Sometimes something emerges in my sketchbook that catches me a little off guard and feels like it’s about to take me in a bit of a new direction. That’s what happened with this quick little illustration the other day.

Next week I’m embarking on a 100 day adventure with a group of fellow creatives in my 100 Creative Days workshop (registration is open and there’s still time to join!), and these motifs might be where I begin. Birds, sky, moon, words. I’ll be painting on small wooden panels during the workshop, with my sketchbook interspersed as needed — my kiddos and I will be traveling to Colorado just a couple days into the start of the workshop to help care for my mom, who’s having a pretty big surgery next week, and so I’ll need to be flexible in my daily creating. I think it’s always a good idea to stay flexible in our creating. It doesn’t need to be perfect. In fact, one thing that’s going to be really important for me during these 100 days is showing up honestly each day in the community space — sharing struggles, wins, aha moments, where I’m feeling resistance, setbacks, all of it.

I’m really excited to get started. Our kickoff call is on Jan. 21st, and day 1 of art-making is January 22nd.

Who could you be at the end of 100 creative days?
What kind of creations could you have to show for it?

If you want to find out, I’d love for you to join us. The workshop and community space just opened today and we’re starting to get to know each other already.

If this feels like something you might be interested in, you can click below to get more details:

Learn more + sign up

There’s power in making art.
There’s power in doing it every day.
And there’s magic in doing it together.

I haven’t worked on a project like this in several years, and it’s making me feel both nervous and excited, which is always a good sign for me that I’m heading in the right direction.

Come join me if this feels like a fit for you wherever you are in your life and your creativity right now!

xo
jess

Way back in something like February (which feels like a lifetime ago somehow) I dreamed up an idea for an event I wanted to create. One of my favorite things is being in a creative community full of creative people, all lifting each other up. I like helping people feel like they’re not alone, and I like making art with people. I like trying to swing things away from the curated perfection of Instagram and the internet in general and instead steer things toward realness, authentic sharing, and connection.

I didn’t know what this event would look like exactly when I was dreaming about it – it didn’t have a name, or a format, or a platform, or people on board, or anything like that. Another of my favorite things is having an idea and then having to figure out how to build it from the ground up. I like starting before I have a fully-formed plan. In fact, I don’t think it would even be possible for me to fully form a plan before starting; starting is what allows the plan to begin being created.

Fast forward to now, 7 or so months later, and what this idea turned into is this: ART OASIS.

It’s a FREE, week-long online creative retreat happening October 18-24, 2025, and YOU are invited!

This is the incredible group of artists and creative teachers that said YES to being a part of it:

I mean. This week is going to be EPIC.

If you’ve ever wished for a week just for creating, playing, and taking a big ol’ deep breath with your fellow creatives, this is it. Art Oasis is your invitation! There’s no pressure. No expectations. Just art-making, connection, and joy.

For seven magical, nourishing days, you’ll get:

• 5 creative sessions per day with over 30 amazing artists from around the world

• A mix of workshops, lessons, live calls, and cozy conversations (heart-centered chats about creativity + life)

• Gentle prompts and inspiration to keep your creativity flowing

• A private online community (our Oasis Hub, hosted on the Circle platform) where you can connect, share, feel supported, and make new friends with kindred spirits

Registration is open now – and it’s totally FREE! ✨

I’m so proud of this creation. It feels like what we need more of in the chaotic, wild world we’re living in right now.

There’s also an option to grab an All-Access Pass for $59, which will get you lifetime access to everything in the retreat (otherwise you can access it all through October 31st) as well as a huge, exclusive bonus bundle of goodies from the artists and me.

The fun officially begins on October 18th and lasts through October 24th.

The community space is already open, though, and you can go in and introduce yourself now and start to make new creative friends!

My wonderful creative assistant Emily and I have been working so hard on making this the most magical, soul-nourishing, welcoming, inspiring event possible, and we’re so excited for you to come join us. Truly.

LEARN MORE + SAVE YOUR SPOT HERE!

and I are getting so excited for The Variety Show to start in just a few days, on Monday March 31st!

We hosted 2 live pre-show sessions this week, answering questions about the upcoming event, our processes, the surface pattern design industry, Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, and more. Our friend also joined us, too, and gave us a peek into her super cool and unique fabric design process!

Watch the replays here:

Watch the Q+A replay

Watch the Draw-Along Replay

Tickets to The Variety Show are just $27. You can learn all about it right here. Sarah and I will be showing you how we use Photoshop and Illustrator to design repeat patterns, and we’ll be joined by special guests Peggy Dean, Jen Hewett, Dylan Mierzwinski, Rashida Coleman-Hale, and Melody Miller, who’ll be sharing their processes, insights, and wisdom throughout the week. It’s going to be epic, and if you’re at all interested in surface pattern design you definitely won’t want to miss it.

The fun begins on Monday March 31st at 9am PT/12pm ET!

Everything will be recorded and replays available, so no worries if you can’t make it live.

Hope to see you there!

xo
jess

Learn more + grab your seat

ps – know someone who might like to join you at The Variety Show? Share this with a friend and invite them to come along! Everything is better with a friend! :)

Hi friends!

I’m super excited to invite you to join in a very special workshop that I’m hosting with my friend Sarah Watts called The Variety Show, coming up March 31st – April 4th! This weeklong workshop/show is allllll about surface pattern design. Sarah and I are hosting it together, and we’ll be joined by a couple of very amazing special guests — artists Jen Hewett and Peggy Dean. Yes! And, we’ll have some surprise bonus appearances revealed soon who’ll join us throughout the week as well.

What if you could pull back the curtain on the surface design world — for real? Not just a peek, but a backstage pass to see different artists, their approaches, and their career paths in one incredible week?

That’s what’s happening in The Variety Show. You’ll get an inside look at several different programs and processes – including Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, and block printing. You’ll get to hear about how different artists use different programs and processes to achieve specific looks in their creative work, and how the programs sometimes weave together in fun, unique, and personal ways. We’ll tell you all about our weird and winding creative paths and the different ways we’ve each created our own versions of success.

LEARN MORE >

There’s a secret about having a creative career that I don’t think is talked about enough, and it’s this: we’re all just making it up as we go. It’s weird and it’s winding and often non-linear, and there’s a lot of diving into the unknown involved. There’s no magic ticket. There’s no blueprint or fill-in-the-blank set of templates or trend report you can follow or course you can take that will lead you to mega success. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years talking to working artists, and the general consensus for how to create your own success is this: Spend lots of time making lots of art. Make lots of mistakes. Figure out what works for you, and lean into that. Let it unfold in its own weird way. Work hard. Be persistent, consistent, and patient. Practice. Don’t stop. That may sound hard or depressing, but it’s actually the best news ever. There’s no road map, which means you can literally do it however you want. There’s no right way or wrong way – there’s only YOUR way. And when you give yourself permission to do things your way, it’s not going to look like anyone else’s, and you’ll be on your way to creating your own version of creative success, too.

This is where The Variety Show comes in.

We’re kicking things off Monday night, March 31st, with a live “speakeasy”, where we’ll be sharing unfiltered, authentic truths and stories from surface pattern designers who’ve been there and who’ve been working in the industry for decades! You’ll leave feeling excited, inspired, and empowered. It’s gonna be awesome!

There are lots of online courses about different design programs out there, but how do you know if it’s going to be the right choice for you and your artwork style?

It’s important to be clear on the different options you have available as you’re setting out on your creative career, so you can make informed choices that’ll lead you in the direction you want to go. Seeing different artistic paths, real-time workflows, and having honest discussions can help you make the right choice for you—without pressure and without FOMO. That’s what you’ll find in The Variety Show!

LEARN MORE + SIGN UP!

You’ll have a front-row seat to different approaches to surface pattern design and lots of amazing conversation around it all. We want you to be able to explore all your options so you can make informed + empowered decisions about how you want your surface pattern design learning to unfold.

We’ll help you demystify the surface pattern design proccess, and The Variety Show will help you find clarity and confidence to carve your own path in surface design.

Come join us!

xo
jess

ps – the sessions will be live, but everything will be recorded. So no worries if the times don’t jive with your schedule – you’ll be able to watch the replays when it’s convenient for you :)

pps – learn more + sign up here!

I like when the universe orchestrates things this way. A random email from an artist I don’t know leads to a decades-long real friendship with another artist I don’t know. Amazing. Meant to be? Maybe!

Sarah and I are both surface pattern designers, fabric designers, artists, moms to 2 young kids, and we’ve both experienced some pretty traumatic and hard stuff in our lives. We’ve had so many conversations about life and creativity and balancing the heavy stuff with this relentless drive to create and this hopeful nature that we both share – to find and create beauty in and from dark places, to keep going, and how the light and the dark of life coexist and add richness, realness, and really cool honest + inspiring kinds of connection.

So I’m verrrrrry excited to be collaborating with Sarah on a very special project. As you know, she’s a pattern designer like I am, but what you may not know is that our processes are pretty different. She primarily uses Photoshop, I primarily use Illustrator. We both use Procreate on the iPad, but in slightly different ways. She teaches Photoshop, I teach Illustrator.

What’s so cool about being an artist is that there’s not just one way to get where you want to go. For example, Sarah and I both design fabric, for different companies, and have really different design processes using different programs entirely. But the result is the same – colorful, quirky fabric. It can be really tempting to follow someone’s advice when they tell you they know the way to your success, but the truth is – the creative path is different for everyone. Sarah and I create some of the same types of things, but our paths have been different and we’ve each created our own versions of creative success that don’t look like each other’s or anyone else’s. And that’s how it should be!

There are lots of different tools to choose from, and there’s not one that’s the right choice for every artist (if someone tells you there’s only one way to do things, don’t listen and run the other way! haha) The tools and programs that make sense for you might not be the same as the ones that make sense for other artists. Your process will be your own – you’ll develop your own little quirky ways of doing things in Illustrator, or you’ll find that your artwork lends itself better to Photoshop, or that you don’t want to use a computer at all and you’d rather just make art on paper or canvas forever and call it good! And that’s ok! There’s absolutely no right or wrong. There’s just making a lot of art, trying a lot of things, listening to what makes your heart sing and how your gut leads you forward, and figuring it out as you go. Your path is supposed to be windy and weird and unique. That’s the path of an artist.

So! What is this special collaboration anyway? The Variety Show is a week-long live event focused on surface pattern design that Sarah and I are hosting together. You’ll get a peek into my process, Sarah’s, and those of a couple of other special guest artists as well. You’ll get a look at Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, and some analog techniques, too. Our intention is to pull back the curtain a bit and show you that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creative learning, and there are lots of ways you can learn how to design patterns if that’s something that you want to do.

Details: The door fee is $27, and the dates are March 31-April 4th. The event will be held live, and there will be replay options. You don’t need to download any programs to join in. No experience whatsoever is required! Sign up here!

I started teaching myself how to design patterns in Adobe Illustrator in 2007. I’d discovered and become obsessed with design blogs (this was back in the inspiration-filled early days of blogging!), and that’s where/how I first learned about surface pattern design. I saw artists on my favorite blogs who were creating these amazing patterns and collaborating with cool companies to get their designs onto products like bedding, wallpaper, stationery, and notebooks. It had never occurred to me that there were actual people designing the things I saw in stores – fabric, notebooks, etc – and it was like a massive lightbulb went on and I knew surface pattern design was the path for me. I remember feeling like “why didn’t anyone tell me this could be my job??!”

The trouble was that I didn’t know how to use a computer for much more than email and reading blogs. The good news is that I didn’t let that stop me. It took me over a year (and lots of frustration) to learn how to use Illustrator and to make my first successful pattern that repeated properly, but it was the best feeling in the world! I was hooked. That was 18 years ago (ummmmm, how has it been that long omg), and designing patterns is still my very favorite thing. I’ve worked with dozens of companies and have designed hundreds of patterns, and it still lights me up now like it did then. I think that’s how you know you’re doing something right. If you still love it.

Anyway. I made a FREE 39-page PDF guide all about surface pattern design and how to get started if it’s something you’d like to learn more about. (Plus, it’s very pretty, if I do say so myself!)

Download the free guide

I also teach a class called Pattern Camp, where you learn how to use Illustrator and design your own patterns in a super-short amount of time. Like, 2 days. It might seem impossible, but I promise you it’s not.

The next live Pattern Camp class is coming up on April 12-13, 2025 – it’s a fast-paced, no fluff approach to learning how to use the program and to get you designing patterns quickly – without all the frustration that I went through when I taught myself all those years ago. You can learn more about it right here.

It’s fun looking back on my first patterns and seeing how far I’ve come! I wonder what it’ll be like looking back on all this 18 years from now….. what a weird thought. Will I still be designing patterns? What will my life look like another 18 years from now? Contemplations for another day, perhaps…

For now, I hope you like the guide and find it helpful if you download it! Let me know if you have any q’s! :)

Download the FREE guide

My kids and I spent the weekend in Colorado visiting my family, who were all gathered to celebrate my Grandma turning 98. Ninety-eight! Most of my family still lives in Colorado, and I’m the lone sibling out of 5 of us that lives a plane ride away (I live in Portland, OR).

Here we all are:

I’m the oldest, and the shortest (I’m on the left there). My youngest sister, Bizzy, is the pregnant one – she’s 10 years younger than me. My brother Marc is gigantic – 6’5”. Next to him is my sister Britt, who has 4 kids (!). Jill, on the right, is 2 years younger than me, and hosted the party for my Grandma. They’re all awesome, and I’m super lucky. I love when I get to spend time with them.

Between the 5 of us, we have all these people (two of them are mine):

These are almost all of my grandma’s great-grandkids. There are 3 others who weren’t there and Bizzy’s babe who is about to be born. So many kids!

My sister-in-law texted me last month to make sure we weren’t planning on coming to the party, and I agreed that yep, that’s right, we won’t be there. And then I stopped for a minute. I wondered why my immediate response was to say no, without actually even thinking about it, or looking at the calendar, or stopping for a moment to wonder how I might feel if I missed it, or how my grandma would feel if we were/weren’t there.

And it occurred to me that these are the important moments that I might want to choose to prioritize. My grandma just turned 98. That’s pretty dang old. How many more birthdays will she realistically have?

I had a bunch of reasons why it wasn’t practical for us to go – it’s expensive, kids missing school, a doctor’s appointment that would be a pain to reschedule, work obligations and live Zoom calls for my online classes that constrained the trip, inconvenient flight times….. you know, the usual.

My word for the year is SPACE, and it’s pretty cool seeing all the ways I can live into this word in all different parts of my life – I want to give myself more space to prioritize the things that actually matter in my life, and one of those things is my family. And so, I booked a flight. My kids missed one day of school. We had to get up super early at 4am to leave on Friday, and we didn’t get home until 9:45pm on Sunday, but we had the best 3 days! It was so worth the trip. Not only did I get to see my grandma, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews, but I also got to see my mom, my aunt who lives in England, and my uncle, aunt, and cousins from Maryland who I haven’t seen in 5 years. My kids got to hang with their cousins. My kids will have memories of spending time with their great-grandma. Not everybody gets that, and it’s pretty dang cool.

I’m so glad I chose to pause and to make a different decision. I’m so glad I didn’t miss this, and I can’t wait to keep leaning into what matters and away from what doesn’t.

xo
jess

One thing that you may or may not know about me is that I’m a solo parent, 100% of the time. My kiddos are 6 and 9 now, but when my husband died and my world turned upside-down in August 2018, my son was not quite 3 and my daughter was not quite born. You can read a bit more about all that here if you’d like, and the 2 books that I’ve written in the last few years – Radiant Rainbows and Art For Self-Care – were born out of the darkness of this experience as well, and I’m deeply proud of both of these creations.

Anyway. One evening in early 2019, about 6 months after Ryan died and a couple months after my baby girl was born (on Ryan’s birthday…. I’m telling you, you cannot make these things up), I intuitively turned to art-making as a way to begin processing my feelings and my experiences.

Life was really really hard in those days. I was a swirling sea of confusing feelings, exhaustion, and overwhelm. I needed a way to tune in to what was actually going on inside of me – to comfort and soothe myself, to identify and acknowledge my feelings, and ultimately to learn to feel better in this new version of my life.

I decided to start a 100 day project that I called ‘100 Messages To Myself’. It was a way for me to commit to practicing listening to my inner voice and to show up for myself in a small, creative way each day for 100 days. It turned out this project would be a major creative and healing catalyst for me.

Every evening after my babies were asleep, I sat on the couch with my iPad or a sketchbook. I got quiet, I tuned my ears inward, and I waited for a message from my innermost self – the voice that wants nothing but the best for me.

Through listening, hearing a message meant just for me, and then drawing I was able to calm myself. To acknowledge where I was. To comfort myself. To figure out how I was actually feeling. To heal. I never had a plan. Each day was its own experience. I just had to show up and my inner self took over from there.

I didn't know how radically transformative making art this way would be for me. Making art centered around my own words to myself was a lifeline. It still is.

Sitting down to make art became a way to have a conversation with myself and to process the beautiful mess of my life. Because that’s what it was –– a big messy swirl of all sorts of emotions that were hard to sort out.

This was my way to untangle myself each day.
Many days now, it still is.

I made this free 17-page guide because I know the power and impact that using art-making as a tool to tune into my inner voice has had in my own life, and I want other people to be able to use art in this way, too. Making art is good for your well-being in every sense of the word, no matter how creative you are (or think you aren’t!). I'll teach you how I did it, so you can start doing it for yourself.

Inside the guide you'll find 7 ways to begin tuning in to your inner voice and 7 prompts to use to ease your way into this transformational art-making process.

The best part? You don't even have to be an artist to benefit from this practice. I promise!

You can download the guide for free right here.

If you try it out, I'd love to hear how it goes and what kind of an impact it has in your own life!

Enjoy!
xo
jess

When I was in college, I remember learning that to be a successful artist in the world, you have to find your niche and your signature style, and then make work like that forever, never straying very far from your chosen medium or recognizable look. (Maybe that's not what they were actually teaching us, but that's apparently what I absorbed and what I remember!)

I remember thinking then that it would be so BORING to just make the same kind of thing over and over for years on end, never having much room to experiment or change or grow. I understand that there can be a lot of room within a style and genre and medium to explore and experiment, and that that can feel very exciting for some... but for me, I knew deep down that I wouldn't be able to stick to just one thing.

One of my favorite things about my creative career so far is how I've been able to bounce around to different projects, use different mediums (media?), and switch it up when I want or need to shake things up.

No rules, no limits.

I LOVE working with different types of supplies, and they all feed my creative soul in different ways. When I'm designing repeating patterns on the computer using Adobe Illustrator, I can lose track of time and get into the flow more easily than when I'm doing any other kind of creative work. When I'm painting, sometimes it takes me a bit longer to get into the flow and to quiet my mind, but when I do the sense of accomplishment when I see what I've created in one sitting is one of the best feelings in the world. Drawing on paper is what I'm currently trying to fall more in love with, and one of my goals this year is to spend more time drawing. Drawing on paper, though, is also where my inner critic really loves to rear its head the most, for some reason. Lots of stories and judgments and contradictory chatter, sort-of like this:

But drawing on my iPad is a whole different story! I absolutely love it.

As I've been drawing this past week, I've started thinking about my next fabric collection, which I'll be designing over the next couple of months – you can see some of the little drawings I've made up there at the top! I'm not exactly sure what these will turn into yet.... the first step in my pattern design process is to just draw a bunch of motifs so I have a lot of different shapes and things to work with.

Next, I'll take them into Illustrator on my computer and start arranging and coloring them, and the fabric collection will slowly begin to take shape.... I'll share some more peeks along the way if you're interested!

I teach my pattern design process inside my Pattern Camp course, which is coming around again in April. If you want to learn how to turn your own drawings into repeating patterns using Adobe Illustrator, I would love to teach you! More about Pattern Camp in the coming weeks.

I have something extra special up my sleeve that I'm creating with my good friend Sarah Watts, who's also a pattern designer and fabric designer, like me. Sarah creates her patterns in Photoshop, and I create mine in Illustrator. We both use Procreate on the iPad in our workflows, and we both paint and draw and create art on non-digital surfaces as well. We use different programs and have different processes that lead us to the same end result: unique digital pattern designs.

Sarah and I share a deep belief that there's no magical path that will get you where you want to go creatively. Being creative and designing a creative career is about figuring out how to do it in your own way. Not the way someone else tells you it should be done or is the "right way". There's not just one right way. There are as many different ways to find creative success as there are people on the planet. And what's at the root of all of them is making a lot of art, and leaning into your own unique process.

What works for one person may not work for you. Everything is up for experimenting and questioning. There honestly just aren't really that many rules. We're all making it up as we go along, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and that's different for every single one of us.

Be wary of anyone who tells you their way is THE way, I think.

That’s all for today!
Happy Tuesday to you, wherever you are. :)
Until next time...

Substack! Here we goooo!

I’ve been missing the feeling of old-school blogging (like, circa 2007) and have been trying for a while to find a way/a space to get into that free creative zone and rhythm that I used to love again for a while. Instagram sort-of took the place of blogging for a while, which I used to really like, but I don’t really love spending time on Instagram anymore (like so many of us).

I love to write, and I love to make art, and I don’t love the algorithm and how it makes me feel like I need to chase likes and comments and engagement; it takes all the fun out of it. So….. I think Substack might be the new place for me?! We’ll see what happens. We’re just casually dating right now. Maybe we’ll get more serious! ;)

One of my goals for this year is simple: spend more time making more art. And one more specific goal within that goal is to practice drawing.

I don't consider myself someone who's particularly good at drawing. I like to draw (a lot, actually!) but I get all up in my head about it a lot of the time, thinking I don't know what I'm doing, comparing myself to other people, judging what's coming out of my hand, wondering if I should be using a different pen, or a different sketchbook, or or or....

Sometimes I stop myself before I start. And you don't improve in any area if you stop yourself before you even start. And so, I've been drawing. And I'm going to keep drawing! Here are a couple of silly little drawings in my sketchbook, to prove that I've been doing it. Ha. I'd like to get better at drawing hands. And feet. And now I know you're looking at the hands and the feet of that dancer up there and thinking "yeah, she's really not very good at drawing hands and feet, is she?" and this whole post is making me feel vulnerable now, which makes me want to delete it and start over, but which actually tells me that I'm on the right track and that someone will probably read it and it'll be exactly what they need to hear.

Why the heck does it feel so hard sometimes??! The life-ing, the sharing, the drawing, the just being....

Speaking of drawing, I got this book by Danny Gregory probably close to 20 years ago, and I just pulled it off my bookshelf again last week as I've begun my new adventures in drawing. I love this quote by the author, that I think I saw maybe in his newsletter recently? I can’t remember. Anyway, it goes something like this: "You think you don't draw because you can't. But you can't draw because you don't."

I had a painting professor in college who used to tell me “You have to be willing to make the bad art in order to get to the good art”, and I’ve remembered that hundred, probably thousands, of times over the years whenever I start judging my artwork. It’s all just part of the process, you know? You have to be willing to just get your hands dirty, to get uncomfortable, to make lines and marks that you feel embarrassed about, to feel like a beginner, to keep going. The keeping going is where the magic is.

Here’s a drawing I did in my sketchbook earlier today during a live art-making session in The Inner Magic Art Club (a membership I co-host with my friend Becky). I really need to work on drawing hands, omg. Don’t look. Haha.

I don’t know how often I’m going to post, or what exactly I’m going to share here, but I’m excited to keep it loose and light and free, with lots of permission to change my mind and share what’s on my heart as I go along. I’m really inspired by real life, real conversations, and real messes. I follow my intuition. I’m inspired by wonky lines and imperfection. If that sounds good to you, I hope you’ll follow along. :)

xo
jess