A GOIN' SURFIN' GIVEAWAY : : WITH PAINTBRUSH FABRIC STUDIOS

GIVEAWAY TIME!!! On Instagram! Starting today April 8th!

Enter to win a Lysa Flower Goin' Surfin' Flat Fat Stack!

Um, what the heck is that?! It's Paintbrush Fabric Studio's, answer to a Fat Quarter Bundle but it's printed all on one piece of cloth, with a super long piece of selvage! (One of my personal favorite perks of a FFSB!) …BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

ALSO win a surprise gift pack from ME! Lysa Flower (there might be a rumor, it's a little somethin' somethin' from each of my collections in it! But my lips are sealed!)

A Goin’ Surfin’ Flat Fat Stack Bundle!

P.S. If you feel like overachieving and getting some extra entries you can share this reel to your stories and tag us!

All the legal jazz: Giveaway by @lysaflower/@pbsfabrics and is open to everyone, but if outside of North America, the winner will be asked to pay shipping. Giveaway closes on Friday April 12th, 2024 at 11:59 PST. By entering the giveaway you are acknowledging that you are subscribing to emails for Lysa flower, Paintbrush Studio Fabrics. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We will announce the winner in our stories on Saturday April 13th! (So don’t let scammers trick you with fake accounts and ruin our fun!)

 

ENDLESS SUMMER : : VANS

One of the very best parts of Tofino, other than the beaches and waves, is Tacofino, a parked food truck that serves tacos and my very favourite, Diablo cookies!

So there we were, after a day of attempted surfing (but successful boogie boarding), we thought we’d head into town to Tacofino. As we were driving to it we saw it! The most beautiful van I had ever seen…

The next day we went back to Tacofino for round two, and we also enjoyed ice-cream at Chocolate Tofino. While waiting in line for the ice cream I noticed this chalkboard painting of a van with surfboards stacked extremely high on it (I thought it was funny and took a very fuzzy photo of it). While I didn’t stack my surfboards that high on my vans they definitely influenced mine! Inspiration was everywhere on this trip!

I haven’t even told you about the sunsets yet! They were blazing and reminded me of the Endless Summer movie poster, hence the name for the top left print.

With every collection I love to do a standalone illustration for the name of the collection. While playing with some markers, I came up with the goin’ surfin’ lettering and ended up incorporating it into a tossed goin’ surfin’ van print.

So the moral of the story is, eat Tacofino, it’s good for your health, especially the diablo cookies, as is ice cream at Chocolate Tofino! Oh and yes, inspiration is everywhere… especially in Tofino!

 

PRETTY PLEASED ABOUT PURPLE!

… BEFORE IT USED TO MAKE ME PUKE! Okay well that’s a bit dramatic but it has been on my “No thank you” list for a long time. When I started designing for my Goin’ Surfin’ collection I wanted to push my colour palette and decided now was the time to make friends with purple. I had done it with grey about ten years ago, so I knew it was possible. Have you ever had a colour aversion?

I think A LOT about colour and I’m curious about these aversions. I don’t know what it’s like for you but for me colour is instinctual. I’ve taken all the colour theory courses, but to be honest, I can never remember all the rules. All I know is when I use certain colours or combinations they give me strong feelings that I react to.

I know about the symbolism of colour, which I find surprisingly conflicting for some colours (like yellow which can be both happy and anxious). I know purple is a hard colour to make and that’s why it was reserved for royalty, but that never helped me warm up to it.

Then there’s a psychology to colour but I think it gets muddy with your personal relationship to it. Let’s say a colour was a hot trend when you were a kid, for example avocado green, and you have memories of your mom making you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as you basked in your avocado green kitchen. You might have warm fuzzy feelings whenever you see avocado green but others might have the exact opposite reaction to it.

When it comes down to it, I think the specific hue is the important factor to making friends with a colour. For example, my father in law and I both love yellow. Except, he loves school bus yellow and I love a bright lemon yellow. To me, it’s not the same colour at all! Kind of like growing up with other Lisa’s in my class room. I didn’t think of our names as the same ever, even though they sounded the same!

So in the end, I searched and found a hue of purple I adored and used in Goin’ Surfin’. Not only did I stretch my colour palette, I finally made friends with purple and I LOVE what it did for this collection, especially my Sunshine Floral! Those pops of purple really made it sing!

 

MAKING WAVES FOR SURFERS!

Designing the waves of this intricate surfer print was one of my favourite design challenges in this Goin’ Surfin’ fabric collection!

Once I got my head wrapped around the repeat, and realized I needed to bring each wave to a point (otherwise it looked like toothpaste, ha, ha!) AND then when I put the surfer silhouettes on the waves, it was pure joy!

Then of course I played with ALL the colours (my very favourite thing to do!)! While I didn’t end up using the pink and yellow waves for the surfers I did end using it for the base of the sunshine floral!

In the end we went with the above colourways. ALL of them I’d LOVE to swim in! Or Surf! :D

 

GOIN' SURFIN'::A NEW FABRIC COLLECTION MAKING A SPLASH!

I’m very excited to introduce my seventh collection licensed to Paintbrush Studio Fabrics called, Goin’ Surfin’. It’s being sold to stores now, so keep a look out at your local fabric store for it soon!

Sometimes collections come out of unexpected places. Last summer I had been working on a collection when an opportunity to go camping with some friends in Tofino popped up. We’re hotel-ers not campers, but we went for it anyways. Little did I know, taking this break would become a breakthrough for my collection too!

Often when I’ve finished a collection, I realize what it’s really about. Sure this collection is about surfboards, beaches, sand, waves… but to be honest the last two years have been tough on our family. The good news is we all learnt a lot about ourselves, we have all grown and are better for everything that happened. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say, when we were watching, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, I looked at my husband and said, how is it possible they know this is our life! Minus the hot dog fingers of course.

I realized, especially in the making of the wave print, how important it’s been to let go. Let go of the past, to what we perceived as our future. Let go of expectations. Let go of strangling the moment, instead of letting it arrive naturally.

Even though I never fully stood up on a surfboard, I did catch some waves that took off and it was shocking how fast it was. When that happened I was like, “OH… I get it!”… all I had to do was to let go.

I also realized how important it was to find the calm in the chaos. While trying to learn to surf, waves crash into you, or you fall off your board (there’s a reason they call it the drink!). It can be hard to find your footing, on the board and in the sand. Like our last two years, just as we got up again a new wave would come and crash into us. It was hard for us to catch our breath but eventually we found the calm in the chaos and it’s a beautiful view.

So my hope for this fun summer collection: not only does it fill you with endless inspiration for summer sewing projects, I hope it also helps you let go and find calm in the chaos in this thing called life (imaging those last few words being said like Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy intro!)… and speaking of music, as I do with each collection, I create a playlist early in my workflow. You can listened to my Goin’ Surfin’ playlist HERE.