"From the first moment I began sketching birds on a Pennsylvania porch, I knew art would be my compass."
Sitting down with Stacie Dale felt like sharing that porch with an old friend. Stacie and I have both walked winding paths through fashion, illustration and home décor, and our conversation reminded me how many ways there are to build a creative life.
Walking Through Stacie’s Story
Stacie shared how growing up near nature reserves sparked her love for birds and botanicals.
She studied fashion design, sewed and painted hand‑crafted keepsake chests for years, then slowly returned to licensing when a home goods company spotted her online. When she realised how little guidance existed for artists, she created Surface Design News, a monthly newsletter connecting designers with manufacturers, and the companion Pattern Roundup email that sends artists’ work straight to art directors.
Why Direct Connections Matter
Our conversation turned to how artists can feel pressured to post constantly on social media. Stacie was candid: art directors rarely discover work that way.
A warm, well‑researched email has a far greater chance of being seen. She encouraged us to spend time developing our own style instead of chasing every trend. Success in licensing often arrives after years of practice and pitching – and that’s okay.
Embracing Tools & Trusting Your Voice
We also talked about tools. Whether you prefer Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Procreate or a sketchbook, the most important thing is your creative vision.
Don’t let software hold you back. Protect your art when you share it and honour your own pace.
As I reflect on our chat, I feel grateful for voices like Stacie’s. She reminds us that creativity is both a craft and a calling, and that the path is rarely straight but always worthwhile.
Resources or Businesses Mentioned in This Episode
· Surface Design News – Stacie’s monthly newsletter
· Pattern Roundup – monthly email sending artists’ work to art directors
Guest - Stacie Dale's Links:
https://www.staciedaleillustration.com
https://www.staciedaledesigns.com
https://www.instagram.com/surfacedesignnews/
https://www.instagram.com/stacie_dale_surface_designs/
· Millie the Mouse book series
· Songbird Stories: Tales of the Pennsylvania Woods
· Stacie Dale Designs – print‑on‑demand shop
· Design tools: Illustrator, Photoshop, Affinity Designer, Procreate, Canva
· Platforms: Spoonflower, print‑on‑demand sites
· Protective tools: Nightshade/Glaze - Research on how even these might not be good enough yet
Listener Support Note
You can support the show here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2397445/support
Can’t see the episode player above?
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Some links in this post may be affiliate links, which means either Kaylie or Delores may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you). We only share tools or products we genuinely love and use ourselves.
TRANSCRIPT:
Delores Naskrent: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Creative Juggle Joy podcast. I'm Delores Naskrent, and today's conversation is one that I've been really looking forward to. Today, I'm sitting down with Stacie Dale, an illustrator, designer, and longtime professional in the surface pattern design world. Stacie is the artist behind Stacie Dale Designs, and she's the editor of Surface Design News, which is a publication that helps connect artists with real opportunities in licensing and product design.
She has spent nearly three decades working in apparel and home decor, and she brings such a thoughtful perspective to how artists can actually build a sustainable career in this industry. Stacie, I'm so glad you've agreed to come on the show with me.
Stacie Dale: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Delores. I am so excited to chat with you.
Delores Naskrent: Excellent. Before we dive in, could you give everyone a little snapshot [00:01:00] of your background and what you're working on right now?
Stacie Dale: Sure. I am the artist behind Stacie Dale Designs, and my work primarily focuses on bird and botanical illustration. I do product art for children's wall art. I've done temporary tattoos.
I've done home decor. It's, it runs the gamut of, what you can do in licensing. I've done a little bit here and there. I also illustrate children's books. I'm working on a series of books right now called Millie the Mouse- Aw ... for an independent author. And then I also wrote my own book called Songbird Stories: Tales of the Pennsylvania Woods, and I'm working on a follow-up to that as well.
I have my hand in a lot of different things. I grew up in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania surrounded by nature preserves and the home of John James Audubon, which is where I developed my love of birds and nature and botanicals. And you can't [00:02:00] live here without knowing a lot about birds. It's just how it is in this town, so
Delores Naskrent: That's great.
Stacie Dale: Yeah, it's really fun. And yeah, I've been painting and sewing and crafting since I was four years old. I come from a somewhat creative family. My dad, he was a painter. My mom she was very crafty. I wish I was as crafty as she was 'cause she's really good. So over the years, I've just I've worked in a bunch of different capacities.
My degree is actually in fashion design, and I worked in the apparel industry- For about 10 years, and then I did freelance for a few more years after that. But during that time, I started my own business doing hand-painted keepsake chests, and that business took off, and it was my main business for almost 20 years.
Delores Naskrent: Wow.
Stacie Dale: And I just started getting back into licensing probably eight or nine years ago, I would say. It just came about that someone approached me about [00:03:00] licensing my artwork on some home goods and they had seen some things I posted online. And that's how I went back into that.
So that's my background.
Delores Naskrent: That is a great mix, I have to say. Yeah. One of the things that makes your perspective so valuable is that you have spent all those years doing all of those different things, and now you have this newsletter, which I really wanna talk about. You're the editor of Surface Design News, and that gives artists insight into what's actually happening in the industry, which is super valuable.
I can't even imagine not having it now that I've been getting it for these months. I feel like I would need to have it to know what's going on. Do you wanna talk a little about how or what led to it? Like, how did you start it? Sure. What made you start it?
Stacie Dale: Yeah, Surface Design News, I had taken a surface design class online back in 2021, [00:04:00] I think it was, or 2020, I forget.
But I came out of that class, and it was a great class. I learned a ton. But I knew from my experience in the apparel industry that, there's this huge network of companies to license your work to.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: Because I worked as a designer we did license some work from the companies that I worked with.
Every once in a while, we would license artwork from another artist. So I knew how it worked. I knew it was out there. But I felt like I needed to tell people this is how you find these companies, and this is how it works. And so I started Surface Design News really as just a way to inform other designers about, where are these opportunities, and how do I talk to these companies and, what's going on.
So I started Surface Design News, which is a monthly newsletter- And it used to only include 10 companies. Now it includes 20 companies every month. But I also have articles links to things that are going [00:05:00] on different teachers. I have links to their classes. Anything that's upcoming I just put a link to that in the newsletter, and then I also have designers.
Every month I have a theme, and you can submit two pieces of artwork for the cover of Surface Design News. And then I also have something called Pattern Roundup, which is an email I send every month to my list of art directors, and it's basically the same two pieces of artwork that you send in for the newsletter go immediately into the Pattern Roundup email.
And so I send that out, and then I can see which companies have opened whose artwork and how many times they clicked on it. And it's a great tool, I think, for designers so that you have some idea of are you hitting the mark? Even if it doesn't lead to a licensing deal, if a company
Clicking on your artwork and they wanna see more, that's good information to have. 'Cause then maybe you'd want to [00:06:00] approach them. Or if they're not a company you wanna work with, you don't approach them. But I try to give the designers some information from that email that lets them know, this many companies looked at your work.
You might wanna stick to fabric, because it was all fabric companies that looked at your work. So it's just a little offshoot that And it's free. You don't have to be a subscriber to Surface Design News to do it. Anybody can send stuff in. It's one of my favorite things to do, because I love seeing other designers, get some notice out there without having to do a whole lot, so other than send in your artwork.
It's almost... people have said to me "Why don't you be an agent?" I'm like, "I don't know anything about being an agent." They're like it's the same thing." I'm like, "It's not." I said, I don't wanna deal with contracts and all that." I said, "I really just reach out to all of the..." I have a very large list of art directors that I have accumulated over five years, and I just send it to them and see what happens.
So- That's awesome ... but the newsletter itself is really meant to give [00:07:00] people an idea of I think some of the courses that are out there, they focus on a specific thing, like either fabric- ... or stationery or greeting cards or wall art. So those are great, but there are a ton of other kinds of companies that you can license your artwork to, and I think Surface Design News gives people a very broad spectrum of the types of companies.
Delores Naskrent: Right.
Stacie Dale: It's not all fabric companies, and it's not all greeting card companies. It's a mixture of about, I'd say eight or nine different, types of companies that you can send your artwork into for consideration.
Delores Naskrent: So it's a resource that it helps- Yeah ... artists to understand the industry- Yes
which is really great, and that's something I love about what you're doing, 'cause a lot of artists think that the hardest part of becoming a licensed artist is learning how to do the art, but that's- Yeah ... really not the case. It's really the challenge of understanding how the industry works.
Stacie Dale: Yes. Yeah, that's a huge [00:08:00] thing that I think a lot of designers and especially ones that come out of some of the classes, they feel like, "Okay, I've learned the art.
I learned how to make it. I'm... This is all I have to do now, I just call these companies up, and " There's a lot of other little details that you need to know- Yeah ... before you start pitching to companies. And I think it's just important for people to know that there is a bigger spectrum of companies out there that will look at your work, and- Yeah
you don't have to focus, on just one thing.
Delores Naskrent: We were just talking about that. Yeah. I was talking about the company that I, ended up licensing with, and it's it was a teddy bear company, and yet it was my artwork that they were licensing, and it was just the weirdest thing.
At the time I couldn't wrap my head around it, but- What have you seen in the way of changes? What are the biggest changes that would affect these artists who are out there trying to get licensed?
Stacie Dale: There have been [00:09:00] some obviously big shifts in technology. AI has changed things. It's funny.
Some people are so afraid of AI, and that it's gonna take over and it's going to just become this replacement for us. And my thoughts on that are that these companies have been doing business with artists for decades. They're not going to just suddenly shift their business model to doing all-AI artwork, because it's not proven that it works.
What's proven is that working with artists is what is selling their product. So I don't worry about that so much. The things I do worry about with AI are that, when you post your work online, AI scrapes that information, and it can put it into someone else's artwork.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: And there are ways to- Help that, you can do what's called nightshade or glaze over top of your artwork before you post it, and that sort of [00:10:00] scrambles the artwork so that they can't scrape it.
It's very time-consuming. But I feel like there's this push right now when I'm ... It's probably been going on for a while now, that artists feel like the only way that they are going to get noticed is if they put their work online, and put it on Instagram, and that's not true. It isn't.
Delores Naskrent: There's ...
Stacie Dale: It's more rare that an art director finds you on Instagram than it is if you send a well-crafted email to that art director.
The chances I'm opening that email is between 40 and 50%. The chance of them finding you on Instagram is less than 2%.
Delores Naskrent: Wow.
Stacie Dale: So I don't put all of my artwork up on Instagram. I save a lot of it just for art directors, because I don't want it scraped because I'm too lazy to do glaze- ... most of the time. But and it's a lot of effort to [00:11:00] do, but, you have to protect yourself a- or you just have to be okay with it.
It's gonna happen. AI's not going away. It's staying. And as an artist, we can cry about it all we want, but you have to figure out " where should I be putting my effort, the most? Am I getting most of my work through posting on Instagram?" If you are not, don't post on Instagram all the time.
Yes, 'cause- Don't
Delores Naskrent: spend
Stacie Dale: your time there ...
Delores Naskrent: not every artist gets their work by posting on Instagram. You may think- that but what I'm hearing you saying is that it's not necessarily the only way- No ... which is great. That's why resources and, conversations like this are important for people to understand that.
Go- I didn't get any of my art licensing deals by having my art posted on Instagram or anywhere.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. I had one in 10 years. I had one company reach out to me, and it resulted in a very small licensing [00:12:00] deal. I've gotten more from going directly to art directors.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: And I just encourage other designers to not
Don't feel like you have to post every day. It, I think it's just this ... It becomes like a hamster wheel. You feel like, "I have to do this. I have to do ..." You don't have to do that. Before the internet, we all got- licensing deals by approaching art directors or writing to companies. That hasn't really changed.
The way that you contact them is, has changed. You email them usually.
Delores Naskrent: Right.
Stacie Dale: But there are artists too that still send physical, printouts of their portfolios and have gotten work that way. Yeah ... Jenna Blackburn is one of them. She prints out her portfolio and sends it to companies, and she's gotten some great licensing deals that way.
So I just don't want people to feel like posting online is the only way you're going to get noticed, because it's actually not the most common way that people license their work. And I know it seems like that because when an artist has some success at [00:13:00] doing that, they post about it and you see it. But there's a ton of artists that don't even bother so much with Instagram who are doing very well licensing their work.
So don't feel like you have to do it a certain way. There's no one way to do it, and I don't want people thinking that, there's all this pressure to post online. I've felt it. There have been times where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't posted all week. I've gotta post something."
And it's silly. I'm like, "Why am I... I don't have to." The stress.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: It's just, it feels because everyone else is doing it, that somehow that's the right way to do it. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with trying to do it that way, but statistically, you're better off contacting an art director directly than hoping they find you online.
It's like a needle in a haystack. They might find you, they might not. Yeah.
Delores Naskrent: One of the things artists in my [00:14:00] audience are always asking is how to approach companies professionally. So from what and speaking of what you were just speaking of, both in the industry and through Surface Design News, what are some of the biggest mistakes when trying to break into licensing?
I know you've talked about pitching and submission
Stacie Dale: yeah. One of the biggest mistakes I see is artists trying to change their artwork to fit with a company's aesthetic. And sometimes that works, but most times it doesn't. You wanna develop your own style, and because a lot of work is digital, a lot of it looks the same.
It's harder to make yourself stand out when you're using the same tools as everybody else.
Delores Naskrent: Right.
Stacie Dale: There's definitely ways to do it and you want to be able, you want somebody to be able to recognize that this is your artwork. And, not to say there isn't money to be made in some more generic type artwork, that there is.
But as an artist, you don't wanna conform- To try and fit [00:15:00] yourself, like-
...
Stacie Dale: You're a square trying to fit into a circle, so I think that is the biggest mistake I see, is that there's a lot of artists out there who they learn maybe from some of the classes out there to do it just this one way, and they think that's their style, that's the way
I encourage every artist to take at least a year, maybe two, to just make artwork. Do it daily. Make it a daily practice, and you will develop your own style. If you don't do that, if you're just jumping right in to making vector designs and churning them out and they're, they don't look any different than anyone else's, you're gonna have a much harder time.
Yeah. That's just the truth of it. But, as an artist, you want to be known for your style of artwork, and that takes time. A lot of time. It does.
Delores Naskrent: Absolutely.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. Yeah.
Delores Naskrent: That, that is definitely one of the top things I would say too. And being patient. A lot of times patience ... Yeah.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that kind of goes back to the posting on Instagram.
It, people ... It's like [00:16:00] a quick fix. People think "Oh, this is gonna get me where I wanna go." You have to put the work in. That's all there is to it. I think another mistake people make is the way they present their work. Again, there have been some classes out there where, they've been told, "Oh, you need a story behind your collection.
You've gotta write a whole ... to give the art director a feel of what..." You don't need to do that. The title of your collection should tell that art director everything they need to know about it. You shouldn't have to write three paragraphs about your walks in the woods. Like, how I've been inspired.
Those things are nice, and if you wanna do that for yourself as a way to get yourself in the mood to do a specific type of collection, that's great. Art directors have very little time. They are not going to take time to read your three paragraphs.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: You really wanna present your work in a way that shows it on their product.
Delores Naskrent: Right.
Stacie Dale: If you send them a collection [00:17:00] and it's a fabric company, make sure you have a mock-up of fabric and showing them this is my collection. This is exactly what it's gonna look like on your product. Just sending them the artwork sometimes is not enough for it to grab them, because they're looking at thousands.
Not hundreds, thousands of people's submissions. So the more you can make it easy for them to see this is how my art fits on your product, the better. Don't spend so much time on writing a whole story
Delores Naskrent: Gotcha.
Stacie Dale: Yeah, it's just, it's not necessary. You can do it, but it's, they're not going to read it.
We got, when I was in the apparel design, we used to get some people like that, that would send us these huge... back then everything was still physical, but we'd open up a portfolio and there'd be this whole page about what their entire portfolio was about, and we'd just skip right over it.
Because all I wanna see- ... [00:18:00] is the artwork, or if you have something we can use. That's the basics, is do you have artwork they can use and that will sell? You may love a collection and think it's the most beautiful thing ever, and it might be, but if it doesn't fit with what that company thinks it can sell, it's not gonna go.
You've got to think in terms of manufacturing.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: How do they manufacture? Who's their customer? What do they buy? What's the price point? Think about all those things. Put yourself in the art director's position, and then you will have a better understanding of "This is what I need to be doing.
I don't need to be doing this stuff." And you'll have better success. But it's definitely one of the bigger mistakes I see, is that I see portfolios a lot that are full of what I call fluff. You don't need all that, and it's taking time away from you making artwork.
Delores Naskrent: That's super helpful
Great information.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. It's important and and I do think patience is a huge, [00:19:00] misstep for people, is that they do think, because so and they got a licensing deal a week after they put their portfolio out there on the inter- Like, that's the exception.
That's not the norm. So don't feel as if you've failed right off the bat because you didn't get a licensing deal. There's lots of artists that will go four or five years without getting anything.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: And then once you get something, you start to build momentum. It's not all gonna happen at once, and it's rare that does happen for somebody.
It usually, the people that it happens for are usually the people that have a very unique artistic voice, and that it's very noticeable that it's something that's not out in the market yet. Those are the people that quickly get something. But, again, it's, you've gotta be in the right place at the right time, and if you don't spend the time developing your art, and you have to be happy with it.
If you look at it and you think, "It's just like everybody [00:20:00] else's," that's not what you want. You wanna look at your own artwork and be like, "Yes." That is gonna fit on this company's product 100%. I know it. This is for them. Ask yourself those questions. Don't just create something and
You should always self-reflect, self-edit before you send it to an art director. Because, like I said, you don't wanna be sending them stuff that they can't use. Yeah. It's gotta be very product specific.
Delores Naskrent: I often give that same sort of advice. I like, for myself even personally, putting the art away for a while and not looking at it, and then going back to it even a couple weeks later, a month later, and you're gonna see some stuff right away.
So don't... have a lot of stuff in motion all the time. Be prepared to work in the future and in the past, so that- Yeah ... you're looking at new stuff, you're creating new stuff, and then go back and look at your old stuff and then, ask yourself, "What [00:21:00] can I do to make this better?"
Or, "Am I doing that anymore? I'm not, so why would I want this to be out there?" I think self-editing, self-critique is very important. Yeah. So I agree with that 100%. Now, this episode is gonna air around the time of the Profitable Artist Summit- Oh, yay ... which is, yeah. Yeah, I know you're in it.
Stacey's in it, and, I love that
Stacie Dale: summit. I think it's great
Delores Naskrent: Oh, I think so too ... it's really great. Vanessa and I- Yeah ... just wanted to create something that helps artists gain this kind of clarity about how they can actually make money with their art. And this year we're really focusing on skills.
So not just learning techniques, but also understanding the big picture, understanding real paths forward. So this conversation today is perfect for artists who are participating in this summit. Your perspective fits beautifully into that. For artists who are just starting to explore, [00:22:00] what would you want them to understand about really building a full career in the industry?
Stacie Dale: I think, we touched quickly on-
having patience and not forcing things. Like-
Delores Naskrent: Yeah ...
Stacie Dale: you want it to grow organically. You wanna develop your own style, and you've gotta take time to learn the industry and how it works. And pitching, it sounds easy. It can be easy, but you've got to do your homework on these companies before you pitch them.
Know what they make. Again, know their price point, know their customer. Does your work fit in with what they make? If it doesn't- Don't spend your time pitching to them. It's not gonna go anywhere. I've made the same mistake. I've pitched my work to companies and I think, later I'm like, "Why did I send that?
M- my work doesn't fit with anything." Because in my mind, I thought that my work was so [00:23:00] good Yeah ... that they were gonna just abandon what they make and take what I like and put it on their product. And that is the most ridiculous thing, but I'm guilty of it. I have done it. But you don't wanna spend your time chasing companies and trying to make them take your aesthetic.
You've got to have work that fits with theirs. Be choosy about what companies you're approaching. Don't just throw stuff at the wall and hope it sticks. Sometimes that works, most times it doesn't.
Delores Naskrent: Thanks. That's great. Sometimes I have to remind my students about all of this kind of stuff, and right after this summit, I'm gonna be teaching my Mastering Surface Pattern Design class in Affinity Designer, and I'll be doing a small workshop showing how approachable it can be in comparison to Illustrator, 'cause I think that is also a difficulty for a lot of people, is learning to use Adobe Illustrator thoroughly, and being told [00:24:00] that it's the only way to move forward in the industry.
Absolutely. Some artists think that the only way they can actually get ahead and design surface patterns to be a part of the industry, they have to use Illustrator, and it's just not true. So sometimes I think the perfect tools aren't, don't exist, really. It's all about learning your tool as best you can.
And what I think people really need is clarity about their direction, and confidence in presenting their work, and not worry about what software you're using. There are successful artists in the industry using every different software program out there, so don't let that be an issue.
Stacie Dale: 100% agree. When I first started making patterns I was using Illustrator, and I hate Illustrator. I don't like the program. It's not for me. It's very mathematical to me, and I am not a mathematical [00:25:00] person. I tried very hard to like it, and I, at one day, I was just sitting there, and I had spent three hours just staring at this, and I'm like, "This is not how I create art.
At, at all." I am analog. I draw everything using colored pencil.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: And I love that. That's the way I love to make art. And so- I just abandoned Illustrator, and it didn't work for the type of artwork I made. Photoshop works much better for detailed types of artwork watercolors and that sort of thing.
Affinity, I started using Affinity, and I did like Affinity. I found it a little easier-
Delores Naskrent: Yes ...
Stacie Dale: a little more user-friendly than Illustrator. It's also way cheaper. Is it free now on Canva? It's free now,
Delores Naskrent: yeah.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. I use Canva a lot too. I love Canva. Just for organizing my thoughts before I go into Photoshop and, like- Yeah
commit to it, I will arrange stuff in Canva just 'cause it's super fast and super easy. [00:26:00] Yeah, there's plenty of ways to make patterns, and you don't even have to make patterns. You can just do spot art. You can do wall art. You don't have to make repeating patterns to make money licensing your work.
That's- You can do greeting cards ...
Delores Naskrent: absolutely correct. Greetings And I concur with that because I didn't even start making repeat patterns till way later on in my career, and most of the time they're support for something that I've illustrated. So- Yeah ... the very first pattern I had to do, it was, I was asked by Russ, the company that I was working for- to create a whole Christmas collection of stuff, and it was a bunch of illustrations. But they also just needed coordinating fabrics to put on the back of pillows or to put at the top- Yep ... and bottom of flags. So that's when I started. So honestly, I went years without ever creating a repeat pattern.
So if you're an illustrator out there, a painter, designer- ... just know that can still be- Yeah ... [00:27:00] perfectly acceptable when you're trying to get your art licensed.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. My first licensing deal that was for home goods, and it was a little bird that was putting flowers in a vase, and there was no repeating pattern that went with it.
They didn't need a repeating pattern, and they put it on a ton of different products. It does not have to be repeating patterns. Those are... You should learn them. You should learn how to make them because, like you said, Delores, there are companies that will want them to go along with your spot prints.
But- Don't feel like that's the only way to license your artwork. If you're gonna do Spoonflower or something like that, yes, you have to know how to do repeating patterns. But again, even Spoonflower, you do not have to use Illustrator. My work that's on Spoonflower is all very detailed colored pencil drawings that I made into a repeating pattern on Photoshop.
Delores Naskrent: Yeah.
Stacie Dale: So there's a wide [00:28:00] spectrum of tools now that are available. Maybe 10, 15 years ago, there wasn't. It was just Adobe products, and Adobe is expensive. It's not cheap. Yeah. And I'm starting to see a big shift where I feel like Affinity ... The more user-friendly the software is now, the more people are gonna gravitate towards that, and I think that's why Adobe is not getting as many new customers, is because of things like Affinity and Canva, and, there's other
Procreate. There's other programs out there that are much more suited for easily making patterns and easily making just any kind of art really. Don't fall into that trap where it's like, "Oh, I have to learn these Adobe products." They are not necessarily the industry standard anymore.
Delores Naskrent: No, they aren't. No. If you can export with whatever type of pattern or [00:29:00] finished art that the company needs, you're good. You're golden. You can be using- Yeah ... Photoshop, and you can be using Procreate for raster-based patterns, and you can use Affinity Designer for both. Yep. So we've seen a lot of people jumping the ship and-
Stacie Dale: Yeah
Delores Naskrent: Coming over to use Affinity Designer because they can do both vector and raster in the same program. And I encourage my students to work between Procreate and Affinity Designer. If they're really comfortable with Procreate, they can draw all of their motifs, their single items, and export them as PNGs, bring them into- Affinity Designer, and then I even have automated templates where they can just drop their artwork in, their single motifs, have a rough pattern, and then go in and do anything else that they want to really perfect the pattern.
That's
Stacie Dale: fantastic. It,
Delores Naskrent: it is. It's really great.
Yeah. You'll have to take one of my classes, Stacie.
Stacie Dale: I know. You
Delores Naskrent: would love it.
Stacie Dale: I think I would. [00:30:00] I really do wanna learn more about Affinity. I started fooling around with it, and I was like, "This is way easier for me than using Illustrator- Yeah
or Photoshop, to be
Delores Naskrent: honest. And iPad. You can go and sit on a couch or go sit- Yeah ... on your lawn chair and watch the birds- Yeah ... as you're doing it, be inspired by nature.
Stacie Dale: Yeah. And for somebody like me that does more hand-drawn or hand-painted art, I do use my iPad a lot. I will start sketching out an idea on there all the time, and I love doing that.
It just gives me a little bit more focus for when I go to do the finished piece with- that I'm gonna hand draw. There's- That's great ... many different ways to use these tools. Yes. And there's a lot more tools, and I think there will be even more tools - Yeah ... coming that will make it so easy that, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on Adobe programs to make artwork.
You just
Delores Naskrent: don't. Believe me, if your art is beautiful, that is what speaks to the companies that are buying it. Yeah. It's the [00:31:00] beautiful art, and they're gonna make it work because they see your work and they want it, and that's- Yeah ... that's the bottom line.
Stacie Dale: Yeah.
Delores Naskrent: Now, before we wrap up can you tell me, Stacie, how people can actually find out about Surface Design News?
Like, where can they actually go to find that?
Stacie Dale: Yeah. You can follow us on Instagram is one way. It's just @surfacedesignnews. You can go to our website at www.surfacedesignnews.com, and you can subscribe to the newsletter there if you'd like. If you want to look at my artwork, you can go to a couple of places.
You can go to my Instagram, which is Stacie_dale_ surface_designs. Terrible name. I've gotta change that. But that's what it is. We'll put the
Delores Naskrent: links, we'll put the links in the show notes.
Stacie Dale: Okay, yeah. And then my illustration website is Staciedaleillustration.com, and then my retail site is Staciedaledesigns.com where I actually sell products which is another revenue stream for me.
I [00:32:00] just put my artwork on a lot of print-on-demand products. And, is it a big money maker? No. But it's there, and a lot of my previous customers from days when I painted keepsake boxes, like that email list, I send them links to the, The retail side. And they'll, they're the ones that will end up buying stuff usually, but I don't do much to promote it outside of that.
Delores Naskrent: This was really great, Stacie. Yeah. I'm so glad that we've had this time that we could, just hang out and talk about the industry. I'm loving the Surface Pattern Design News newsletter. It's not expensive, folks, so if you get a chance, check it out. Each issue includes company submission opportunities, and I can't emphasize that enough.
Lots of industry articles, designer features, and resources for artists who want to grow their careers in surface design. Thanks, Stacie, for sharing your experiences and your perspective and [00:33:00] your help to the industry, to everyone and connecting people with real opportunities. It's incredibly valuable.
Stacie Dale: Thank you so much, Delores. This has been so lovely and, I do wanna encourage everybody to do the Profitable Artist Summit because I will be there and I will show people how to actually find companies, and Delores will be there.
Yeah, there's a ton of good information in this summit, and it's free. Just encourage everyone to definitely sign up for that when it's time. So- Perfect ... thank you so much, Delores. I appreciate it.
Delores Naskrent: It was great. You're welcome. Thanks everyone for tuning in, and keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process
