Pride designs - Queer inspired designs / Free for Commercial usages

Did you know our pride designs are free to use commercially? We make new designs around pride month each year. And all designs are available for licensing, completely free for commercial and personal use. We believe in supporting the causes that matter.

I grew up with a brother that was 11 years older and he loved dressing his full size Barbie doll (yup, me!). So it didn’t come as a surprise when he brought home a boyfriend. Growing up in a small town being gay was just not very accepted. My brother already moved to a city where obviously there’s a lot more diversity. But I was stuck on a school that was not very accepting of my ‘family’s choices.’ I loved my brother and thought it was the strangest thing that people would come up to me and spit in my face because they heard my brother was living with a man. So I was a lesbian then right? Oh those ignorant people. I met a lot of them.

When I travel I also visit places where this kind of LGBTQ+ diversity is hidden. Or just completely criminalized. I do visit these places because I think it’s good to open a conversation. I actually discuss my brother often when we’re talking to strangers abroad. They first meet me, I’m pretty all right, so they enter the conversation with an open mind. An invitation to talk openly.

This month we licensed some Pride designs to our dear customer Angela who’s the force behind The Fashion for Kids. She’ll be offering our designs on fabric and if you’re EU based you can order a piece on her website. We believe in making the world more colorful and fun. More inclusive and kind. And that means everyone’s welcome. If you resonate with our story. Please get in touch. We love working together with the warm hearted and like-open-minded.

I believe those small nudges matter. Talking about it, anywhere, matters. You want to meet half-way right? In order to see things from another perspective, you have to step out of your own comfort zone. And my experience is it’s not that filled with hate as we try to teach people. It’s just the lack of diversity growing up in a society where this kind of freedom just isn’t common that causes an unsafe atmosphere. So that’s why I don’t ban certain places from my travel list. I might agree, disagree, but it’s about connection. And you can do that with anyone as long as you’re open to it.

We live in a country that puts individuality above everything. Which I think isn’t the holy grail at all. We can’t live without each other. So I can understand why one of my friends accepted himself fully, but chose to live as a cis man with a women and kids. His culture & tradition’s wired like that. You choose the greater good: family above everything. And so everyone has a story. Hopefully our prints will trigger those conversations. We don’t fight for what’s right, but just kill ‘m with kindness. Open your eyes for all that diversity.

Most of the designs shown her and on our socials too are available for licensing. That means you can pay a fee and in return we will send you the original files which you can use for your own production. This covers commercial usage too. Want some more info about licensing and costs involved? You can find more info about our rates on the website. We have a lot more queer inspired designs available. Just shoot us a message if you'd like to browse our full portfolio.

These designs are now available for licensing. And we also have some of these designs available on fabric & wallpaper through our partners at Carriage House Printery & Spoonflower.

The Lookbook - The Simple Patriot / Celebrating the 4th of July in modern minimalist style

Meet out new minimalist retro style Patriotic designs. Over the years we created many patriot prints. American inspired designs in red and blues, perfect for National Holidays like the 4th of July. These last months we made some more simplistic design versions around this theme.

Our Patriot designs always have been quite busy. With lots of detailing and different elements in one print design. This year we wanted to make two new collections. One that's a little more on the trend with groovy seventies flower power influences. And one more minimalist style. We noticed we have two types of customers. One that go for the all maximalist kind of design for wallpaper, dog accessories and kids clothing. And one that is looking for a more mature and neutral tone for their items.

Hopefully with these new minimalist designs we can cater to our customers who are looking for a more boho & simplistic aesthetic. The designs featured here are available for licensing. We have more color options from each design available and we have some more designs not shown here. Want to see them al? Just shoot us a message.

These designs are now available for licensing. And we also have some of these designs available on fabric & wallpaper through our partners at Carriage House Printery & Spoonflower.

Hello Miami Beach // The Abstracts // A design process

We are very proud of our newly launched Miami collection over at Spoonflower. This summer we created a whole bunch of new abstracts inspired by Miami’s beaches and streets. In this post you can read a little something about the process of creating this range of abstracts.

For this collection I started with some expressive shapes. When I create abstract designs the process of creating the shapes is linked to how I feel. I usually make abstract art when there is lot’s of drama to deal with, it is a way to transform my emotions into creation without having to think to much about the final result, color palette or proportions of an illustration.

A hell of a ride
Throughout the year there have been several things I needed to deal with. A partnership that resulted in a dramatic ending. It turned out I was the only one invested in this colab, a romantic relationship that ended very sudden, uhm yeah, I sort of invested in that too. Some family ties that needed my attention. Lot’s of things have happened this year, shaking me to the core and rethinking my entire self. When I go though real lows I create. There is no other way I know to deal with these things. I have been making things ever since I was a little girl, and most of my designs are targeting kids, that is not a coincidence. Getting in touch with my fundaments, my pure self is all I can rely on. And that basic emotion gets translated into my artwork.

Soft edges
When I am angry I create raw, high contrast designs. I use a dry brush, black ink. It is very obvious you can tell something needs to get out. But this summer I was not angry, I was mostly hurt. And when I feel hurt I do not need to get into the ‘raw’ as much. For the new Miami series all designs and elements were made with markers and ink resulting in rounded geometric shapes. Using a large marker and large brush make the details and shapes a little softer, there is no raw edge like other abstract designs have had. This soft touch represents the vulnerability I did not want to avoid or ignore. But I felt vulnerable after all the events that happened this year. And I was not going to run from it. I decided to face it, and am still facing it. Creation transforms but does not take away the pain. it is a process.

There is nothing more soothing for me than to turn my illustrations, and for this series, my abstract shapes, into patterns. I think you have to be a little crazy making 2000 patterns a year. But turning these shapes into repeats is so fulfilling! It is like sleeping under fresh crisp sheets, or the scent of raindrops on the hot summer pavements. Well, I don’t expect you to understand but making patterns puts my mind at easy. There is no better way of meditating for me than staring at my own seamless repeats.

This too shall pass
The entire Miami series is about being vulnerable. Therefore the colors are soft with a warm blush pink and a light ice blue, and a contrasting whiskey brown for a little character. I am not much of a drama queen usually so when I finished my 15+ designs I felt like a huge weight fell off my shoulders. I can truly say making art is like cleaning my soul, at least get rid of a big pile of dirt. Creation, how I love you!

Every single design needs a name. When I started creating these basic shapes I did not work around a theme. I just noticed some shapes reminded me of the city and some reminded me of the beach. And I knew this series had to be named after Miami with it’s sunny sea side and busy streets, the art deco architecture. Naming these prints took away the serious and turned this collection into a fun range filled with humor. I had so much fun coming up with the names; cocktails, salt, derby. The bling, obviously. The food prints: fries, taco’s and hotdogs. The names of the designs tied them all together as a collection.

Now the entire collection is available on fabric and wallpaper via Spoonflower. Most of the designs are still available for licensing too. So take a look and enjoy the new abstracts.

BB Fabrics & Little Smilemakers Studio // New Memphis style inspired collection

Have you seen our new collection over at BB fabrics? We have been working with this company for a few years now and last months they launched their new summer collection of colorful home textiles. I collaboration with their creative studio we made a new collection with a mix of pastels, geometric basics and a Memphis twist.

BB fabrics is a company that has been running around the textile business for four generations. With an eye for good design and a warm heart in doing business they are the absolute top of the industry. This year they changed their entire look with new name, a new logo, and a stylish new website and we are honored to be part of this new direction with our new summer range.

You might have seen some posts on our Instagram already. We are very proud to share this new collection with you. We made some memphis inspired ice cream designs that lead to this colorful collection for the summer season. BB fabrics offers a large collection of home decoration textiles and heavy weight fabrics. With their in house design studio they collaborate with designers and license brands to offer a broad range of unique prints with every new season. Their high quality fabric is sold from stock, so they are ready to ship within 48 hours. Check out their website for all new prints and order your favorite Little Smilemakers designs here. Stock up for your business and order these new prints before they are all sold out!

For a few years we have been collaboration with BB Fabrics now. We have developed a whole bunch of designs together in the past. We love their no nonsense honest way of doing business and which lead us to a long term collaboration with hopefully many more fun collection to come we are currently looking into doing exclusive work for them. We love to give them a shout out here. So stay tuned!

Announcement for Shutterstock buyers // License designs // Contact our studio directly

Some of you have noticed already: We are no longer licensing our designs via Shutterstock. Due to a crazy sh*tload of misuse, and no proper sollution to prevent this in the future, we decided our designs were not getting protected as they should and we decided to delete our collection. We are very sorry for all you buyers it had to come this far since we worked with Shutterstock for almost 10 years, but things got.... unworkable.

We have removed our all our designs and we are working on a new library of non-exclusive artwork. You can now only license our designs by contacting us directly. If you would like to receive a link to view our online portfolio just send us an email and we are happy to send you a link to our work. We are still in the process of adding all designs to this library, not our entire collection has been uploaded yet but we are working on it! It will take a little while before all 5000+ designs are all up, processed and tagged. Please have some patience!

Legal Matters // License information Little Smilemakers Studio fabric & designs

We are honored that so many companies would like to have Little Smilemakers designs in there shop. We have licensed our designs all over the world. However, there are lots of companies not having the proper license to sell our work and it is starting to be a full time task to investigate and monitoring these matters.

Licensing art for your business
We have been licensing our designs both exclusive and non-exclusively. If you are selling fabric and would like to add our designs to the shop contact us directly. We opt out the enhanced license through Shutterstock since there is too much mis-use. If you would like to start selling our prints just contact our studio directly and we will be happy to guide you through the licensing process.

Legal steps
For all of you selling without a license you can still reach out to us and purchase a license up till May 1th. As of next month we will be taking legal steps toward companies who are selling our designs illegally. If you stumble upon our designs and if you are unsure the fabric is legit just contact us and we can help you further.

License & Spoonflower
And if you are selling our designs with Spoonflower fabric: no worries! Royalties are included in the price so you don't need an extra license to sell your products with our prints on them. Spoonflower has a great royalty structure, you might pay a little more but artist benefit from each and every purchase directly. We love to see all those finished products and would like to thank our Spoonflower customers for their support. You make our work pretty damn awesome!

If you want to make sure to buy original designs check if your reseller is registered on our client list on the Little Smilemakers Studio website. If you purchase through one of our customers you are allowed to use the fabrics for small businesses and other commercial use.

Announcement for our Shutterstock customers // Enhanced Commercial license only available directly

Almost 10 years ago I joined Shutterstock as a contributor. Starting out with a few abstract and urban photographs and textures but soon changed into uploading vectors: illustrations and pattern designs only. A lot has changed in print. Things have gotten more digital and the demand for designs for commercial purpose grew.

Our Shutterstock portfolio has been a great way to showcase our designs and we still upload some artwork every now and then. It has been a great way to built up a steady business, generate a base income and exposure.

The past year a lot of things have changed in the enhanced license agreement. Our designs are usually made from vector. So it is easy for customers to edit and change colors and adjust the prints to use them for their products. Which we love. But it also means it is easy to download the files without the right license and have a high quality file without paying the proper fee. Unfortunately that happened a lot.

Misuse of designs
As our business and also online vector portfolio has grown bigger we noticed an increase in misuse of our designs and since we have to protect our creations we decided that from April 1st we stop selling enhanced licenses over Shutterstock, at least for now. It does not mean our designs are no longer available, we just would like to do direct business when it comes to licensing our designs for commercial use, so we know every print we find out there is licensed in a legit way.

After some consideration we decided to opt out our enhanced license downloads via Shutterstock. But our entire portfolio is still available for commercial usage too. Just contact our studio directly and we will help you further.

Newbee in licensing?
If you are new in licensing designs we are also happy to give you more info about our standard and commercial licenses. We also have in-house expertise to guide your business through the process of production, can adjust colors, scales and detailing and of course with our 10 year experience we are on top of the trends. So don't hesitate and send us a message.

> New travel iphone case series | Daily Objects | 100+ Little Smilemaker designs to choose from

More than 100 Little Smilemakers designs are now being sold via Daily Objects. if you are looking for a cute travel themed case for you smartphone, take a look at the Daily Objects webshop. What do you think of this quirky UK London city design? More a Paris kind of girl? Take a look, with 100 designs to choose from it won't be hard to find something you like. Little Indian tuctuc patterns, Rickshaws, Tata Trucks and many more. More that 30 latest smartphone cases available.

> Retro retro in tha house!

by Maaike Boot

> Unfinished Words | Kavka Antwerp

Unfinished Words is a new project supported by Antwerp Youth Capital 2011 & de Stad Antwerpen. A collaboration between Unfinished Monkeys and a big group of multidisciplined artists. We all put together an amazing event in youth house Kavka, Antwerp. This night you can see all the creative minds and work blend. Unfinished Words is an open event filled with random words, psycho poetry, acapella or solo vocals, hiphop dj's, mc's, heavy weight music, crazy visuals and graphics, progressive decorations and lots more. So come and see! Doors open at 8pm. Performances start at 8.30pm and we will be entertaining you till 6am!

> Massaal aan de freubel

all images by Maaike Boot

Het nieuwe stationary seizoen is begonnen! De eerste agenda's voor het volgende schooljaar worden nu alweer in elkaar gezet. Het beloofd weer een lekker creatief seizoen te worden. Zoals bijvoorbeeld met de Girlscene agenda. Deze transformeert dit jaar een heus stijlboek! Bij deze een kleine impressie!

> On a Montmartre corner

all images by Maaike Boot

> Making fabric

What an incredible inspiring place that is! Istanbul is a city, home for nearly 20 million people, busy, crowded, chaotic, polluted but amazingly colourful! Wherever you go you can see the hand pinted patterns. On walls, ceilings, pottery or fabric. Just what i needed, a nice piece of inspiration for my new Unfinished Monkey project. Bright colourd flowers were painted on the ceiling of a little tea lounge. In the middle of the very busy Bazar.

Together with product designer Miriam Zink, we will be launching a very fruity, spicy and chicky webshop. We are working hard on our Unfinished Monkeys website but ofcourse try to make some new stuff aswell. Making fabric.