From a Few Beginnings

Hey there, welcome to my first blog post on Happy Hannah! As I’m building this website and working to assemble new designs from a lot of my pre-existing artwork, I suddenly remembered that this is not my first attempt with print on demand surface pattern design. Let’s go back to 2019 (I can’t believe that was 5 years ago as of this writing?!) and I was playing that Safeway Monopoly shopping game they used to run in spring where you were granted a specific amount of Monopoly tickets game pieces based on how much money you threw at Safeway that day. Sometimes the shopping clerks wouldn’t care and just nonchalantly hand me a huge stack of them, hooray! Their job is already busy enough, so it seemed extraneous to make them count out tickets to distribute per customer, so I definitely understood the “educated guess” huge stack approach. Anyway, so one of these tickets included a prize for a free large dog bandana from Shutterfly.

This dog bandana from Shutterfly allowed you to upload your own photos and/or artwork to their template. I figured this would be a great way to play around with a fun Hannah pattern design. So I threw together some Hannah cartoons, crafted together what I thought was a fun color scheme and other pattern textures, and totally did not design it as a repeat pattern. I intended the design to just be a standalone tile design that wouldn’t repeat. So I completed the artwork and uploaded my custom creation to Shutterfly. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what the file specs should be, besides uploading a HUGE file to smash in as many pixels as possible for high resolution. Shutterfly processed my file through its tired server and I was given a digital proof of what my dog bandana may look like. I thought the pattern seemed too big proportion-wise, but since I didn’t create a repeat pattern and couldn’t shrink my ratios down, I figured the scale is fine for a free bandana. Order!

The day came at last when I received my custom designed dog bandana scarf from Shutterfly. I ripped open the mylar envelope and was excited to see my artwork on a triangular-shaped piece of light material. Being the self critical gal that I am, I wasn’t really happy with how the scale of the artwork turned out. I know, I know- I could have adjusted my file to improve the scale, but again, I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t have the exact specs Shutterfly needed. I didn’t let that bum me out and wasted no time on trying it on my unsuspecting dog. I found out right away that she absolutely hates any clothing. I don’t get it- she wears a collar, how different could a little bandana be? Apparently VERY different. Hannah sulked in the corner looking miserable while wearing the bright festive bandana with cartoons of her on it. I don’t know how our dogs put up with us…I kindly freed her from the bandana and have it hanging on the vacant monitor mount in my office. At least one of us could enjoy it!

Moral of the story: even though I had no idea what I was doing, I still enjoyed making artwork and trying out a new platform to print. Don’t let yourself be afraid of trying new things even when you don’t have all the specs and guidelines!