April

I have been part of a thriving online community of surface pattern designers for nearly a year now, most of us met on the Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design e-course (a truly life-changing course). I call them the Design girls, though we also have a few men on board. Working alone is at times brilliant but also hard. It's incredible to have this group of people to ask questions, to show designs, get feedback and see what they are up to. We are all growing and conquering the world in our own way, and supporting each other along the way.

One of the designers, Gill Eggleston (you can find her here) put together the White Book of Surface Pattern Designers which also has it's own website and facebook page and has proven to be very successful already. Another huge talent is Maria José Bautista V, also known as MaJo. She got a group of us together to make a calendar for 2013. I did April and you can download it for free from MaJo's blog and print it out, or stick it on your computer desktop. You could even use it as wrapping paper, if you wanted to wrap up my birthday pressie at the end of April... Pop over to MaJo's blog to get the large file, you can print it up to an A3.