Saturday, October 1, 2016

Freshtastic Little Smilemakers Fabric: Pura Vida Animals // October selection



Every month we upload new work to our Spoonflower shop and over the past 5 years our portfolio has grown from zero to over 3000 designs to choose from. Behind the scenes we can search within our portfolio but we noticed customers have a hard time finding what they want sometimes. With our monthly Freshtastic Fabric post we feature new fabric that was added to our shop. We include some direct links to these new designs and color versions. Hopefully we can filter on trend designs and make the process of selecting prints a little easier.

For our October post we selected our new Pura Vida series. 5 years ago I traveled to Costa Rica, such an inspirational place full of amazing animals, plants and views. Over the years we have made many collections based on my travels but somehow I never sat down to make a series of designs based on this trip until last year when I decided it was time to expand our portfolio with an entire Costa Rica inspired series of animal fabric. For this months freshtastic post we have selected a whole bunch of these amazing animals. Hopefully you like them as much as I do and we hope to se some fun kids fashion and home decoration pop up in our feeds.

Frogs
While I was traveling we were joined by a Biologist who told us all about the amazing life the jungle in Costa Rica had to offer. We stopped for a little break and while we would buy some beverages he would be out looking in bushes and under leaves. When we came back from one of those stops, he had found a tiny little frog. A very poisonous one was staring at us from the palm of his hand. Such a tiny creature. We have included this tiny monster of the jungle on our fabric series. We made them in yellow, blue and pink. They don't look much like monsters though. They are pretty cute.

Toucans
The iconic toucan is hard to find in the forests of Costa Rica. Seeing one up close was pretty impossible, but I did. These birds are so bright and so beautiful. Gorgeous animals! We made a simple repeat fabric design for our Spoonflower portfolio in fresh tropical yellow, lilac and green colors.

Toucans
The sky and trees are full of wonderful birds in Costa Rica. We included a Pura Vida birds design including some of the quirky birds we've seen during our trip. We added some colorful summer color schemes for this tropical collection and also some more neutral shades for our colder season since winter is on it's way here in Europe. A basic black and white, green and a stone purple. Enjoy!

Turtles
When I was a kid, my older brother had some tiny turtles, he still has some up until today. Right now they are preparing for their winter nap. I love turtles, those beautifully textured shells, their curious heads. So cool. I have seen some turtles during my travels and if you visit Costa Rica you can go to the ocean at night to see those sea creatures nesting on the beaches. We also had a turtle friend over at one of our lodges, just walking slowly through the gardens. We made some fun textured turtles for our fabric collection too. We have made several colors, teal, brown, pink and yellow ones.



Lizards
The Pura Vida fabric collection also has some cool reptiles in there! Geckos, snakes, crocodiles and iguana's. These giant lizards gathered around the river we passed, on every rock there was a lizard getting some tan, well, they were probably just waiting for bugs to pass by, but they seemed to be pretty chill just hanging there. We made some lizards for our collection too. I personally was not very happy with the result but some of you convinced me they were lovely and I decided to include them anyway. Here are the links: Teal, blue, gray, maroon and yellow.

Sloths
One of our trending prints at the moments: Sloth fabric is hot hot hot! Those adorkable creatures hand in trees everywhere. They seem so slow and lazy, but next day they are gone. Run off to another branch. I come from a country where there is very little wild life, seeing those sloths for the first time was amazing. Those long arms, up side down heads, so funny! Everything about these creatures made me smile. So mysterious! For our exclusive collection we made some sloths, but since they were licensed exclusively, sent out never to be seen again, and a Pura Vida series needs some sloths we made some new ones for this range. Hope you like them! We have some cool teal colored fabric, pink, lilac and we added our print that is also available on fabric via Ansje Handmade: blue beige.

Whales
We can make an entire new range of water life. There is so much in and on and around the ocean. But these creatures couldn't be left out. Some blue, lilac and soft moss colors are available in our shop. Go take a look.

Snakes
During a walk through the jungle I notice something bright laying on a piece of bark in front of me. It was like a throne. On top of it was a bright shiny, all rolled up, snake. As I came closer he noticed me and started to move. My guide rushed towards me and told me to not come any closer, this snake was supposed to be the most poisonous one in Costa Rica. I wasn't really going to watch the snake from up close. Dear lord, a snake! Hell no! I am Dutch, I don't like those scary creatures. But as I do with most scary things, I turn them into something cute and created these green, pink, yellow and beige snake fabric designs. Pretty adorable right?