Finished work: New Rainbows & Sprinkles leggings for fitness, running, climbing and Netflix & chill

For a couple of years we’ve been working together with Lucy who’s the owner of Rainbows & Sprinkles, based in the UK. This year I’ve also been working from the home and asked her to send me some of the new pieces she licensed. A package arrived this months with a bunch of fun leggings.

Have you been working from home too? I bet you are also wearing a lot more leggings than high heals this year right? When Covid kicked in we move the studio and we’ve been working from home ever since. So no need to dress up for a meeting. I catch myself in leggings all day every day, I have to admit, it’s pretty comfy. I am used to working from home, but this year we all needed some more comfy pieces in our closet. These leggings are great to chill in but as a boulder girl I also took them to the climbing gym. Finding proper leggings can be so hard. Especially to work out in; not many are squat proof! I am such a fan of these, they are thick enough to not be see-though in extreme stretch situations. And soft enough to wear on the sofa for some chill and Netflix. But they are also very breathable. Is that a word? They are great for a sweaty, more intense work out too. So this time I am showing you our leopard print. But there are many more to choose from. Check the Rainbows & Sprinkles website for all prints & sizes and, did you know you can also get these prints in baby, toddles and kids clothes? Happy matching!

Licensing print designs
If you like to license our prints for your business too please send us a message. We license print designs all over the world and we love to welcome new collabs.

Made with Little Smilemakers Studio Fabric // Top 5 // November 2017

We love to see a finished project after working hard on a new collection of design or a series of illustrations for our clients. But with finished fabric designs it is even a bigger surprise to see what customers create. To see how final products evolve when people put their own creative energy in there is amazing.

If you browse around on Etsy or Instagram for some kids fashion or home decoration you are very likely to stumble upon some Little Smilemakers prints. Most creatives with small home based businesses sell their projects via internet and tag us via Instagram. So we see some amazing things pop up in our feed every month. We love how Little Smilemakers creations are the foundation for other creatives all around the world to work with. So here is our monthly blog post that features some creative results from around the world. Sweden, Australia, United States. All over the world our designs are used for the most wonderful items. We have some cute Polar Bear leggings, Indian Animal Rompers, Soft Sole baby shoes and some cool kids accessories. This is our top 5 selection for November.

1 // Bean Sprout
Bean Sprout must be one of our favorite webshops using our Spoonflower fabric. Hiedee has a great eye for unique and bespoke designs and we love her style and gorgeous clean photography. Bean Sprout has a pretty big collection of Little Smilemakers fabrics, all turned into the most adorable baby and kids fashion accessories like baby bibs, book bags, summer hats and nappy wallets. For this months Made With post we selected one of our favorites: the reindeer book bag. Perfect accessory for your kids winter school days. But we also featured our cool monochrome dashes fabric that was turned into a cute baby bib. Wanna see more? Take a look into her gorgeous shop for all wonderful handmade creations.

2 // Maxomorra
The new Autumn Winter ’17 Plus Collection is a new design project, risen from their curiosity to explore Maxomorra outside the box. The new Plus collection contains eight prints in a limited selection of styles, all made by Little Smilemakers Studio. With a few extra details to the prints and a brand new and beautiful color palette. To create complete outfits, there is also a small basic collection with solid colored jersey and velour available. As always, pick your favorites, mix and match, and go out and be fabulous. There are t-shirts, leggings, hats and so much more to choose from. But have some patience, the collection will be released for autumn and isn’t in shops just yet.



3 // Oh Boeys
We were doing a little happy dance when we saw this perfect pair of Christmas pine tree soft soles in our Instagram feed. We love this fabric and are so happy to see these turned into this cute pair, so cute! Oh Boeys is an Australian webshop selling bows, bibs, soft sole baby shoes and blankets for your little one. They have a colorful range of products and you can also customize your own pair of soft soles. Go take a look and see for yourself and see what else they have!

4 // La La Loop Baby
Lorraine is based in the UK and has a background in knitted textiles and fashion design and started her La La Loop range with cashmere fashion and interior accessories. After her twins were born she was inspired to pick up sewing and an entire new collection was launched. She now has some of our all time favorite fabric available as rompers, leggings and baby & toddler accessories. Her items are flying off the shelves so make sure you place your order in time for the holidays! Go take a look into her Etsy shop.

5 // Roostery Home
Roostery Home is an accessory and interior decoration brand that collaborated with Spoonflower. All of our designs that are available via Spoonflower are also available via Roostery Home where you can find all sorts of fun home decor items and interior accessories. From tea towels, bedding and pillows to chairs and wallpaper. Just order your favorite print on your product of choice and add some Little Smilemakers designs to your home. Perfect for the not so talented sewer like me. For this month we selected out monochrome crosses designs that was turned into bedding. Our designs were also featured on the Oh Joy blog and Spoonflowers winter catalogue. Take a look if you are curious and order quickly to be in time for the holidays. You can find over 50.000 products just with Little Smilemakers designs on them. Crazy!

Top 5 fabric trends // winter 16/17 // watch out for these cool themes and styles this winter

Every season we reveal our best selling designs and make a fun top 5 of current trends. In this part of the world we are preparing for the colder season and all winter themes are picked up. But down under things are getting warmer, so we always have to contrasting geographical areas fighting for the hot sellers title. So much fun to see those two world join in our shop sales. Here is our Top 5 in fabric trends for this year’s winter season. All fabrics are listed below.

Monochromes & Textures
More and more people begin to realize we need a serene and peaceful place to call home after being overly exposed to so many things each and every day this seems to be a ultimate lifestyle change all around the world. As a designer the prints I love most are the basic, plain, pure shapes. We have been making fabric and print designs for over 8 years now and we have seen the shift from crazy colorful-all-colors-of-the-rainbow-in-one to the pure Scandinavian inspired texture like designs. And we love it. In this time and age our fabric buyers are more conscious and fabric should fit into a multi purpose: gender neutral, age neutral, cross seasonal etc. We love this strong trend since we love working with a clean simple shape and turn it into a strong repeat for fashion and home decoration. Especially the monochromes have been very popular this season. In strong black and white, less saturated natural colors and soft pastels.

Kawaii faces
When we visit japan almost two years ago we were inspired to make a new series of Kawaii style designs. We all know Hello Kitty right? Kawaii means something adorable or cute in Japanese and while I was traveling through this amazing one-of-a-kind quirky country I notice nearly everything ‘graphic design’ related, business logo’s, packaging, public adds, infographics: everything was Kawaii. Cute tiny eyes and a smiley face. So we are so happy to see these eyelashes, tiny faces and smiles pop up in home decoration in this part of the world. Our most popular Kawaii inspired print must be our popsicles and ice-cream design. But we also created some winter themes for this colder season. We mixed it up with a little Scandinavian: less colors. Hopefully we can enjoy those smiley faces for another few years.



Bears & Sloths
We looooove all the typical fall and winter animals. Animals will always be one of the most hot-selling themes and every year there is another animal standing out and trending like no other. This winter it has been the grizzly & polar bear. Bears are popping up everywhere and unfortunately a lot of copies are also going around also. But we have a cool, very unique selection in our shop. When we are preparing for snow, down under they are sewing their new summer pieces. This summer we saw our Sloths picked up all around the world. Now 8 months after releasing the Pura Vida series in our exclusive design presentation every single print artist has their own sloth available. So the sloths probably won’t be here next year but we wanted to celebrate them a little anyway. Next to elephants my personal fav-of-all-time animal. How can you NOT love those quirky creatures?



Gender Neutral Kids Themes
The past few years there has been a worldwide discussion about gender. This topic made it a little difficult to sell my pink designs as ‘girls print’ and blue designs as ‘boy print. Sometimes we get the most nasty comments on designs in blue or pink. The thing is: if someone is looking for ‘baby boy fabric’ you kinda need to tag designs in a way everyone can find what they need. It does not mean we think blue should only fit boys. As a Dutch designer I can tell you I am quite happy about the gender discussion and when people get better informed they also make better choices so that is why we see an increase in sales in kids designs that are gender neutral. It is getting more and more important to NOT label and we are so happy to see how strongly this effects our sales. That is why we wanted to add it to our top 5 trends this winter. Buying gender neutral is not only a gender conscious decision, it also reduces the footprint for our kids fashion industry and home decoration companies. Why release two lines when you can cover all at once? I love it! We plan on making more and more neutral prints ourselves but keep adding a boy and girl tag every now and then.

Dreams
All night and sky related designs are crazy popular this year. It is so funny to see how all dream themes and sky related prints are trending. Our hot air balloon designs were all sold with an exclusive license this year, we did not manage to add new designs to our fabric shop but our oldies, clouds, moon & stars, they are all picked up and are popping up in small boutiques all around the world. So funny how quick a trend can set! We thought this dream topic was a good one to end this post with. If you are looking for some fresh themes go visit our Spoonflower shop and show us what you make!