I'm always looking for inspiration for surface pattern designs and I do love a good challenge with prompts, particularly when it also helps me post on social media platforms more regularly, so this is kind of a win/win situation.

I'm going to be drawing at least one motif a day to use when creating surface patterns, after all, you can never have too many motifs to work with. I've also put together a list of 30 prompts for motifs so that I don't waste drawing time by deciding what I want to draw, you can download and print out the prompt sheet below if you'd like to play along (link below the picture)

Click here to download a Month of Motifs prompt sheet

Come & play along on Instagram @clairesalisburystudios and share your motifs, sketches, doodles and drawings using the hashtag #monthofmotifs

I'm currently taking the Designing Your Way course which is the first module of the Make it in Design courses and we're just getting to the end of week three.

The first time I took these courses back in 2015 I was a total newbie to surface pattern design, I hadn't really drawn properly for years and I had never used Photoshop before. I learned lots, but there was quite a bit of information I hadn't absorbed as I was starting from scratch. I knew as soon as I finished Module One that I wanted to be a Surface Pattern Designer. I took the next two modules and loved every minute, I was planning to re-take Modules 1-3 again with the new skills I'd learned as I knew I'd get even more out of them second time around I also wanted to take the Ultimate Portfolio Builder course which had so far been out of my budget, so when I won the "Designer in a Year" course bundle in a giveaway at the end of 2017 I pretty much fell out of my chair. I chose to take it as a sign from the universe that I was on the right track (it may sound a bit woo-woo but it works for me).

I'm loving the course even more second time around, not only am I getting a healthy refresher on some of the points and tips that I'd forgotten or had slipped off my radar, but I'm really enjoying seeing how much my work has improved over the last couple of  years.

Over the last 3 weeks we've been looking at patterns around us, shapes in patterns, sketching, motifs and colours, it's been so much fun to just go right back to the basics.

I started rummaging around for circular objects, here are some of the ones I decided to use:

Lego borrowed from H's room, different sizes, different colours, different textures, I was pleasantly surprised to realise how much inspiration you can find in 5 bits of Lego.

I used a large selection of blue buttons to create a cascade type pattern, at first I was just using a mixture of all sizes and colours of buttons but I switched to just using blue to see how it would look and I liked the tonal effect.

Still on the theme of circles I grabbed a few rolls of Washi Tape

I made a quick stripey pattern on a postcard with Washi Tape, a black pen, a glittery button with no middle and a white heart brad (one of those split pin thingys).

 and finally some very rough and experimental circle creation using various pens and circular objects.

I have got so many ideas for patterns, designs and collections bouncing around in my head right now that I'm going to be clearing a few weeks of time in my schedule so that I can develop these further before Module Two starts in May.