10 Dorm Room Essentials

July 16, 2019July 17, 2019 ~ Julie ~ Leave a comment

Hey guys! Today I’d like to share with you 10 dorm room essentials to get you ready for heading back to school this fall.

Please note this post contains affiliate links.

1. Tapestries

Tapestries are wonderfully versatile decorations. You can put them on the walls surrounding your bed, or use them as a bed sheet.

2. Fairy lights

Fairy lights a.k.a. white Christmas lights add really pretty and soft lighting to your room. You can put them on the wall like in the picture below, or around the top and sides of a tapestry as a backdrop to your bed. This creates a really nice boho vibe and they can be a lot less bright and jarring than regular lamps or overhead lighting.

3. Pillows

If you’re going to be spending long hours reading and studying you might as well be comfortable. Add some pretty throw pillows to dial up your decor and give yourself some back support.

4. Cute bedding

You’ll be spending a lot of time on your bed so it might as well look cute and reflect your unique personality!

rose gold mandala bedroom comforter duvet

5. Cute stationary

From the dorm room to the classroom, everyone needs some cute stationary. You can find all kinds of unique notebooks, planners, pens and more. You can even get customized stationary with your name on it!

custom name modern clipboard pink and marble

6. Photos of Friends and Family

You might be away from home for a while, so it’s nice to have some photos of your friends and family close by. You’ll also be making a lot of new friends! A great way to showcase these special people and moments is to use a bulletin board. You can pin all kinds of photos into a fun collage to hang near your bed or work desk.

7. Cozy blankets

When the nights start getting long and cold, a nice fuzzy throw blanket is just what you need to curl up with a good book.

mandala pattern throw blanket for dorm room

8. Plants

Since you can’t have any pets it’s nice to add some greenery and life to your dorm to brighten things up. If you don’t have a window you can get a little grow lamp or even just some fake plants, which can really add to that zen boho vibe.

9. Posters

Posters are a dorm room must have! You could have pictures of your favourite celebrities or an iconic photo of your city to remind you of home. Even a motivational quote to start your day would be a great addition to your dorm room.

Adventure Landscape Sunset Dorm room Poster

Stay Wild Flower Child Mandala Dorm room Poster

10. Coffee Maker and Mugs

Everyone needs their morning coffee but buying it every day can add up! If your dorm allows it, invest in a small coffee maker like a Keurig or even just a french press with a hot water kettle. Make sure you pair it with a cute mug!

Pink and white tropical leaf pattern dorm room coffee mug

I hope you’ve found this list of dorm room essentials useful. Good luck at school this year!

Cheers,

Julie

Shop for more unique stuff for back to school here!

Beautiful Colour Palettes to Inspire Your Art

May 29, 2019May 29, 2019 ~ Julie ~ 2 Comments

Tropical sunset colour palettes blue purple lilac

Hi guys! Today I’m sharing a collection of beautiful colour palettes I made using my own photographs. Feel free to use them as inspiration for your art or colouring pages!

I always find myself struggling when it comes to colour schemes so I thought making a few of these would be a great resource to refer back to.

Turquoise blue summer water swimming pool colour swatches

Feel free to share these colour swatches on Pinterest or anywhere else you like to collect this sort of thing.

Crocus flower bright purple colour palettes

Another way I like to use these is for coloring mandalas. There are many more ways you can use these including inspiration for home decor!

Color swatches from a lake in British Columbia Canada

Make your own colour palettes using the Canva Color Palette Generator!

Let me know which one of these colour themes is your favourite by leaving me a comment below!

Want to see more of my photography? Check here!

Use these colour schemes to colour in one of my free colouring pages or even to draw your own mandalas using my template!

Cheers,

Julie

Yoga Mats on Society6!

January 31, 2019June 26, 2019 ~ Julie ~ 2 Comments

Guys, I’m really excited to announce that Society6 now has yoga mats!

I think my designs work quite well with this product. And the best part is that they are actually reasonably priced!

I’ve spent several hours over the past weeks customizing my designs to put on these mats, some were quite old so it was hard to locate the files on my computer!

These are so nice I might have to get one myself and then review it.

You could even combine the yoga mats with matching products to round out your fitness gear, like a tote bag or leggings!

These yoga mats come with a strap, are only 3.6 pounds, and are made out of latex and heavy-metal-free materials.

Check out my full yoga mat collection here.

Let me know what you think of these by leaving a comment below. Strike a pose!

Namaste,

Julie

PS – shop all my of my products here!

Painting a Mandala on my Wall

January 27, 2019August 29, 2019 ~ Julie ~ 11 Comments

This is a video I created showing the process of painting a large mandala mural on the wall of my apartment!

I already had this beautiful turquoise colour on my wall so I just used silver acrylic paint for the mandala.

Before I started painting, I created a template using string, a thumb tack, and white pencil crayon which easily wiped away with a damp cloth after the paint was dry.

Some of you have asked me to explain the process of creating the template so I will attempt to describe this below.

You will need:

1 thumb tack
string or yarn
pencil or pencil crayon
ruler

Steps:

Place the thumb tack where you want the center of your mandala to be.
Measure out a piece of string from the thumb tack to where you want the largest circle of your mandala to be (this will be the final size of your mandala).
Cut the string and tie one end to the thumb tack, and tie the other end to the pencil crayon.
Keeping the string taught, draw a circle all the way around, with the thumb tack in the center.
Cut off the pencil end of the string by a few inches.
Re-tie the pencil to the new end and draw another circle inside the first.
Repeat the process until you get close to the thumb tack and cannot draw any more circles.
Remove the tack, then use a ruler to draw lines across and diagonally from the middle.

You can use my Mandala Drawing Template as a guide for how your final template should look. Let me know if you need any more clarification!

It took me about 8 hours to complete this painting.

Check out the video and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Would you do this to your wall?

Cheers,

Julie

How to Sell Your Art Online in 5 Steps

November 14, 2018June 27, 2019 ~ Julie ~ 17 Comments

Step 1. Build your portfolio.

In order to start selling your art online, you should have a decent sized portfolio for potential customers to choose from. Aim for 10-25 artworks.

sketch book designs feathers pug painting watercolour

You can either make a bunch of new artwork, or dig up some old pieces that could work digitally or physically to sell.

Step 2: Decide where to sell your art.

Next, you’ll have to decide where to sell your art and that will depend on your medium, style, and goals as an artist.

Identify your audience and how you want to sell your art.

Are you going to sell primarily prints? (many avenues)
Are you going to sell physical work, such as paintings? (Etsy, or Fine Art America)
Do you create sculptures, jewelry or something else tangible? (Etsy)
Are you interested in designing t-shirts and/or home decor products? (Society6, Zazzle or Redbubble)

Check out my blog post about Where to Sell Your Art Online to help you decide.

For even more help on deciding where to sell your art online check out these posts:

Step 3. Optimize your artwork for sale

You’ll have to optimize your art digitally, or take a nice photo of it in order to sell it online.

Scan or photograph your artwork
Make it a large file size
Try to get sharp lines and true colors
Post process in a program like Photoshop to fix colors, or clean up scans.

Here is a an explanation of how I clean up my drawings using Photoshop and Illustrator

Step 4: Upload and enable as many products as possible

Upload your art to your chosen platform.

If you are going the Print On Demand route, only add to products that look good and work with the design.

Step 5: Market your products

This is where a lot of artists struggle because, well, we’re artists not business or marketing professionals!

Share your products and artwork on social media.
- Create an Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook page dedicated to your art.
- Ideally, choose one you use frequently so it’s not a burden to learn or use daily.
You may consider building a website, which can be a hub if you sell on multiple platforms. It could be a blog or just a portfolio of your work.
Check out my pages for inspiration:
To dive deeper into marketing, watch tutorials on YouTube or try Skillshare to hone your business skills or even artistic skills as your business grows.

There is a lot to learn on the business side, but don’t neglect your art!

Consistently create new designs so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t, and go from there.

Consistency is key!

For more tips on selling your art online check out these posts:

Social Media Marketing Tips For Artists
Blogging for Your Art Business
How to Increase Your Sales on POD Websites

I hope you’ve found this guide to selling your art online useful. Feel free to leave any additional tips or questions for me in the comments below!>

Cheers,

Julie

Selling your Art on POD Websites: TeePublic Edition

May 9, 2018June 27, 2019 ~ Julie ~ 9 Comments

I’ve recently started selling my designs on a new Print On Demand website, called TeePublic. I’ve made a few sales so far, and I wanted to share with you my experiences.

Read on to find out more about selling art on TeePublic and see if it might work for you!

Open a free TeePublic store and start selling your artwork today!

First Impressions of TeePublic

This POD is very T-shirt focused (it is TeePublic after all).
Prices are comparatively very reasonable. Maybe your friends/family won’t pay $30 for your t-shirt but they might be willing to pay $14!
Caters to branded and/or fan art. (Personally I avoid this because I’m not willing to have my stuff taken down due to copyright infringement)
Punny and funny designs also seem to do well.

Ease of Upload

Very quick and simple uploading process. Few steps.
Intuitive tagging (suggestions come up even before you start typing)!
Must use a .png image for the t-shirts (ie. no background).
You can upload patterns for some products like pillows or totes, but you can only use one version of the image, you can’t upload a different file for the t-shirt (so in that case there would be no t-shirt for that design).
As mentioned above, there is no ability to upload multiple versions of the same design to suit a different product type, so keep this in mind.
You can resize and centre your design easily.

TeePublic Storefront

Pretty basic. Focus is on the design and T-shirts.
No models, just images of the products by themselves.

Here is a screenshot of my store front:

T-shirt product page display:

Products and Pricing

A fairly small range of products but they are quite affordable.
Basic t-shirts are $14 for the first 3 days after upload, then they go up to $20.
T-shirts go on sale for $14 at least 1x per month. (Other products go on sale too)
A wide variety of shirt styles including hoodies and kids’ clothing are available.
They also have stickers, totes, tapestries, phone cases, mugs, pillows, notebooks and prints.
Prices in USD.

Shipping

Starts at $5.99 to the U.S. and Canada.

Payment

Paypal or Payoneer payment options.
Paid monthly on the 15th for previous month’s earnings.
Affiliate program available, but you have to apply.
They also have a “refer an artist” program, where you can potentially get paid if you refer someone to open a store and they make sales.

TeePublic Community

There is a Facebook group but it isn’t very active.
No obvious forum.
Ability to follow other designers but not to like their individual works.
Less sense of community than other platforms such as Zazzle or Redbubble.

Promotional Tools

You will get an e-mail once a month or so letting you know about upcoming sales.
In this email are links to download various advertisement templates catered to different social media platforms, which can be used and edited in Photoshop.
Teepublic advertises their top design picks on the homepage and through e-mail campaigns so if you can get noticed by them, they’ll do the work for you!

Summary

If your work is very graphic, and especially if you do fan art, TeePublic could be a great option for you.
Their website and uploading process is simple and easy to use.
Their affordable prices, especially $14 T-shirts, is an excellent way to entice buyers.

So, what are you waiting for?

Check out TeePublic today and let me know what your thoughts and experiences are in the comments below!

Cheers,

Julie