Three Ways to Use SMART OBJECTS for Patterns in Photoshop

This episode is all about how I use Smart Objects in Photoshop when I am making my patterns. In this episode I break down when to use smart objects and how to use them in three different ways to edit your patterns and make your artwork work harder for you. I show layer masking, adjustment layers, and good practices for making strong patterns with smart objects. I hope you enjoy this episode and let me know if you have any questions.

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Episode 498 was released on Feb 20, 2026.

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Transcript of 498

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Diane Gibbs with Creatives Ignite, and today I am gonna show you how to make a smart object and then edit that smart object so that you can change the colors, and here’s why you might wanna do that. Here’s, uh, something that I painted in my sketchbook. I painted about four of these pages. Um, with the same colors, knowing that I could change the colors of the stems or I could change the colors of the flowers, but first to create a smart object.

And I’m not exactly going into how to make a, I mean I am, but not super detailed on cleaning. But you have to clean, you have to get all the stuff out of the background and, and each of these little things that you want to be able to change. It could be together, it could be, um. Separate and I specifically did these separate, I placed on another layer note.

So I’m just going to skip through the cleaning process. And just so you know, I see some things that are a mistake. ’cause more than likely I am going to, I, I see this little bit of white that’s left in this and [00:01:00] there’s a couple other spots sometimes that doesn’t really bother me. Here and here it probably bothers me.

Definitely here. So what I’m gonna do is I put a black layer, um, on the very bottom, and I, I just turn that off, you know, because I can’t really see those white pieces. And oftentimes I will put a white piece, especially if it’s a dark piece so that I can see it better. So to be able to, um, I wanna select this, but I have so many layers.

Um, although I did call them flower that or stem, it doesn’t really help. So if you right click, if you can hit the control on a Mac, if you hit the control key and it’ll show you what layer, so layer 17, it might mean, hey, I’m on that black layer, but I really want STEM 24 and now it’s got me STEM 24. And if that isn’t working for you, you do have to have auto select selected in the.

Upper menu. So I’m gonna [00:02:00] zoom in because, but currently this is a smart object. I actually can’t do anything to this now because this is something that I want to be in. Anything that I’ve done, I’m actually gonna rasterize this layer so that it, I can. Actually, I’m getting rid of the smart object for a second so that I can clean this up and get it to what I want to be.

I’m going to very quickly clean up this layer with just a, an eraser with a hard edge. Um, I could do it with a PIN tool. I definitely need something smaller. Um, but. This is probably a pretty fast way for me to go about and, and I’m just hitting the left bracket to get it even smaller and I’m just gonna erase.

And why I got a small one was so that I could get into this little crevices. Now if I, I could make it a little bigger so that, but I don’t wanna, um, [00:03:00] you know, erase something that’s blue. And you could use the magic wand, but sometimes I’ve found that it’s selecting too much. So now I’m gonna go to a bigger brush.

I’m gonna go over here and get this little bit that’s over here. And I see some, a little bit of white there. I don’t mind that it’s just the stuff on the edge. So I’m gonna make my brush a little bigger or a good bit bigger, and I’m just gonna edit this. Now, this is a layer all on its own. It doesn’t have anything else on this layer.

That’s how I’m making these smart objects. Um, and it could have been both the flower and this, but it wasn’t so. I am gonna show you how I use this now. I kept a lot of the white that was inside the flower just because I felt like it, it worked with it, so it didn’t, didn’t bother me. Now to make this a smart object, I have made a quick key command and it’s very easy to [00:04:00] do, but I, so I’ve made an action.

Um, I did it once, which is I just had the thing selected and I was hit record. So I hit. I can make another video on that. I’m not gonna, but I have this as a, um, quick key, which is command A four for me. You can make your own. Um, it’s not gonna work for you because I had to make an action, but pretty much I go to this in the Layers panel.

I go to the hamburger menu and I say, um, convert smart object. That just takes a while. So command whatever is faster than doing that every time. So here I have it now if I wanted to adjust, now it’s clean and I, that’s what I want. If, say I wanted to make this a different color. First, let’s take this one and this one over.

I just need to see what this one is. So this is Flower 26 and STEM 24. Those are the two we want. So I have, [00:05:00] so I’m looking for Flower 26 and. There’s Flower 26. I’m just gonna hold option or command down. So I have both of these selected and I’m gonna hit copy. I’m gonna go to a new document. It doesn’t really matter.

It’s gonna make it kind of small anyway, but here it is, right? So I still have two smart objects. That means I can adjust the color on each individually because I’ve done them separately. So I’m just gonna turn off this with the flower. Now you can see again, I could select, um, and make the background black.

So I have a tiny bit of white there I could fix if I wanted. I have a tiny bit of white there. Let’s look at this. I have a good bit of white here, but again. I’m okay with that, so I’m gonna let it be as is. I can turn this off if I want this stem to be green because it’s on a separate layer. I have a smart [00:06:00] object here that’s the stem and a smart object here.

Again, when I was cleaning them, I just had to separate them. I’ll show you one that’s a little bit harder that I don’t have separated. Um, so I’m going to double click on, on this layer. And I can’t just double click on the layer. I actually have to, ’cause it doesn’t give me what I want. I wanna double click on the image that is the smart object.

Now you’ll see I actually could draw something in, say I wanted another, um, leaf. Obviously wouldn’t want it in black, but let’s just say I did. Um, it would be there. So I would save this. I mean, this is terrible. I would probably never do this. So let’s, let’s undo real quick. I would always do it on a new layer.

So say I was drawing something, let’s just say that’s what I wanted. I’m gonna hit save and you’ll notice this is A PSB. So when you’re doing mockups, you’ll notice you’ll see PSB, and then you close this, you command W and it goes back. And then [00:07:00] this is there. Where this helps is when you’re making patterns that have this flower used lots of times, because you always want this there.

Well, the reason I did so many flowers is that I didn’t want exact repeats. Um, just I wanted the pattern to be more, um, interesting. So I’m gonna double click again here, and I’m actually just gonna delete this layer. But what if I just wanna change the color of this, which is very realistic. Um, there are a couple ways to do it.

I like to do things in layers so that I can always go back to this, this one. So if I’m gonna do an adjustment, I’m not gonna go to image adjustment up here. I’m actually gonna do an adjustment layer. Or sometimes if I was masking, I wanted to get rid of this leaf, I would do a mask there. So for this, in this instance, we’re gonna do a hue saturation, and I’m gonna get it to be the color that I want it to be.

So I want it to be. [00:08:00] Not exactly, but we’re gonna darken it up just a little. Okay? Now I’m gonna save this and I’m going to close this. Now I have a green with this light blue. Say, I wanna change this now because I’m not working in, these are just, sorry. Let me go back to the one I was supposed to be on. I mean, this isn’t repeated anywhere here, right?

So I usually will clean them, get them where I want them, and then I start placing them into my pattern. I don’t use this cleaned file to do any of these edits usually. So let me show you this real quick. Hang on. All right, so now you see my pattern that I made. Um, again, I had these little. Things separate and I ended up making them in a group.

So the flower was together. So if you look, this is flower six, but it is flower number 23 and STEM number [00:09:00] 26. So where I’m doing these changes is happening in this file. Now, did I use STEM 26 again? I don’t know, but if I did, it would change as I do this. So, um. Like these dots. I know I did multiple dots. I did, uh, let’s see.

Dot two, dot three, dot three, dot four do five. So dot three is a copy. So if I make a change to dot three, it probably will change this one also. So this is the beauty of the smart object, but I’m just gonna show you here. So if I wanted this stem to change colors. I would need to do again, a, a, a reversible change.

So I’m gonna go back to hue saturation like I did before. I’m gonna bring it to a little bit greener and, uh, darken it up. I actually think it’s probably a [00:10:00] little bit more green. Okay, and I’m gonna save. And then you close that window command. W And now you see. Now granted I didn’t use it except right there.

But let’s change, um, I mean, I don’t like to use the same image multiple times. That’s why I would paint a lot of them. But let’s do the dot. This dot right here is the same as I believe this dot right here. Okay, so we have two different dots. I’m going to edit dot three. This is dot three, and this is dot three.

Copy. Now, once I edit dot three, it probably will change the color on dot three. Copy. So double click it. Easiest way that’s non-evasive is to hit the. Um, layer mask. So now I’m gonna change it pretty significantly. And, uh, let’s go with this orange. Let’s lighten it up just a [00:11:00] little. Just wanna make sure you can see it.

And I’m gonna hit save. And, and what I would do, because I would need to change dot two dot 4.5 0.6, I would just copy these numbers down. So negative 1 44, 68, and a 13. So. So that I would have that, I was gonna save that and then command W and now you notice it changed it. Look, this is dot, um, this is dot three and I only changed it once, right?

So dot three copy it got changed and dot three got changed. So this is the beauty of doing things that are multiples. Now I could go into dot three. Copy. And it has that same, so if I wanted to just hide this, just turn it off. Save window. Now all my dots are the same. If I go back to my flower, which I can’t remember, which flower this is, so STEM 26, this is the group and flower six.

It’s STEM 26. I [00:12:00] want to choose STEM 26. Double click on that object, and I can just un, I can just hide that so I can save and window. And yes, that’s normal. So now I’m back to what I did. But if I wanted to really change this, I would make these changes. But I would write down those colors that I was changing it to so that I could apply it to do one, 2.4, 0.5, right?

Um, if you wanted them all to be different, then it wouldn’t matter. You could just do them individually. Now, here’s another situation where I have. Um. I have these lines that I’ve done, um, that I change colors often and I actually just save them. Like it’s not that big of a file, so I just save it as this is the Indigo file.

Um, but if you notice, this is, this is what it is. So in the smart object, there is’ a. Um, [00:13:00] a color change, but had I, if I wanted to or say I wanted to delete something. So let’s do a mask on this one. So, say I wanted this line, whole line to be gone, paint white reveals black concealed. So I wanna be painting with black because I want to cover up.

Now I just need to make sure my brush is the size I need and I probably just need a hard brush. Because I don’t wanna have any like soft edges. So say I just wanna rip complete. Now this is not taking anything away. This is just a masked layer, right? So now I hit save and um, I can go back. Now it’s, if I was using, again, when I’m using these.

I’m not making these changes here in this cleaned, edited file, but I wanna show you. All I have to do is just take this to the trash and I want to hit delete. I don’t want to apply. So that’s another way I wanted to show you one [00:14:00] other way, and it was with. These flowers. So this is, these flowers have already cleaned and this is one where they’re not, it’s not a different color.

Right? This green part isn’t separated. It is in the same um, uh. I haven’t taken the time to make this change. Right. So there are a couple ways you could do this. Say I wanted to change this pink color. Well, it’s not really selecting everything I’m already in. I’ve double clicked in to the smart object. Um, so that’s probably not a great way to do it.

So you could do, um, let’s do it a different way. So I’m gonna hit select color range, and I want kind of everything that’s in this. And I just clicked something in here, right? So I hit okay and it made the selection for me. Now, if I don’t want this to change, then I might. Or it doesn’t look like it’s all [00:15:00] selected, I may need to go in and kind of select a little bit more because I have this add on to the selection.

I’m just going to quickly kind of draw around this so then I’m getting more of like these little pieces and it doesn’t really matter. So now all of that’s selected. Now I could make a smart object from this, but I have a couple pieces that aren’t actually there. There’s nothing selected here. So I wanted to hit the V key, which is I want to go to the move tool, which is the V key, and then I do an up and A down.

Now you see that my running ants are just on the stuff. They’re not gonna actually add more pixels into this uh, piece. And I could make a smart object of just this. So the way you know, you would go to your hamburger menu and do that. But I have this as a quick key. So now I have this as a smart object.

And, but, um, let me, what I normally would do [00:16:00] is I would, um, cut this and I’m going to, and you can see that there’s some other hindering, uh, stuff that, leftovers that didn’t get selected, which is not what I want. Um, I actually would want all of this selected, so I’m actually gonna have to go in and select this whole bit.

And I’m just gonna do a really quick, because I want all of this selected. I’m just holding the space bar down and now I’m gonna do the same thing. I’m gonna do V up down. Now I have the whole thing, so when I hit cut, it’s all gone. There’s not a remnants. And I’m going to, um, paste in place, which is command shift v um, that way it’s in the right place.

Now I can make two separate smart objects. I know it. The whole thing was a smart object and now I’ve just. [00:17:00] Made it not two more. It would be easier if I’d just done this in the beginning. That’s obviously why I normally would do this. But let’s just go ahead and make each of these a smart object on their own, which I have as a quick key command in my actions.

So in my actions, I’ve already made this, so, um, command F four. And then I’m gonna do that here. Command F four. Now I’m inside a smart object. Inside a smart object. So if I want this flower to be a different color, again, I would not be doing this on this, this level. I would be in my pattern. I would’ve already pa placed these.

Now it will be easier. So, but if I was using this in a pattern, which I’ll show you in just a second. Okay, so I’m going to change this color again. I’m doing it non um. I don’t know. I can’t even remember what the word is called, but I’m not gonna be messing anything up. So say I want to adjust this so that it is [00:18:00] a little bit more, let’s try to go purple.

Okay. There’s purple. It’s a little too bright for me. So I’m just gonna take the saturation down a little bit and I’m just gonna make it a little bit darker, maybe the saturation, and then I would just write this down so I always have a pad of paper next to me. So that’s a negative 86. Um, except I’m not sure why.

’cause I can always come back to this, but, and I don’t have to do this multiple, so we’re just gonna hit, I’m not gonna write it down. I’m gonna hit save and window and now I’m back to this one and, and then I’m going to just leave the green the way it is. Um, so I’m gonna save and window because I was in A PSB so.

Granted, I wouldn’t necessarily do this unless I was in my file. So say I’m making a new file, I always start to work at a 12 by 12, so it must be 3,600, or I could do [00:19:00] six, uh, 600 DPI, but I’m gonna do 3,600 by 3,600. But at 300 DPI. And that’ll gimme a 12 by 12. So I have a 12 by 12. So now I’m, what I’m gonna do is I’m going to paste that smart object.

Now it has a double smart object. It, I’d have to go in and change deep dive down again to do that, to change that. Now let’s put this into pattern mode so you can see it at work. I’m going to, uh, view and pattern preview and, okay. Now granted, I just have one of these right now. Um, I’m gonna go ahead and duplicate it now.

If I just pasted it in again, it would be different. So I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna go back here and just so that you can see it, I know this is not the right one. Um, I’m gonna go back in, back into this and I’m just gonna turn that I’m just, it’s there [00:20:00] still, but I’m gonna save window, save window. Okay, now I’m gonna copy this Smart object copy.

Now I’m gonna go back to my untitled. And I’m gonna paste this. Now, this one, as you notice, it’s all behind the same thing. So sometimes I, I don’t like to just have the exact same flower multiple times because, um, it gets boring to me. So I would flip some things or something. So with this one, I’m just gonna flip it Now, nothing’s gonna happen to the others.

It’s just gonna happen here. So I’m just gonna do a transform flip horizontal. So now at least I have a little bit of a difference, and maybe I’ll just rotate it so it’s a little bit more vertical. And if I wanna do the same for this one, just so that it’s a little bit more vertical and this one I’m gonna leave angled and well, no, this one I’m gonna change.

So it’s a little bit more [00:21:00] opposite way. So now I have four flowers. They’re all the exact same, which I don’t like, um, because I can actually tell. But let’s just say I’m doing something like this now, I don’t necessarily want this one, um, to be. I want it to be behind. So I’m gonna put this on the bottom and I’m gonna just move this one, kind of like this.

Now, if this was my thing that I’m doing now, we know that we pasted in, um, just this. Now I’m going to go back. Just to show you, now, I pasted in one of these purple ones I pasted and then I copied, and then I had layer three. All this is layer two, layer two, copy layer two, copy layer two. That helps me to know that it’s the same thing, so if I’m gonna go back to that, this, I am going to dive into it again.

And I’m gonna turn this back [00:22:00] on. I’m gonna save window, save window. And then I’m gonna copy this. Now I’m pasting in from that original again now. Now I can go in. Now this is only once, right? So I’m gonna go into this. That’s layer four. I’m gonna go into this layer two copy. I’m gonna double click, double click ’cause I have to get into this.

Now, say I wanna adjust this, these colors. I want this one to be.

More bright orange maybe. Okay, so I’m gonna save window, and it’s just telling me it, I haven’t had enough time to save and close the window. Now I have three of these and only one of these. So if I wanted that original again. With, then I just have to paste it more than once from the original. Do you understand?

So smart objects can work great. I [00:23:00] personally would rather see five different flowers painted. They can all be the same color, and then you change the colors like this. But then I can use five flowers in this motif so much faster. Um, so I, I would just, um, copy these all, so now I can just move them all.

And then I can start adjusting where they are because they would be five different flowers. I kind of feel, personally, I think this is a lazy, uh, lazy man’s pattern making when you are only using the same flower because it’s so distinct that it is the same. Now granted, you’re changing and you’re adjusting it, but that would be where.

I would have a little bit of an issue. I’m gonna show you one more thing with smart objects that, um, hopefully will help. Now finally, I’m going to the one that I keep wanting to, um, select, and it’s this one. So say I have three flowers here, but say I didn’t [00:24:00] want this one. So right now I have two smart objects.

If I want them both to go into my new thing, I’ll select them both over here, a copy. And now we’re gonna go back to this untitled two and I’m gonna paste. Okay. And you can kind of tell I did these around the same time. They’re not exactly the same kind of flowers, but I’m okay with that. Say, I wanna make these smaller.

These are gonna be smaller flowers in this, but I really, um, and then maybe I, you know, if I want to duplicate these, I can just drag it down to the duplicate and then just move them, right? And they don’t have to stay in the same position even together. Like, I can move this one to be over here. It doesn’t have to, I wouldn’t want it on top obviously, but.

You know, I can, I can, I can move things, I can adjust it, but say I want this one to not have this other, um, flower. I don’t like this. I just wanna cut off, or, you know, [00:25:00] I’m not really gonna cut it off. Um, this is layer five copy. It’s also gonna affect layer five, so I’m just gonna double click. And now I’m already in the editable smart object.

Well, again, I would just do this with a mask. I’m not going to actually cut anything unless I was going to cut it so that it was its own flower. I. But they share the same stem. So I actually just wanna get rid of this one. So I’m getting the, oh, not the eraser. I want the brush. Black reveals, white conceals.

’cause I’m doing, I’m just gonna make my brush a little bit bigger so that I can get this done a little faster. And I am going to just, now, I’m gonna make my brush a little smaller so I don’t mess up this part. And I could have, um. I could have left some of, some of the stem, not this, but, but I’m just not, ’cause I think it, it can be funky to do that.

So I’m just gonna kind of [00:26:00] taper it so it looks more natural. Okay, so now I save and window, nothing’s gone. But now if you notice, it’s gone in both. Now, if I wanted it to not be gone in all of them, then I would have to go back to my original. And paste it in again. So to me, there’s a beauty in using smart objects.

It helps you not have to paint 80 different flowers, which I’m all for, but I do think that you need to have some that are different. So you need to paint ones, paint different ones. And I don’t know if I’m, I’m close to the same size. Yeah, pretty close. So now I can place this one wherever I want it. Um, and, you know, I can flip it.

I could do other things, but now I have that extra flower as well. [00:27:00] Hopefully this makes sense. Smart objects are amazing. I don’t usually edit them on just their regular layer of wherever I clean them. I’m, I leave that open so that I can go back and copy and paste. Until I have what I need, but I’m usually editing the smart objects on this layer.

Hopefully that helps a little bit of a training in smart objects and patterns. I hope you have a great day.

Transcript of the Sabbatical Update: Refiner’s Fire (February Update) 498 B:

diane: [00:00:00] Hey, this is diane with Creatives Ignite and I thought I would read my, or tell you my update, which is pretty much in the email, but with a little extra ’cause that’s just how I roll. But I looked at the last two broadcast emails that I had sent and, and I’ve really struggled honestly with, gosh, do I keep going?

I know I have things to share and say, but do I keep going? Because it’s not as in general. General as maybe it was before. So the podcast has taken a new turn and, and I really honestly was just super scared last year because I didn’t know if anybody would listen. Well, for sure. They’re not gonna listen if you never do it, Diane.

But anyway, um, I’m gonna kind of give you a little bit of background. Definitely there’s been. Um, I needed courage this year. My word is grit, but I didn’t have courage last year. That was my word, and I just didn’t have it. Um, [00:01:00] so this year, I know it’s February, but it’s gonna hopefully gonna be different.

Um, what I’d like, I feel I’m in a much better place. So, all right. So I looked at the last two emails and it all said, oh, I know I’ve been MIA, I know I’ve been MIA, or I know I’ve been, you know, missing, or, I know I’ve, it’s been a while, but I decided not to start. This newsletter with that same starting, I’m just gonna tell you kinda what’s been going on.

So, to be honest, for the last few years after my mom died, it’s been really hard. I was at a beginning of a pivot when she passed, and pivots, I’m sure, as you know, are hard. I know, I’m really positive and I am. That doesn’t change. It hasn’t changed. Uh, but you can be sad and still be positive, but. I am a really positive person.

Um, but death brings up a lot of things. It actually helps clarify some things and God has really had me be in the refiners fire. There’s a song [00:02:00] we sang at church, I think last week or the week before, about the refiners fire. And what that means is when. You’re someone welder or some silversmith or something is melting down a metal, let’s just say silver, to use it in a new way.

So they had silver, I don’t know, utensils. And now they’re gonna make something else. A, a, I don’t know, a, a vase or something. I have no idea. A platter. Um, they have to melt it down and there’s some yucky stuff on the top in that crucible. And you have to scrape it off and it gets discarded. And I feel like that’s kind of what has been happening.

I mean, as we just age, we have to go through that refiners fire, and if not, we just have a whole bunch of extra baggage that we’re carrying around with us. And so in that crucible, after you scrape off the gunk, um, and it’s expected to [00:03:00] have gunk, there’s some impurities. You’re gonna be left with pure silver underneath or whatever metal you’re using because we all have stuff in our lives that we need to get refined.

We have to choose to burn it all down. And then start over with the peer stuff. And for me, the pivot was having a place to put my illustrations in January of 2018. I had my first ever sabbatical. I started teaching in 2002, but I started at the University of South Alabama in 2003. And it was the first sabbatical I’d ever been able to have because our schedule didn’t, we had too many students and we had, which is great, great problem.

Um, but we. I didn’t, there wasn’t a spot for any of us in graphic design to take sabbatical, so we adjusted our schedules and I was awarded my first sabbatical in 2018 and that January was rough. I was very sick for the first three weeks of my sabbatical. This one hasn’t been much easier, just it was different.

Lost a, a [00:04:00] friend, so I had to go to Denver and, sorry, but. And just so people know, it’s like when I say I’m on sabbatical, they’re like, oh, cool. You get to do whatever you want. And I’m, I’m always like, I don’t think you understand what sabbatical is, so you have to apply for a sabbatical. It’s not just this period of rest where we do nothing, professors or whoever do nothing.

It’s actually a time to work on a focus project. So you have to pitch a project and hopefully it gets accepted and then you spend all this time that you couldn’t spend if you were. Teaching, you know, because you need this focus time. So during the 2018 sabbatical is January through May. Um, that sabbatical I was working on developing my illustrations and developing a style or styles, it started something in me that has been peace in the chaos.

To be honest, I love illustrating, I love making collage. I love cutting paper. I love [00:05:00] making art with those pieces. Cut paper. I love painting. I love it all. But honestly, I was making illustrations mostly just for me, just in my sketchbook, and I didn’t know how to use them in anything or if they could be used.

Maybe it was just these little bits of joy that I get to pass around. But I wasn’t really get commissioned by enough clients to incorporate into websites. I was sometimes, um. Or to do print collateral for clients, I guess because they knew me more as a designer and I wasn’t an illustrator, but I was getting some, just not enough, but it wasn’t feeding the itch that I wanted.

But I also realized that maybe commissions like that aren’t what I was looking for. So to be honest, I would make stickers and share these little joyful illustrations at conferences and with friends and family, and those I thought were my little joy bombs. And I thought, well, if that’s all it is, that’s fine.

But I had a feeling God wasn’t done with me in regards to how I was using my illustrations. My friend Allen turned me on to service pattern design during one of our [00:06:00] seasons of Power Station, which is a three month co coaching group that I ran once or twice a year. It’s been on hold since my mom died, but in February of 23, I decided to take Bonnie and Christine’s immersion, and then I think it was May or June or sometime, I mean, I decided in February to take both of these and.

I also took Amarillo Henderson’s Pro Watercolor Build course. Bonnie focused on surface pattern design, SPD for short, um, for Adobe Illustrator for Vector and Amarillo focused on surface pattern design using Adobe Photoshop or Raster graphics. So things I had sketched in my sketchbook I could scan in that weren’t really like pen.

If they were line drawings, I would do them in Illustrator if they were illustrations or watercolors or. Things like that. It was better if I was doing it in Photoshop. And I’ve realized, I mean, I’ve had to, I still do patterns in both, but that’s kind of how I decide, [00:07:00] which I’m, if I’m drawing it in pen, I’m just gonna vectorize it.

So in the middle of me taking this class, it was a eight week class. My mom died, well, she, she had a stroke and on, I think the ninth or the 10th of March, and then she died on the 25th. In 2023. And despite it, I still did both courses because the summer before in 2022, I had a major creative burnout and I turned to making more art and painting.

And my mom loved it and I knew she would want me to continue. I would send her all these images and, and she would be such an encouragement for me. Of course, she liked everything. I would get everything on the fridge, you know. But she was my biggest supporter for my podcast and in life. She was tough on me, but she was always honest.

Even when it stung. She wasn’t perfect, but she was my best friend. She wasn’t always my best friend. Uh, growing up, not so much, but, um, we really [00:08:00] found a wonderful relationship in the last, I don’t know, 20, 30 years of my life. I miss her still and I tear up as I was writing this almost three years later now.

So I had trouble doing everything. As a result, uh, that I was normally doing after she died. I was still building websites for clients and doing client work, and I was trying to keep up with the weekly podcast and, and did for the most part, I kept hearing my friend and long time schedule or the podcast, Ashley Barkley say, are you getting something out of it?

And if I would say Yes, then keep going. She said, you need to get something out of it. And I was, but I was changing and. I was, my focus was changing and I wasn’t able to do everything because I was in such a learning phase. It was difficult for me to, it felt like, like an extra side job. So I’m still teaching [00:09:00] full-time at the university and it has, if you talk to me during COVID, it was rough.

Whoa. Um, and I wasn’t sure if God was calling me out of that. But I do feel clearly that I’m not released from teaching at the college, college level yet, but I do think I’m going to be teaching in different ways, teaching more online, um, doing some Skillshare classes. Those are some things I would like to do, and just having some other classes just on my site.

I do feel like there’s other ways I can share knowledge and continue to learn and grow with my illustrations in the service pattern design. And that’s kind of where this next episode is for 4 98. Um, so this is getting long. I hope you’re still with me. I think it’s easier to hear me than it is to, uh, read it maybe.

But I applied for another sabbatical. Um. And I got it starting this January. I did a lot of prep for it last semester that I really haven’t shared except just with my close friends. So, you know what’s been going on. You’ve, you’ve [00:10:00] been getting inundated with images in your text threads probably. Um, and I appreciate you so much, but I am really getting close to being able to share it with everybody.

Um. And I’ve been investigating a lot of new avenues. I take a lot of classes on Domestica and I had taken this one, I mean, I took, I love Domestica. Um, but there was one class that really like itched, so it scratched and itched that I had had for a long time. Um, it’s still foggy. I have, don’t have a exactly super crystal clear direction, but it’s getting clearer every day because I’m continuing to pursue it.

I’m also working on a book during my sabbatical of this journey. So more on all that stuff and the stuff I’m not showing you yet. Uh, next episode, but for now, I’m gonna share how tos about the process. So episode 4 98, the one that is right before this one, probably. [00:11:00] Um, this is 4 98 B. It, um, is the how to process of using smart objects and combining what I already know about design and illustration with what I’m learning about surface pattern design.

So that’s what this episode is all about. My friend Ann Ford, who’s been a designer for a long time, she said she even learned something from this video. So maybe you’ll watch it, you can always speed it up if you, uh, don’t wanna watch it at one x, which I never watch anything at one x. Um, but I hope you enjoy it and.

I would really like to know, so you can always hit reply on or give it a like on YouTube and hit a reply. Give it a comment on YouTube or even here on wherever this is on the page that is on Creative Ignite. So on this, this page on the website, you can comment there too and I’ll reply. Anyway, I appreciate your patience and your grace and.

I can’t wait to tell you [00:12:00] more about my refiners fire and I’m still in it. So I hope you guys have an awesome day and week, and I hope that I have another one for you next week. Bye.