining, and bedding. Highlight various product categories offered by Spoonflower, showcasing best selling and trending designs within each category. Recently, Spoonflower has introduced a new range of metallic wallpapers that you can check under the wallpaper options. Feel free to take your time exploring these options. The trade program is tailored for interior designers, seeking to collaborate on exciting projects. In our next lesson, we will delve into the artist corner and discuss essential considerations before setting up your own shop. 4. Preparing Yourself: The Artist Corner: The artist corner tap covers all the important aspects of being a designer on spoon flour. Upload a design. This menu directs you to the design upload page. Design challenges. Here you can discover current and upcoming design challenge themes, dates, and voting details. Learn about the benefits of participation, the prizes available, and browse through winning designs from the previous challenges as you scroll down. Selling and commissions outlines the payment structure for designers. Seller agreement, recently updated in February 2024. This agreement is pivotal. It covers essential aspects such as selling content, pricing, and payment, taxes and required documentation, privacy policy and more. Notably, failure to provide complete tax information will result in the removal of your ability to sell in the marketplace. Thus ensure you fill out your tax form before commencing selling and thoroughly review all the details. Design s. This segment addresses design file basics and provides guidance on effectively uploading your artwork into the artist marketplace interface. We will discuss these with examples in the forthcoming lessons. Topics covered under this segment include design guidelines, basic design information, design tutorials, designing for Home Decor and T towels, uploading and saving designs, and wallpaper design hacks. Selling Qs. Here a compilation of articles delves into the specifics of selling to customers through the spoon flower interface. It covers proofing designs, basics of selling art, preparing designs, design challenges. Understanding shop profiles, commissions, taxes, and third party marketplaces. Ensure to allocate sufficient time to thoroughly review these articles. Finally, there is the above tab where you can check out details about spoon flour, understanding its workings, purpose, and impact. In the next lesson, we will learn about setting up our spoon cl account. 5. Setting up Your Spoonflower Account: Registering for spoon flour is completely free. Create your account by providing your name, e mail, and other necessary details. Once your account is set up, you can access your dashboard by clicking on the person icon. On the dashboard, you can check your stacks and analytics on the left side, which includes your earnings, new messages, collections, favorites, et. Followed by the news, which is basically the activity in your shop, which can be further classified through this drop down menu. When you click on Analytics, it will show you data based on your shop performance. Here you can see which are your top ten designs based on search tags, favorites, sales over last 30 days and comments received. On the right side, you can see more detailed taps based on your dashboard settings. To customize your dashboard setting, click on this button. You can select various options on what you would like to see on your dashboard. And once selected, simply wait for it to be saved before returning to the dashboard. Additionally, you can choose to hide a tab from the dashboard by clicking the hide button. Under the icon venue, you will find the orders tab, which displays the status of your order history on school flow. Under my settings, you can reset your password and update your name and screen name. However, it is recommended not to change your screen name to maintain consistency. If you still want to change your screen name, consider the following. People might search for your designs using your current screen name. If you change it, your shop will no longer appear in those search results. Designs that have placed in the top hundred in design challenges or have been featured on Spoonflower blog with your screen name will not be updated. This means the link to those design names will no longer work, resulting in a page not found error. When you change your screen name, your shop URL also changes. You will need to update the link everywhere you have shared it. You can also adjust your e mail notifications and subscriptions here. The next step displays your spoon dollars, which represents your earnings. You can see your available balance, including total earned commissions and other credits earned through winning design challenges. Commissions are paid out every 14 days, and if your balance exceeds $10, it can be transferred to your accounts. You can also see your commission bonus status based on your monthly commissions. Normally, you earn 10% commission of material sales on every product from fabric and wallpaper to Home Decor. But you can earn 11% that is 1% bonus. If your monthly commissions were 300 to $999 13% that is 3% bonus. If your monthly commissions were $1,000 to 14 $99 and earn 15% that is 5% bonus, if your monthly commissions were more than $500. Here you can see the commission status you are at. Below that, you can click to see all the previous month bonuses. Your statement staff shows yearly summaries of the spoon flower commissions earned for each tax year. In the redemptions details tab, you can access and update your redemption settings. You can choose to save your commissions until they reach a certain amount by unchecking this box, and when ready to redeem, update your settings to transfer the money on the nearest payout date. The next step is for updating your tax information. Once you have successfully submitted your tax form, you will see a green tem indicating completion. Under verify account, you will find steps to become a verified spoon flour seller. In the privacy settings tab, you can access settings to download data or delete your account. Lastly, under design distribution, you can choose to sell your designs on external market places like Ets Amazon, and Bay. This allows your work to reach buyers who may not be searching on spoon flour, providing more opportunities for sales. You can distribute your designs on these external market places free of charge by checking the relevant boxes to update the settings. The next option on the dashboard is favorites. You can also access favorites by clicking the favorites from the top of any page. On your favorites page, you will find your favorite designs with the most recent on top. To remove a favorite, simply click on the heart a second time. Next is a link to review your created and saved collections. We will cover this in detail in the upcoming lessons. Next is Design library. This page, which is also the most frequently used page by designers, allows you to upload designs, create collections, batch edit titles, tags, descriptions, and more. We will delve into this page in our upcoming lessons. Next is view my shop. Access your shop to see how your shop front looks. We will see how to customize your shop front in the next lesson. Below this, you will find the upload your design button, which directs you to the design upload page. Notification tab displays real time updates for your shop, including likes, comments, sales, messages, and more. Next is messages. Here you can chat with buyers when they request size or scale adjustments on particular designs. You can only send messages to spoon flower members, not guest users. The messaging interface currently operates in separate threads for each message, lacking the ability to attach photos directly. However, designers can use messaging to build connections with buyers and sometimes receive images of the products, which can be used for marketing purpose. There are three ways to send messages to buyers. Traditional saved message and automated message settings. Each has its advantages and considerations, such as personalization and automation. With the traditional method, you have the flexibility to customize your message subject and content according to your preference. Additionally, you have the option to choose whether you want to send another message or not as Puntla notifies you if you have previously messaged that buyer and when the message was sent. For the saved message option, it's a manual process requiring you to click Sent each time you want to send the message. You can draft a message and use it as template. Click on the button that says, send your saved message to send it to the buyer. The third option is the automated message setting where your saved message is automatically sent every time someone buys from your shop. All you need to do is turn this option on. Personally, I don't use this feature because it provides the least control, and it might inconvenience buyers if they receive the same message for each purchase, especially if they are buying multiple items from my shop. With the recent updates from Spoonflower, I'm hopeful that the messaging interface might also receive an update soon. If that happens, I'll make sure to update this lesson accordingly. The M design challenges tab allows you to view your voting history and entries. Under my voting, you can track the challenges you have voted in, the number of votes you have cast, and how many times your selection made it to the top ten. This practice is valuable for enhancing observation skills and understanding trending designs appreciated by the community. In the My entries section, you can review the challenges you have entered the votes your designs have received and your top ten placements. Thumbnails of your challenge entries along with the rank accompany this information. Lastly, the option to log out from your account is available. In the next lesson, we will learn how to customize our shop trend. 6. Customising Your Shopfront: To access the shop front, simply click on the person icon and select view my shop from the drop down menu. On the left side, you will find the product section which showcases the total number of designs available in the shop in fabric and wallpaper category. You can sell each design in both categories, but typically we don't market t towels and wall hangings as wallpapers, so the numbers may vary. Below, you will find the profile picture, screen name, bio and associated links. Next, you can explore designs categorized under options such as shop home, design collections, all collections, my favorites, followers, and accounts I follow. When visiting another artist profile, you will also find options to follow them and initiate contact. Let's explore optimizing our spoonflower shopfront for maximum impact. After becoming a verified spoonflower seller, it's essential to customize your shop front. Ensuring it is up to date with a banner image, shop image, your name, location, bio and relevant links. Click on edit your shop, and to upload a shop image, simply click Choose a file, and select the desired image from your computer before clicking Upload. For optimization, consider using a headshot selfie or an illustration like a self portrait. While sharing an image of yourself is ideal for building a connection with customers, it's not mandatory. Next, you have the option to choose what information you want to display publicly. While it's essential to make your profile visible to the public for customers to shop, you can decide whether you would like to share designs you have favorited or connections with other designers you have followed or who have followed you. So you can turn these on or off. Your screen name is the name you initially created your account with when you joined Spoonflower. It serves as both your Spoonflower user name and your shop name. It's crucial to choose this name thoughtfully from the start considering your brand identity. Changing it later can impact your shop's performance, getting it right early on is ideal. To make the most of the limited character space, I have used my e mail address instead of the city. This is how it shows up on my shop front. Next up is your location. For the bio, you have 160 characters available. While it may appear short, you can type more characters in this field. However, any extra character beyond the limit will get cut off when you save it. You can use a character counter online or make sure to check it after saving. For the bio, think about who is going to be reading it. It's great to be friendly and explain the services that you can provide the customers, who is reading your bio. You can tell a little about your style, whether you would like to offer size and scale adjustments. You can also check out fellow artists profiles to get an idea. Next, we have the option to include two links which are highly recommended. For the first link, direct users to your website, and for the second, consider linking it to your social media platform such as Instagram to encourage followers and potential customers to engage further. Lastly, the shop banner serves as a powerful tool to attract customers. You can highlight specific collections, new designs or best sellers. You can include your patterns, brand name, logo, and more. The image should be 868 pixels by 117 pixels and less than 2 megabytes in size. I have prepared a template for your convenience accessible in the project and resources section. Simply click Choose a file at the bottom and locate your banner file. After updating all the details, click on VM shop to ensure that all changes have been saved correctly. In the next lesson, we will learn how to upload our designs on spoon flour. 7. Uploading Your First Design: Before we get started, I want to mention that spoon flour is in the process of updating how designs are uploaded, and they are currently testing these changes in a beta version. Once they have finished testing and the new update is ready, I'll update the class instructions accordingly. Access the design upload page by clicking on the person icon and selecting uploaded design from the drop down menu. Alternatively, you can navigate to the artist corner and choose uploaded Design or go to the design library and select Add design from the left menu. Regardless of the method, you will be directed to the same page to upload your designs. Here are some key considerations to keep in mind. Spoon flow digitally prints everything on demand, using the SRGB color space, not CMYK. Digital printing means that we can use almost any color imaginable. However, we need to remember that all colors won't turn out exactly as you see them on your monitor. Make sure you have your color mode set to RGB. If you're uploading a CM K file, spoonflower will not present you with an error message. It will let you upload that file and they will print it. However, it might result in some color difference. Make sure your file is already saved in RGB or SRGB color profile. You can upload up to eight files at a time. The total of all design files you are uploading at one time must be less than 40 MB. You can also upload a single file that is less than fortyMB Acceptable formats art JP and PNG. Next, your repeating pattern tile or switch can be any dimension, but it needs to be a minimum of 150 DPI. If you're uploading a file that is less than 150 DPI or more than 150 DPI, it will not prompt, but it will adjust the dimensions of your pattern block in order to increase or decrease the DPI to 150. You can adjust the DPI to a higher value as per your need, but the minimum is 150 DPI. I have explained about resolution in my first class an introduction to surface pattern design. You can check it out. And you can also check out this article under designing FAQs to get a better understanding. Ensure your design complies with copyright laws and does not violate any regulations. Once confirmed, click on Upload and the process may take a few minutes depending on the file size. Once you have uploaded your designs, you will need to start navigating your way around the design layout page. If you upload a single design, you will be presented with that file in the design layout page, once it's uploaded. If you upload multiple files at a time, you will be presented with the design library, once they have uploaded and simply clicking on any design will get you to the design layout page. The design layout page helps to set the scale and repeat information for all artwork uploaded to the site. When a design is uploaded, it is assigned a unique design ID and design URL that links to its design layout page. This section up here, what it's showing you is all the designs that you have in your design library. Blow, you will find the quick action menu on the left. When you upload a design, it's automatically made private, and here we can choose to make the design public. This view all products, you get to see a mock up of your design on various products, which helps you choose the size and scale of the design. If you have uploaded a file and notice that the pattern repeat is incorrect or for any other reason you wish to submit a revised version of the design, simply use this upload a revision button. The download original option allows you to retrieve the initial file you upload it. This can be particularly useful if you need to create a new print size, but can't locate the original file. Delete design, again, not used too frequently, and this is used if you want to delete your design. Lastly, there is the enter challenge option, which redirects you to a page where you can submit your design for various design challenges. Once more, a convenient quick action button is go to design library. If you are currently viewing a single design and wish to return to the design library without navigating back up and then scrolling down, this provides a faster route. Like many websites, there are multiple navigation options available. Then my design challenges, that's if you want to go and look at all the designs that you have entered into challenges. Moving on at the top, you will see the design title. This is simply the title under which your design was saved and uploaded. Image preview window. This visual layout will change as you update each setting in the layout and size tools. In order to reduce page loading time, a photo with lower resolution might be utilized, resulting in a slightly blurry appearance. The layout of your design always starts from the bottom left corner of the image preview window. If your image appears cut off in the preview, it will be printed in the same manner if you order that size. Rulers confirm the dimensions and design scale around the image preview window. Rulers along the top and left side of the image preview window help to visualize the size of your design. They will always be shown in inches unit on this page. There are five ways that a design tile can be saved on fabric. It completely depends on whether you are uploading a patent tile or swatch. You can learn more about patent tile and swatch in my class, an introduction to surface pattern design where I share different types of repeats and layouts and the difference between a patent tile and swatch. Basic repeat just creates tiles of your design straight up and down. Half drop and half brick repeats stagger the tiles either vertically or horizontally respectively. Center repeat takes itself quite literally and prints one iteration of any image right in the middle of whatever size and length of fabric is selected. Mirror repeat will mirror the design both vertically and horizontally, like the four quadrants of a graph. Switch between fabric and wallpaper settings here and you can have different settings for each. The layout for wallpaper includes the same features as on the fabric tap, but access to some features depend on the size of your design tile. Unlike fabrics, there are some limitations for the layout of wallpaper designs. Designs on wallpaper must repeat once or an even number of times across the 24 inch width of the roll so that it will properly install. This means that certain repeats are blocked at certain scale sizes for wallpaper designs. For example, brick and mirror repeat options are not available when a design is saved to repeat once across the 24 inch width. Because each role prints identically, these repeat options are unavailable at this width. But once a design is made smaller, such as 212 inch repeats per panel, these repeats become available for the design layout. So in a nutshell, fabric and wallpaper of the same design can be saved with different layouts, but there are more limitations when it comes to saving wallpaper layouts in comparison to fabric layouts. You can always change the settings. Just be sure to click Save Changes. Once you have decided on the layout, you like best. Design size. When uploading a design to spoon flour, as you are aware, it should have a minimum of 150 DPI. If it falls below or above this threshold, spoon flour will adjust its dimension to reach 150 DPI. For instance, if you upload a design with less than 150 DPI, spoonflower will reduce its size significantly to achieve the required DPI. Conversely, if your design is saved at a higher DPI, spoonflower will increase its dimensions to bring the DPI down to 150. We have these buttons here that allow us to resize the design. The rulers are particularly useful when fine tuning the size of your design. With the smaller and bigger buttons, the resizing is somewhat arbitrary, but there is the change DPI button where you can input a specific DPI value and apply the change accordingly. Again, remember to hit save changes to retain the adisted size of your design. Fabric selection. By default, this is set to petal signature cotton. However, if your design requires printing on a specific width of fabric, selecting this option and clicking Save changes will generate a note on the product page in the marketplace, advising customers to choose this preferred fabric type. For instance, I recently had a customer request for a blanket made from MinkyFabric, which is wider than petal signature cotton. So I created the repeat and selected Minky as the fabric option before saving it. Now, when a buyer wishes to purchase it, they will receive a message recommending the selected fabric. Choose a size and amount. The image preview window will rescale as the item size is changed. Save changes. Make sure to click on it each time you make a change and want to save it. In the next lesson, we will learn how to use marketing and selling section for each design. 8. Marketing & Selling Your Design: Once you have uploaded and sized your designs, you are ready to sell it in the marketplace. Well, now it's time to make sure your designs can be found by customers who are searching for designs like it on spoon flour. Even the most beautiful designs need thoughtful descriptions and dynamic tags so customers can locate them. Filling out the marketing and selling section of each design in your library is a good practice. You will find the marketing and selling section when you scroll down the design preview page. There are several entry boxes to complete. Firstly, your design needs a unique and descriptive name. After the thumbnail of your work, it is the most important detail and should be direct and to the point. Often a good title will contain the likely description a customer would search for. The name will be used by the search engine and should contain words relative to the design. If you are creating multiple color ways or scales of a design, it is recommended to name them consistently. Next as for the description. This is a short description of your design. You can approach it however you like, but make sure to include who might want to use this design and what might they want to make from it. In additional detail, you can expand on the general description of your design in this field. But this is also where you will include essential details that customer must know before ordering the design. For instance, if the design was uploaded to print as a fat porter as a t towel, write that here. Or if the design is cut ins that needs to print on 56 inch wide, you will want to share that in this field. If the design is longer than 1 yard or 1 meter, include the minimum quantity, such as two continuous yards to order. Additionally, if you are willing to re scale or personalize the design, share your contact information here. Select the thumbnail that best represents your designs to customers. Fat quarter, swatch, and crop are the three options to choose from. This is the initial image shown in the search results. And hopefully, it will inspire a click to see the full design on fabric, wallpaper, or home decor. Choose wisely. Moving on, let's talk about tags. These are descriptive words for short phrases that the search algorithm utilizes to generate results for customers both within the site and on external search engines. You can input up to 13 tags for each of your designs. These tags combined with the design title play a crucial role in helping the algorithm locate your designs. It's essential for these tags to be distinctive enough to stand out yet not overly intricate to the point where customers might overlook them. Another helpful tip here is to review the tax associated with favorite artists and their popular designs. For instance, if you have created a Chevron pattern, you can search for the best selling chevron patterns and observe the taxs used by those artists. This can provide valuable insights. Understanding how search functions in the Spoonflower marketplace is also beneficial. I highly recommend reading the guide on searching the Spoonflower marketplace to learn how to use tags effectively and improve your visibility in customer searches. I'll include the link in the resources for your convenience. While artists often like to describe their inspiration in the descriptions, any tags using the names of other contemporary artist artwork or copyrighted property will be removed from your design page. Tags can be a single word or short phrase, no more than 23 characters. If you add more than 23 characters, it will get cut. They can include letters, numbers, spaces, and slash or hyphens. The best tags cover the style, predominant colors, and any defining objects in the design. To add several tags to a design all at once, separate the words or phrases with a comma and press enter. To best utilize your tags, you should avoid duplicate words like floral flower, multiple tenses of a word like leaf leaves, leafy, Synonyms like and and misspelled words, keyword stuff tags, product names and copyrighted property. I will share the link to the article preparing designs for the marketplace where you can read more about making your designs easy to find with tags. You can find it in the project and resources section. School Plat is presently engaged in beta testing a new upload process and the design layout page, including the selling and marketing section. Once the new method is successfully implemented, I will adjust the class accordingly and provide updates. In the next lesson, we will learn about the process of digital proofing on spoon claw. 9. Understanding Digital Proofing: In this lesson, I will walk you through Spoon class new digital Proofing process using the digital Proofing tool. You can access this feature by clicking the T proof design button under the sales section of the design layout page. Use the pan and Zoom features to review your design. After you have panned over your image, you will have the option to choose looks good, or I see an issue on the bottom right of your screen. If you need to make any changes, follow the steps in revising your design, save the updated design file on the device. Make sure to save the updated design file on your device with a different file name. If you upload a design with the same file name, the original design may remain without any update. Once uploaded, it will take five to 10 minutes for the system to update the new design. Refresh the design page before making any layout changes. Double check the repeat settings. Confirm the DPI and dimensions are correct. Once again, click on the proof design button. After you approve your design with digital proofing, You will have the option on the design layout page to update the design settings. You must manually set each design for sale in the marketplace. The site will not allow you to make these updates until after you have proved your design. You can choose either fabric or wallpaper or both. When you select to sell on fabric, your design will also be made for sale on all spoon flower home decor products unless you have opted out in the design distribution within your account settings. Uploading identical designs at a different scale for fabric, be certain to review the wallpaper settings a second time to make sure each design is unique. Quite often, two different scales of fabric will convert the wallpaper to the same scale. Consider offering multiple scales of wallpaper designs by adjusting the settings. If your design is a half drop repeat, be sure to share this information in the description field. Your designs will then show up in search. Though it may take some time like ten to 15 minutes for the servers to fully update these changes. In the next lesson, we will learn about batch editing our designs in the design library. Okay. 10. Design Library & Batch Editing : The design library is home to every design you upload on spoon flower. There are a variety of displays, filters, and actions available to help you organize the library in a way that works best for you. On the left side, you will find the add design option, which will direct you to the design upload page. Next is add collection. When you click on it, a small pop up window will appear where you can name the collection, provide a description, choose to make it public or keep it private, and then add your designs to the collection. Next up, we have filters for refinement that can tailor which designs you see in your library. All designs displays every design uploaded to your account. For sale designs shows proof designs that are also marked for sale in the marketplace. Public designs presents public designs that are not available for sale. Private designs provides access to designs saved as private. Collections links to a new library review organized by your saved collections. Okay. Design challenge entries. Click here to view all the designs you have entered into challenges. Finally, the new filter previously for sale. Click on it to see the designs you have made unavailable for sale or which have been delisted by Spoonflower. Moving on, there are three primary views in the design library. You can easily tol between them by clicking on one of the three ons. Large displays a large thumbnail version of each design in one column with quick links to all general actions. For the grit, design thumbnails are smaller and tied in rows of four while offering access to general actions through a drop down menu. In the list view, each design is displayed as a row in the table view. You can look at both general actions and advanced patch editing features. We also have a search bar where you can look for a design by its name. The sorting drop down allows you to organize the order of your designs in one of the following ways. Oldest to newest based on when the design was originally uploaded, oldest first. Newest to oldest based on when the design was originally uploaded, but new. A alphabetically by design name to a reverse alphabetically by design name. Fresh picks based on an algorithm that incorporates new designs, popular ones, and the trending ones to try to offer customers a mix of both newer and older designs. Best selling based on overall sales with the best selling designs shown first. In the large view, these actions are presented as links next to the design thumbnail. In the other two views, you can access the same actions from the drop down menu with the title, select and action. Change design name, clicking the design name will allow you to edit it collections. Clicking into this unlabeled text field will create a drop down listing your active collections. Select any listed collections to add the design or click on the cross to remove it. Other actions include print and purchase. This takes you to the design layout page so you can begin an order. Make public or private, update the visibility of the design in the marketplace. Upload revision, upload a revised version of the design here. Download original allows you to download the file you originally uploaded to your computer or device. Delete design, clicking this will delete the design from the site. The list few offers extra features that simplify uploading new designs and batch edits. While you may edit design tags and descriptions directly in the design layout page, you can also edit these fields in this view for individual or a batch of related designs. For instance, select all the designs by clicking on the top box or choose specific ones by clicking individual boxes. Then select an action from the drop down menu, such as adding new tags. After typing the new tags into the text field. Update. Once completed, a tel banner will appear at the top of the design library, indicating that your selected design tags have been set. Your chosen designs will now be updated with the new tags. Edit description. Enter a new description, or if you have some current description, it will be replaced by the new one for each design. Edit tags entering more tags will chain them with already entered tags. If you try to enter over 13 tags, those tags will not be included. Delete designs. Display preferences, make public or private. Basic thumbnail preview, Add to collection, select the collections to add or remove multiple design. Additionally, you can click on any design thumbnail to go to its design layout page to edit the layout and scale. One thing to note here is that you can modify the view mode and batch edit your designs on the design library page. However, the size and repeat of each design must be finalized on its design layout page. I would like to share some recent updates that Spoonflower has implemented. Please keep these points in mind. Each Spoonflower shop is allocated 50 designs that can be made available for sale per week. This counts as a single design ID. Meaning that if you make it available on both fabric and wallpaper, it will be considered as one design. Whether you upload variations in different scales or entirely different unique designs, the limit remains fixed at 50 designs for sale per week. Each size scale or color variation of a design constitutes a new design ID and is treated as a new entry. The weekly limit resets at the beginning of each new week, which starts at 12:00 A.M. Monday morning United States Specific time and ends on Sunday. To track your weekly limit, a banner will appear when you have listed 45 designs for sale. Counting down to the last five designs for the week. It will display messages like you have five more designs, you can list for sale. You have four more designs, you can list for sale, and so on. Consider keeping one to five of those spots free in case you receive a change request from a customer. The limit of 50 designs per week does not carry over to the next week. If you choose not to make designs available for sale in a specific week, the limit resets, and you lose those unused spots. If you can't access the digital proofing button or find the option to make your design available for sale, it indicates that you have reached your weekly limit. Another update is on de listing of designs. If a design for sale in the marketplace is at least 2-years-old, has not sold in the past two years and has less than 50 favorites. The design may be removed from sale by spoon flour. De listing is not deleting. A de listed design will be made private and maintain all data associated with it, number of favorites, who favored it, whose collection it was in, et cetera. You will not be notified ahead of time. However, one way to see which designs could be at the risk for de listing would be to sort your design library from oldest to newest. While the exact date of load is not shown, you can still evaluate which of your older designs may need a little work in terms of titles, tags, description, et cetera. You will be notified via your spoon flaw messages when you have designs that have been delisted. While you can always relist any of your delisted designs by marking them available for sale again, it is recommended to consider if there are any improvements you could make to the design before relisting. This may include refining the design itself or optimizing the title description, and tags to enhance its discoverability. It's important to note that the designs included in the color way feature will not be di listed. In the next lesson, we will learn about physical proofing using Pillard. Okay. 11. Physical Proofing with Fill A Yard: Nothing can replace an actual physical proof of your design. There are many variables involved when it comes to the printing process. It is important to keep in mind that colors can look very different once printed when compared to how they represent on a computer monitor. If you wish to see how your designs look when printed on fabric, utilizing collections to create and print a fill yard project is a cost effective method for artists to physically prove up to 42 designs simultaneously. With Phil yard, you can print multiple designs within 1 yard or two yard lengths. Before starting your first Pillard project, you first need to create a personal collection from your favorite designs. Once you have created your collection, however over the person icon and choose collections from the drop down menu. You can also go to your design library and select the collections option under the view section. To start a Pillard from within your collection stage, hover over any collection and click on the small pattern square. Or you can go to the collection you would like to work with, and then you will see a start designing button at the top. Now comes selecting a template and fabric. This will show the collection name and how many designs are there in the collection. Next, choose a template from the six template options. The horizontal and vertical split templates can be used for two designs with 1 yard of fabric, half yard of each. The 1 yard chterquilt six inch square template can contain up to 42 different designs. The two yard chterquilt nine inch square template can be used for up to 48 designs. There are also other project template options like dinner napkins with 2 yards of fabric, and infinity scarves with 2 yards of fabric. Next, choose a fabric. The fabric option available for each template will depend on the one you have selected. Once you have made all the selections above, click the design your project button to continue with building your filler yard. To fill up the blank template you have selected, you will need to first select the design you would like to start working with. Once the highlight is visible around the design, you can start filling in any portion of the template by clicking into each space. Keep in mind, it's not possible to customize each space of the template to have the design centered or to change the scale and orientation. The template mimics the yardage of the design you are using. Also, the template can't be saved, so it is best to finish the template at one time. Once the template is finished, you can add the design to your card with the add to card button and continue to shop or proceed through the checkout process. In the next lesson, we will learn about the basics of designing tea towels and wall hangings on spoon flour. 12. Designing Tea Towels & Wall Hangings: Spoon flower wall hangings and t towels are very popular gift choices during holiday seasons. Both products share the same dimensions. And if you choose to make a design available for a T towel, it will automatically be available as a wall hanging. Both the spoon plow wall hanging and t towels are designed to be displayed in portrait orientation. Both finished products will measure 16 inch by 24 inch. These items are printed on linen cotton canvas and are expertly sewn in house by spoon plow team. The t towels feature a small fabric loop for hanging while the wall hanging comes with solid beach wooden magnetic hangers for easy display. When creating your design, make sure to follow these guidelines. Your design must be uploaded and saved at a dimension of 27 inch by 18 inch. However, keep in mind that the finished hems and installation features will reduce the overall size of your design. Ensure that your art falls within the design safe zones. Create your file at 4,050 pixel white and 2,700 pixels tall for an upload of 27 inch by 18 inch at 150 DPI. Extend the background color or pattern all the way to the edge. Keep main design details centered within the design safe zone that is 14.5 inch by 21.5 inch to ensure that no details are sewn over during construction or overlap by a hanger. While you will upload this design like any other design for the marketplace. You must also add the tag SF rotate within the marketing and selling section on the design layout page. This important step alerts the program to rotate your design 90 degree clockwise when displaying it in the marketplace and ensures it will print in the proper orientation when it is ordered. Once the tax and description are updated, to confirm that your wall hanging is displayed correctly, scroll back to the top of the design page and click view all products. Scroll down the all products page to find the item in living and dining. If something is off, come back to the design product page and confirm the orientation of your design in the image preview window is laying on its side top to the left. Sprotate is correctly spelled and formated. In the next lesson, we will learn how to create themed and curated collections on spoon flower. 13. Creating Themed & Curated Collections: Collections allow you to save designs in related groups for various uses. A collection may include a mix of thousand personal or marketplace designs and will also have distinct URLs that can be shared with others for marketing purpose if their collection is public. Through collections, artists and verified sellers will promote their marketplace designs. A maker or trade member create them to share available designs. Quilas may use a collection to save favorite prints for a fill yard project. Moreover, collections are the starting point for reduced prices for proofing and sampling. To create a collection, power over the person icon in the upper right corner and click collections. From the collection page, power over the gray box on the left, and click on the plus or create a new collection. Fill in the fields in the new collection proper window. When you make it public, it is searchable and viewable by others in the marketplace. If you make it private, it is only for you and always indicated by a gray lock. Click create to save the collection. To add designs to a new collection. While there are a few ways to add designs to a collection, you simply need to look out for the correct button to click. Since it is the same link for designs during searches and on product pages. Go to any design search or product page in the spoon flowers marketplace. Look for and click this small box plus sign near the design image. The add to collection pop up menu will appear. From here, search for your collection or scroll the menu. Add the design to a collection by clicking plus box. To remove the design, click on the minus. If you need to create a new collection, click Create New, fill in name, description, and determine visibility on create a new collection page. Click the Plus box next to this new collection. Click done when the design is properly added. And it will show up in your collected collections. To edit the basic information of a collection. Click on the pen icon that appear when hovering over a collection block. Make any changes and then click update. To change the top three designs shown in any collection block, go into the collection page and hover over the design you want to feature. Select one, two, or three to update the position of the design. The page will update after a couple of seconds. To delete a collection, click on the trash can icon in the upper right of the collection page. Keep in mind, deleted collections cannot be recovered, and they would need to be rebuilt manually. There are two main types of collections you can create. The first type is themed collections, which include a main print or hero print, a few coordinating designs and blenders, and some solid colors. The second type is curated collections, where you group designs from different sets that complement each other. This is a good strategy for boosting sales because someone looking for bedding might also be interested in matching curtains or wallpaper and your curated collection could meet their needs perfectly. To navigate to your saved collections, simply hover over the profile menu in the top right corner and choose collections. The tabs will display organized by collection type. Design collection display collection with your original designs. Collected shows collections you have created using marketplace designs by others and yourself. Featured in if you publicly uploaded designs, This shares the collections created by others that include your vos Using the design library in list view offers an efficient tool for accessing and updating designs across pre made collections. Here you can edit the titles, tags, description, of all the designs that are a part of the particular collection without going through the entire design library. Collections will simplify your physical proofing process. Using fart, you can print up to 42 designs that are included in the collection. Plus, you can use a collections unique URL for marketing. It is recommended to save every design as a part of one or more collections. When a buyer views are designed, they can see other designs from the same collection below it, which leads to your collection page and potentially more sales. But if a design isn't a part of any collection, it will just show fabric details, and below that, similar designs by other artists in the marketplace will be recommended. You can save individual designs into collection that are part of same color family, theme or style. You can access collections through three different pathways, but each of these locations offer very specific access. You can access all collections including personal patterns, public designs, plus other collections that include ear work through the user drop down menu or my dashboard. Review all collections while directly accessing personal designs by clicking collections along the left menu of your design library. See your designs as your customers see them in my shop by clicking collections along the left menu on your shop page. In the next lesson, we will learn about uploading multiple color ways and sizes of designs. 14. Uploading Multiple Colorways & Sizes: Spoon flaw provides the color was feature on the product page for thousands of designs. The color way feature groups three or more designs together that have the same original design elements, but use different colors throughout to help customers easily see what options are available. Having consistent titles and tags between your color way designs will help improve the ability to detect them as well. Starting in 2024, spoon flour will be detecting color base for all newly made for sale designs on an ongoing basis. It is also a great practice to involve color options as the designs included in the color way feature are less likely to be dai listed. Another thing I would like to mention here is that it's a great idea to include some solid colors in your shop. You can upload individual color design files with matching hex codes alongside your more intricate designs. To do that, create a small canvas of 150 pixel by 150 pixel in your preferred design software. Fill the canvas with a color using the hex code. Save this file as a PNG or JP. Upload the design. Remember, even for selling solid color designs, you will still need to digitally proof it. Ensure to save this design in a collection with the coordinating designs and other plain colors. Now, let's discuss visualizing the size and scale of designs. Spoon flow does not offer size adjustment options to buyers. Artists must provide multiple size of their designs in their shop. The number of size options and the scale depends entirely on the design and its intended use. It is advisable to provide three to four size options, including small, medium, and large scale. Additionally, sometimes I also include an extra small size, especially for buyers who design small accessories like dog collars, hair bands, and scrunches. While there isn't a perfect rule for determining size, here are some general suggestions to help you determine the appropriate size. Understand the preferences and needs of your target audience to scale designs effectively. Consider whether they require larger medium or smaller scale designs for specific uses. Keep a during the design process to access element sizes and proportions accurately. You can also print a small section of your design on your home printer to gauge the actual size and suitability. Engage with your audience to gather feedback on preferred element sizes. Experiment with the viewing size of the design in the spoon for designer interface using options like test swatch or fat quarter. Utilize vertical and horizontal rulers for closer inspection and more accurate scaling. Maintain consistency across fabric and wallpaper designs by matching DPI settings. Okay. Review the design on Spoonflowers product mockups to visualize how it appears on various products. Click on view all products in the designer interface to see the design on Spoonflowers mockups of different products. Use the feature to evaluate scale and make necessary resizing adjustments. In the next lesson, we will learn about designing for metallic wallpapers. 15. Designing Metallic Wallpapers: In their most recent announcement, Spontl revealed the introduction of a new wallpaper option digitally printed on gold or silver metallic material. In response to current market trends and consumer preferences, metallic wallpaper has emerged as the ideal solution for interior decorators and high end designers. Here is a quick overview of how purchasing metallic wallpaper works. Spoonflower customers can choose any design to be printed on this Lux wallpaper. It is available in both silver and gold option. No need to check an additional box in your design library to make it available in your Spoonflower shop. As with all spoon flaw designs, it is important to note that areas in your designs that are white will be left unprinted. For most of the fabric and wallpaper substrates, this means that the white of the material is displayed. With the new metallic wallpaper, areas of white in the design will display the gold base paper when a customer purchases gold metallic wallpaper, and silver when a customer purchases silver metallic wallpaper. Customers can select any designs from the marketplace to be printed onto metallic wallpaper. But when designing specifically for this wallpaper type, keep in mind that translucent areas will allow the gold or silver of the base paper to come through. This can dramatically change how a color appears on the wallpaper. I ordered a few samples of my own designs to see how they look and to give you my feedback so you as designers can make the most of it. Here are my observations. First of all, these wall papers look much better in reality than in the mockups with a beautiful shine and texture. The metallic base also affects the colors in your design, not just the white or transparent areas. Personally, I feel cool color designs align well with the silver base. While warm color designs look really nice on the gold base. If your design has a lot of colors, it can be tough to visualize the final results beforehand. But the dotone and monochromatic designs are quite close to what is seen in the mockups. Consider ordering a few of your designs on wallpaper watches so you can see how they print with a metallic base. Here is another simple way to test how your designs will appear on the gold and silver bases. Download the provided PSD and AI files, each containing two layers, one for silver texture and one for the gold texture. Place your design below these layers. Turn on the silver layer and make sure it's blending mode is set to multiply to preview how your colors will look on a silver base. Conversely, turn off the silver layer and turn on the gold layer, also set to multiply to see how your colors will appear on a gold base. You can also compare these previews with spoonflows product mockups. Okay. Additionally, you can create a color chart featuring all your preferred colors and check them all at once. In the next lesson, we will learn everything about design challenges on spoon flower. 16. Participating in Design Challenges: Spoon flower design challenges are an opportunity to boost up your creative skills and join fellow designers in a friendly competition around a specific theme. Design challenge themes are announced month by month to make sure you have ample time to create themes for the following months are shared on the first Friday of the current month. Click into the C challenge terms and conditions link published within the call for each individual design challenge. Ensure to allocate sufficient time to thoroughly review these articles. However, it is good to know the rules that always apply. All designs will be eligible for public voting and the popular vote determines the top 100 winning designs. Those top hundred designs will be made available for sale without proofing. As long as the designer is already a verified seller. Designs previously uploaded on spoon flour are not eligible for this contest. Designs do not require printed proofing to enter the contest. A designer may enter only one design in each challenge. All entries undergo moderation before voting commences, and there may be occasions where designs need to be withdrawn for various reasons. Learn more about it in the design challenge, troubleshooting and eq and stick to the rules. To submit your design into a challenge, upload your design, adjust your entry on the design layout page and click Save Changes. Click the enter a challenge button on the left. Select the correct design challenge from the drop down menu. Under what challenge do you want to enter. Review the voting preview image to make sure your design displays properly. Confirm your design fits the prompt by clicking and adding a thoughtful title and description. Click Submit entry. If you're not sure, click Edit Design thumbnail or cancel and return to the design library to adjust and re save the settings and review the design until you're happy. After you submit your entry, your design will automatically be saved to public so it can be seen during voting. If you mark your design as private, after entering it, your design will be removed from being seen in the challenge. To confirm your design is entered, however over to your profile icon, click My design challenges from the drop down menu. On the My design challenges page, you will see the challenges you have entered, votes you have received, and the top ten wins. You are free to make changes to your design before the published contest entry window closes. However, please refrain from editing your design after the submission deadline has passed. These changes will not be reflected your entry and may impact the accuracy of how the design is represented in your design library and on the voting page. To withdraw your design from the design challenge. Click my design challenges from the drop down menu. Now, click withdraw under the design that you wish to withdraw. After the voting window for a design challenge closes, votes are tulated and a ranked list of all entries is published on the design challenge page. The top 50 design will also be made immediately for sale in the marketplace. Be sure to complete seller verification before your first entry. From this page, you will find links to the results for every challenge. To find your results, click on the particular challenge page and then search by your shop name, screen name or design name by using Control F on your keyboard. You can also view all your challenge entries by visiting the M Design challenges page. One of the best way to participate in the Spoonflower community is by scrolling through the hundreds of vibrant designs, submitted to the design challenges and voting for your favorites. To participate in the voting process of any ongoing challenge, navigate to the artist corner and select design challenges from the drop down menu. Click on the Open Challenge available for voting where you will find the voting deadline and the theme of the challenge. You will then have the opportunity to browse through thousands of stunning patterns created by fellow artists. Vote for a minimum of three designs, and you can also favorite designs by clicking on the Hart icon. This process provides a wonderful learning opportunity as you get to see various interpretations of the same theme by talented artists. Engaging in design challenges isn't a requirement for achieving good sales on spoon flour. But it is highly beneficial if you enjoy healthy competition, seek inspiration for new patterns, and aim for free marketing opportunities. When your design ranks well in these challenges, spoon flower provides additional exposure, ultimately contributing to increased sales. In the next lesson, we will learn how to explore trends and find inspiration on Spoonflower. 17. Exploring Trends & Finding Inspiration: If you are seeking inspiration and trend results from spoon flower, here are some effective tips. Explore best seller designs. Regularly browse through Spoonflower best seller designs to understand popular trends and themes. Analyze what makes these designs successful and incorporate elements into your own work. Follow trend setting artists. Identify artists whose design consistently perform well and follow them on Spoonflower. Studying their style evolution and creative process can provide valuable insight into current trends and techniques. Attend webinars. Spoonflower often hosts webinar featuring industry experts, discussing design trends, techniques and best practices. Participating in these webinars can broaden your knowledge and inspire new ideas for your work. Read blog posts. Stay updated with Spoonflows blog posts, which often cover topics such as design trends, color forecasting and patent creation tips. These resources can offer valuable guidance for staying ahead of the curve. Follow social media channels. Follow Spoonflower on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to stay informed about new design trends, featured artists and community events. Engaging with Spoon flowers online community can also foster connections and collaborations with fellow artists. Keep observing. Continuously observe your surroundings, both online and offline for inspiration. Pay attention to fashion, home decor, nature, and art movements to identify emerging trends and adapt them to your own creative style. By incorporating these tips into your artistic process, you can leverage spoonflower as a valuable resource for inspiration and trend forecasting, ultimately enhancing the quality and relevance of your designs. In the next lesson, we will learn how to save high resolution product mockups for promoting your designs on social media. 18. Saving High Resolution Product Mockups: In this lesson, we will learn how to save rendered images of your designs from any marketplace product to use on personal social media channels or websites. Link into any of your designs through your design library. Click view all products from the left side menu. Right click on the rendered image you want and select open image in new tab. Personalize the size of image in this new tab by updating the to S for a smaller render or L for a larger version, and then pressing Enter. Right click the image and choose Save image as to save it to your device. Okay. Use this image as you like, but be sure to include direct URLs to the spoon flower marketplace for that product so people can find and order your work. In the next lesson, we will explore the steps you can take to fully utilize this platform. 19. Take Action!: To maximize your presence and engagement on spoon flour, consider the following strategies. Frequent design updates. Keep your portfolio fresh by regularly adding new designs. This increases your visibility in the trending and newest sections, where dedicated community members often seek fresh inspiration. Build artist connections. Expand your network by favoring other artists design and following them. This not only helps you build connection within the community, but also increases your exposure as your profile appears in their connections. Participate in design challenges. Showcase your creativity by entering design challenges. Winning or being featured in these design challenges can significantly boost your visibility. As top designs are showcased prominently across Poker's platforms. Engage with customers. Utilize the message center to connect with customers who purchase your designs. Requesting photos of their creation fosters a sense of community and provides valuable feedback for future designs. Leverage social media. Share your designs on social media platform using relevant hashtags, craft engaging captions and include your shopping to drive traffic back to your spoon flower page. Utilize collections. Organize your designs into public collections and use the URLs for marketing purposes. This makes it easier for potential customers to explore your portfolio and find designs they love. Stay informed. Keep up with the trends and themes by engaging with the Spoon car community and reading the blog. While there is no specific formula for being featured, active participation and staying informed can increase your chances of recognition. By implementing these strategies, you can enhance your presence on Spoon car and increase your chances of reaching a broader audience. 20. Final thoughts: Thank you so much for watching my class. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. If you have any doubts or queries, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can leave your questions in the discussion page, and I'll be more than happy to help. If you found this class helpful, do consider leaving a review and sharing it with your friends. Also, don't forget to follow me on Skillshare to stay updated on my upcoming classes. Spoonflower has been a game changer in my career. It provides the artists a robust platform to not just share their unique designs, but also connect with a global audience. Whether you are keen on selling your patterns or simply sharing your creativity with the world, Spoonflower provides endless avenues for growth and success. Join us now and do share your product mock ups in the students project gallery. I'm really excited to see them. Additionally, you can also share them on social media and don't forget to tag me at Gitang Doby so I can like and comment. I'll be sure to keep you informed if there are any further updates on the Spoonflower website. Once again, thank you so much for joining me. I hope to see you in my next class until then happy creating. Okay.