When I decided to do another year of free monthly wallpapers, I wondered if I was pushing my luck but thankfully I managed to get them all out on time again, even with a trip to Japan in the middle!
The theme this year was patterns, which are so much more time-consuming, but I love making them and my Spoonflower store was looking sadly neglected so it was an obvious choice.
I’m so pleased that I managed to come up with a brand new pattern every month and that they’re a good mix of characters and pattern styles. I even managed a few extra ones for a grand total of 16! This is what makes the project worthwhile for me as it’s hard to believe I would have created 16 new patterns without the monthly deadline.
As well as making them available on fabric yardage at my Spoonflower store, they’ve also brought me sales through Society6, Redbubble & Zazzle. I don’t make a ton of money from on-demand sales but it all helps pay the bills and bring me new followers and customers. I also made a few products for my own shop including gift wrap, stationery and my first enamel pin.
If you’re looking for a way to motivate yourself to create new work, or to promote your work to new audience then I definitely recommend free wallpapers or printables. Having something new to promote every month and a reason to send out a regular email to my mailing list has definitely helped grow my audience and make me better at sharing things regularly. I even had a readymade image to make my Facebook page, Twitter profile, shop slider etc. all match the season.
So, what about next year? I won’t be doing wallpapers again, but they’ll all still be available to download so there’s plenty to choose from. I have a couple of ideas and will plan it out over the holidays so look out for an announcement in January!
I hope you enjoyed all the wallpapers this year – which was your favourite?
