One thing I love about being a Spoonflower seller is the amazing communities on Facebook where you can make friends with other pattern designers. Being an artist can be a lonely career when you’re hyper focused on juggling your time between creating and marketing your artwork. Here are the main Facebook groups that have blossoming, active communities.
Spoonflower Fans
The Fans group is where mainly designers show off their Spoonflower design challenge entries, but there are many members who are makers and use Spoonflower fabric to make their products. When showing off your patterns, it’s a good idea to include a link to your listing so makers don’t have a hard time searching for your shop and for your listing. This group is by far the most active and is the only group in this list where you can market your design.
Spoonflower Squad
The Squad group is where designers can ask other designers questions more on the business side of running a Spoonflower shop. It’s also a good place to keep up with any changes that Spoonflower rolls out or any current bugs to keep an eye out for. It’s the best place to connect with experienced surface designers who graciously help with anything that goes wrong or give advice on how to run your shop.
Surface Pattern Designers Color Collaboration
I help manage the Color Collaboration. We’re a group of designers on Spoonflower from all over the world who create a color-coordinating collection of patterns centered around a theme so sewists have a large variety of patterns that will naturally work together, no matter what type of project. Once we put a collection together, all the members do a big marketing push to advertise the collection as a whole. Currently, we run three collaborations a year, and I usually run an Instagram challenge to help artists brainstorm ideas for their entries into the collection.
Surface Pattern Design Critique Group
I also help manage the Critique Group, which is a place where designers can submit artwork to receive a thoughtful critique to nurture their skills. From time to time we run discussion topics, as well as tutorials and industry insights. Most of our members sell on Spoonflower, but we also accept experienced surface designers who don’t have a Spoonflower Shop. A large part of the Critique Group is the Water Cooler Chat, where designers can chat about anything and everything related to surface design and Spoonflower. It’s a good place to make friends with other designers and chit chat around the virtual water cooler.
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