Lysa flower's daily DESIGNGER DIARY : : A COLLAB WITH OCTOPURSE

Magic happens when creativity meets collaboration

I would love to introduce you to Octopurse! She makes the most snazzy and snappy metal frame purses!

I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with her on three of my collections: 9 to 5, Sunshine Inn and Drivin’ Down 9!

I love designing panels and envisioning the potential for products they could become. I specifically thought of Octopurse’s purses when I was designing the sunglasses and cassettes!

but then… they turned out even more extraordinary that I ever thought possible!

She has a few purses, featuring my designs, left in her ETSY shop but also a huge selection of others to choose from. Curious? You can check them out HERE.

Above: my Drivin’ Down 9 panel. Below: my Sunshine Inn panel.

 

Lysa Flower's Daily Diary : : what kind of road tripper are you?

1) Are you a Herbie The Love Bug road tripper? You have a car with a mind of it’s own? Beep! Beep!

2 ) Or are you and Almost Famous road tripper? Are road trips about the romance and the music for you?

3) Are you a steady as it goes kind of road tripper? Like in The Straight Story. You get there when you get there. (*one of my personal favourite movies).

4 ) Or! Maybe you’re a rebellious Easy Rider… who’s happy to take it easy the whole way there?

5) Then again, maybe you’re a speed demon throughout a road trip and you take no prisoners like in Fury Road?

6) Do you take your road trips, with your ENTIRE family? In a Van? Like in Little Miss Sunshine? (*again, also one of my very favourite movies!)

Or perhaps you’re a combo of the above? We all have a speed demon in us don’t we?!

 

Lysa Flower's Daily Designer Diary : : Ring! Ring! Sorry, I don't hem pants.

So I’m thinking it’s time these become digital PDF ART PRINTS? I’m a little stuck on which colour way I like the most. I’d love to know which is your favourite? If you leave a comment below, when I list them on Etsy I’ll send you a 30% off discount code!

 

Lysa Flower's Daily Designer Diary : : illustration

 

Find the Calm in the Chaos:: a change of background was the answer!

Trust me, the irony of how much I had to wrestle with this illustration was not lost on me. I won’t lie, I was feeling uncomfortable with how much time it was taking! I took a bit of a break and started to play with it again after some feedback from my husband and my Monday co-working group of fellow artists.. Above is what I came up with.

I’m finding gardening every morning very satisfying and to quote Blur in Park Life, “It gives me a sense of enormous well-being”. It’s also basically manual labour and switching tasks isn’t fatiguing for my brain. However, yesterday my son asked me to watch a YouTube video about productiveness (mostly I was listening because I had no idea what I was looking at in this League of Legends Streamer’s video). I LOVE what he had to say! And I loved even more that our 20 year old, was listening to him (saying stuff we’d been saying for some time now-ha! parenting!). Needless to say I love learning about ways to be more productive and my favourite Huberman Lab Podcast episode is with Dr Cal Newport: How to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity. Which this steamer mentioned! See Kiddo, your mom is COOL! Ha!

This is the square version.

Since then I’ve been wondering if I’d be happier dedicating a full day to design work, not just mornings. Knowing my time is up at lunch makes me feel a bit chaotic and it’s hard to relax into the design process. The brain change is well, a bit distracting and taxing.

Either way, I worked on this illustration today after knowing it could be better and I didn’t want to settle with just alright. I thought, maybe I need to change the background? I loaded up the Endless Summer repeat and YEP! There it is! YES! I KNEW IT!

This is the 8x10 inch version

So to recap, last year after I had designed the Goin’ Surfin’ collection (after camping and surfing) I assumed, yep, that’s what this collection is about. Nope. It wasn’t until it was done that I realized for the last two years our lives had been turned upside down. We were sinking and taking on water. Our lives were total chaos. Think of the movie, “Everything, Everywhere all at Once” , that was us. Then, in the middle of it, and with help from the good people at The Foundry, we found the calm. Much, much needed calm in all that chaos.

My hope is that everything in your life never gets wildly out of control like ours did. However, if it does, please know this illustration is dedicated to bring you comfort & support.

 
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LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

ILLUSTRATING FIND THE CALM IN THE CHAOS : : DAY 6

Hmm… That dang F! I’m moving a few things here, a few things there but it doesn’t quite feel right yet. The word “FIND” doesn’t quite have the angle I’d like BUT I did move the angle of the “CALM IN THE CHAOS” which feels better.

I’m wanting this illustration to be able to work at 8x10 and 8x8 inches. So I’m asking myself if I should spread out the surfers? Either way, it’s time to take a step away and have a do nothing day tomorrow. We’re going out to see Big Sugar play their full album full album Five Hundred Pounds tonight and I don’t function well without enough sleep. I think I shall lay in bed with the cats and snuggle instead. I know, it sounds rough doesn’t it!

 

LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

 

ILLUSTRATING FIND THE CALM IN THE CHAOS :: DAy 5

 

Yesterday I woke up and felt really in my head. Foggy and grumpy. To get back on track, we hiked up the mountain we live nearby. This spring has been spectacular! The weather was wonderful, sunny and breezy. It did the trick and I was left sweaty and back in my body. Refreshed.

I enjoyed the afternoon and evening in my studio. I added some roundness to the ends of the C, the A, the O, and the S. I made the F smaller and the D larger. I thought it would make more sense since all the other words are like that too. I need to rethink the F, it’s being a bit tricky.

Today I didn’t listen to music but listened to a playback from an online course I’m at taking called the Content Cultivation Course. There were some great nuggets in there!

 

LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

ILLUSTRATING FIND THE CALM IN THE CHAOS : : DAY 4

 

Want to play a game? Spot the differences! The illustration on the left was at the beginning of the day, the one on the right is at the end of the day. There are 9 differences. The Answers are at the bottom. No peeking!

The playlist for today, I hope you like 100 Gecs!!! :D

And this is what I did this evening: Shout out to my friends Kari (@theprintmakerandherdog) and Tara (Tara.Lee.Bennett) stunning show at @newleafeditions on Granville Island in Vancouver.

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*Answers: On the right illustration:

  1. no surfer on the F

  2. a surfer instead of a flower

  3. a surfer from the left had been moved to on top of the D

  4. no surfer in the right corner

  5. surfer on THE

  6. surfer moved from the M to a dot in the I

  7. surfer now on the C in Chaos

  8. the surfer is larger and between the A and the O

  9. surfer larger and on the S

 

LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

ILLUSTRATING FIND THE CALM IN THE CHAOS : : DAY 3

I always start out with an idea but I know I have to be open enough to let it evolve. Which means a lot of playing. It’s getting closer!

Here’s what’s on today’s April 17th playlist!

 

LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

ILLUSTRATING Find the Calm in the Chaos : : Day 1

Today I’m trying something new. I’m going to start posting about what I work on everyday and here’s why:

My friend Hana, when she was diagnosed cancer, started going outside everyday. A love of gardening was something we shared, although she was much more enthusiastic about raking leaves than I ever was. Everything about someone getting sick is heartbreaking. When she got really sick, she’d say, when I get better, we’ll get together. All I could do was send her texts, telling her she was in my thoughts and I was sending her love, along with photos of my garden. Knowing she was going outside each day, I decided I would go outside each day too. It was my only way of feeling close to her. I would think of her each morning, knowing she’d be so pleased to see things budding or how busy the bees were on the dahlias.

In November, when Hana passed away, I kept going out every morning, comforted with my thoughts of her while I dug a little over here and I clipped a little over there. I went out with no plan, just what ever felt good to work on that day. I’m out there first thing every morning, rain or shine, anywhere from 10-30 mins every morning. We both live(d) on acreages and there’s always a lot to be done, to the point of being overwhelmed… but now instead of resenting it or feeling like it’s a chore, I crave my time outside. What a wonderful gift of a daily ritual Hana left me.

Then I thought, what if I applied this daily ritual to my personal work. Usually I get a deadline and dive head first in and I don’t come back up for air until I’m done. I do love a good deadline but this way of working has left me depleted in the past and what I’ve been craving is consistency. So here we go, an experiment! Every morning I’ll work on new work, a little drawing here, a little painting there! Here we go!

Okay, here we go:

Today I’m starting a new illustration for the Goin’ Surfin’ collection. It will be called “Find the Calm in the Chaos”. Job one is working on the lettering. I’m taking my LET GO letters and converting them into the letters I need. Which means making eight new letters by making a/an:

 

Here is the playlist I listened to whilst working away : April 15th, 2024 Ha! Whilst! It’s such a funny word!

 

LET GO : : deep thoughts by Lysa Flower

I always have an vague idea of what I’m wanting to do with a piece. The journey, like many creatives have written about, is U shaped. Starting at the top of the U: "This is such a GREAT idea! (sketching and inking)". To the bottom of the U: "Ugh! Why is this falling apart in my hands (realizing it feels a little flat)". To climbing up the other side of the U: "Okay, that’s interesting, (breaking it on purpose, pushing the scale super large or super tiny) what if I?… to Wow! I LOVE THIS!".

That U feeling; it’s kind of like riding a wave I suppose... AND like the ability to LET GO of expectations, disappointment, each moment. When I really started to think about it, the need to LET GO might be the purpose of life… Whoa, that got deep fast! All I was trying to say was that I LOVE when hand lettering and patterns go together ;D