Hey, Reader!
It’s 7:42 AM. My house is quiet. I’m still drinking my first cup of coffee. Summer is slipping by way too quickly, so I’m doing my best to get up early enough and take full advantage of the long days.
One of the things I’m trying to avoid in the morning is social media. But I gotta tell you, that pull is tough. It’s even tougher when that little voice whispers in my ear, It’s for work.
You know as soon as I heard that voice I crumbled like a graham cracker left out on s’mores night and checked Instagram.
It actually inspired today’s Eduletter.
That’s good, right?
It really did end up being for work.
Okay. So Instagram. I’ll be honest with you. I’m pretty annoyed with it. There are a lot of days when it’s really hard for me to motivate myself to post. Engagement has dropped. A lot.
When I say dropped, I mean tanked.
So today I’m going to share with you what’s going on with Instagram, a few approaches you can try, and one Procreate trick that hands you a Reel on a silver platter.
Let’s go.
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Seemal Farrukh - SeemalsArtwork
A Garden That Actually Feels Like A Place The restrained color palette works together with the intentional, bold outlines to sell this pattern. Muted coral, gold, blue, and sage green feel like they belong in the same meadow on the same afternoon. The selective bold outlining guides the eye intentionally through this garden. There is a real story here.
Scattered and Intentional at Once This reads as a loose toss, but the scale variation is what makes it scroll-stopping. Large daisy heads anchor the composition while smaller blooms and insects fill the gaps without crowding. The repeat feels organic because nothing is locked into a grid, yet it would tile cleanly on a bolt of fabric or across a wallpaper drop.
Wallpaper, Bedding, Canvas Tote Bags, and Quilting Cotton Nursery or cottage-core wallpaper, duvet covers and sheet sets, screen-printed tote bags, heritage quilting fabric. This is the kind of design someone buys because it makes them feel like they are living in a storybook, not just decorating a room.
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Bethan Janine
Celestial Horses Steal Every Ounce of Visual Real Estate This one, you really have to click the link to appreciate. The coral-to-orange gradient on those horses against the dark background is stunning. Add the white starburst patterns and you have something that reads joyful and a little bit magical without trying too hard. The blue florals frame the whole thing like a vintage book cover, which honestly makes me want to hold whatever this is printed on.
A Placement Print That Knows Exactly What It Is This is not a seamless repeat, and that is the right call. The symmetrical layout of the horses along with stars and flowers anchoring the corners creates a composed, intentional feeling. The mirrored structure gives it an illustrative quality while keeping production realistic for a singular placement.
Perfect for Quilting Cotton, Wallpaper, and Luxury Scarves Imagine this on high-end fabric for quilters or a silk square scarf. I can also see this on a whimsical throw pillow or a premium tote. This is the kind of print that makes someone pause.
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Mercedes Cortés - Garabateoprints
Sage and Gold, Deliberately Calm The color story is what stopped me in my tracks. I love this color combo. (You should see my house.) Muted greens, cream, and gold in this retro-scandi daisy motif create a sense of restraint and the textures give it real depth and a hand-drawn feel.
Half-Drop Repeat with Breathing Room This is a staggered half-drop repeat that arranges the flowers so they are nestled without feeling crowded. The soft edges and river-like flow of the cream-colored negative space create a sense of peace, which matters when you are printing this on something people will see everyday.
Perfect for Upholstery, Bedding, and Wallpaper Armchairs, duvet covers, accent wallpaper, and linen curtains. This pattern has the restraint and sophistication to anchor a room without demanding attention. It is the kind of print someone buys because they want to keep looking at it for years.
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Tip #1: What Instagram Wants: 2026 Version & Reels That Get Noticed
Fun fact, Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, is on the record saying that the 2026 algorithm cares about three things above all else: watch time, sends per reach, and likes per reach.
And here’s something really interesting: sends are weighted 3-5x higher than likes for reaching new audiences.
The Instagram algorithm is looking for value. It’s asking:
“Did someone take the time to send this via DM?”
That is a much higher bar than “Did someone double-tap this?”
Educational graphics, decision trees, checklists, “before vs. after” examples, and myth-busting posts are more likely to be shared in DMs than simple portfolio showcases.
By contrast, a beautiful pattern or polished portfolio piece may earn likes from existing followers but produce very few sends. This means that Instagram will limit distribution to new audiences.
That doesn’t mean abandoning beautiful artwork—it means packaging it with information or insights that make people think, “I know exactly who needs to see this.”
One interesting side effect is that Instagram is increasingly rewarding utility over aesthetics. A visually average post that solves a problem can outperform a gorgeous image that people admire but don’t share.
I want to give you four post types with visual hooks that actually work right now. These aren’t generic hooks. These are specific visual hooks for surface design work:
- The reveal. Start with a closeup of a finished tile that’s obscured or rotating, then the camera pulls back to show the full repeat in motion. Reveals work because the brain wants resolution. People are much more likely to stick around to get the answer to “what is this?” (This counts toward watch time.)
- The side-by-side. Two versions of the same pattern playing at the same time — one with the color story that worked, one with the one that didn’t. A visual comparison like this stops the scroll because people naturally are drawn to visual comparison. (This teaches something, which makes it more likely to be shared.)
- The before/after color test. Pull your hero pattern down to just the three dominant colors, then put it back in full color. Educational, visual, fast. (If this rings a bell, Tip 1 of the 3-Color Test from a recent IG carousel is the long version of this idea.)
- The “wait, this isn’t done yet” tease. Start with what looks like a finished pattern, then say “I almost stopped here — here’s what changed it.” Then show the changes. Viewers want to know what you saw that they didn’t. (Watch time)
The goal is not more posts. The goal is quality. You want Reels that get sent in DMs because they’re worth sharing. One reel with strong sends will outperform ten reels with more likes.
One action this week — look at your last three Reels. What’s happening in the first three seconds? If the answer is “Procreate brush moving across a canvas,” that’s probably not going to get you much traction. Shoot your next Reel with one of the four hooks above. Let me know what happens.
Tip #2: Turn One Pattern Into Five Posts (The Pattern-to-Reel Multiplication System)
Here’s a trap that a lot of pattern designers fall into: thinking that one finished pattern equals one Reel.
If you take, on average, one or two weeks to finish a pattern, that’s one or two Reels per month you’re posting to Instagram.
What if I told you, you’re leaving four Reels on the table per patter. Across a year that’s the difference between 12 posts and 60.
The fix is treating each pattern as raw material for five different posts. Same source file. Five different angles.
The 5-Reel formula per pattern:
- The swatch test. Footage of you printing or previewing the pattern at small scale. Pillows, fabric swatch, business card — any quick “is this readable small” test. Fast. Educational.
- The colorway swap. Show the same pattern in 2-3 colorways playing one after the other. Customers love seeing the same idea reinterpreted. Visual variety, single concept.
- The mockup-on-product reveal. Drop the pattern onto a mockup (a throw pillow, a wallpaper roll, a baby onesie — PatternPAL now has 30 of these built in, which means the mockup part takes 90 seconds). Tag the product category.
- The “designing this took longer than I thought” process clip. Speed up the time-lapse of the pattern coming together. Caption something honest about how many tries the colorway took. Or why you decided changed the pattern half-way through. People like honesty. In the age of AI perfection, real human experience matters more than ever.
- The customer-use moment. If a customer or licensee has used the pattern on a real product — gold. Re-share their photo (with permission and tagging) and link back to where the pattern came from. Social proof + community + visibility, in one Reel.
The system is reusable. Once you’ve shot one pattern’s worth of footage in batch, you have five posts ready to schedule. Spread them across two weeks. The algorithm rewards consistency, and you stay visible without designing more in the background.
That said, I don’t know exactly how this will play with Instagram weighting sends over likes. I wish I had all the answers to Instagram engagement, but right now my patience is thin and I’m on the “to heck with it, I’m having a mojito” side of things.
One action this week — pick your strongest pattern from the last six months. Plan five posts using this framework. Don’t do them all today — just plan the five. The planning is the unlock. The rest should be pretty easy once you have the plan.
However, that’s not always the case for everyone. Sometimes figuring out the right plan is overwhelming. Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy. If you need to get unstuck and find your path forward in the design world, my 1:1 coaching calls, the Art Biz Audit, are here for you.
Procreate Time-Lapse Export — The Reel Maker You Already Have
Speaking of Reels, here’s a super useful feature in Procreate that you can use to help you make Reels.
Procreate records every single brushstroke you make. Automatically.
It’s free. It’s just part of the awesomeness of Procreate. You don’t even need to set up screen recording before you start a piece. It just does it.
The Time-Lapse Replay feature captures every stroke on every drawing you’ve ever made in Procreate. If you’ve ever hovered your pen over a file, you’ll see it.
The export workflow:
- Open the canvas you want to make a reel from. Any Procreate file. Recent or old. Doesn’t matter, the time-lapse is there.
- Tap the Actions menu (the wrench icon, top-left).
- Go to Video → Time-Lapse Replay to preview the recording.
- Tap Video → Export Time-Lapse Video to save it.
- Choose Full Length OR 30-Second Time-Lapse. For Reels, 30-second is what you want — Procreate intelligently picks the most active moments and condenses them. (Full Length is great for your archive but too long for IG.)
- Save to your Photos library and you have a ready-to-post Reel.
Amazing, right?
One more setting you should check: Procreate’s time-lapse quality defaults to high, which eats storage.
To adjust, go to Procreate’s main gallery → tap the wrench → Preferences → Time-Lapse Replay → Time-Lapse Quality. Studio Quality (4K) is overkill for Instagram. Good quality/1080p is just fine for Instagram. Set this and you should be good to go.
I love Procreate. It’s such an amazing, intuitive app. And it’s so cool that every pattern you’ve already made has a Reel ready and waiting to be exported. Open three old files this weekend and you’ll have three Reels with almost zero effort.
Until next week — keep creating! 🎨
P.S. — Quick reminder: the COFFEE100 coupon expires next Thursday, July 23 at 11:59pm ET. $100 off the Procreate Pattern Collection Masterclass OR a first-time Art Biz Audit. If you've been thinking about it, this is the week.
P.P.S. — Creative Systems Lab Session 3 is right around the corner. July 22 we’re talking lead magnet concepts, what your opt-in page should say, and building an email newsletter funnel. (Phew! We're going to be busy!) It’s only $67 for the live build session and you get to keep the replay forever. If you missed the FREE CSL Foundation sessions, sign up for the replay → Session 1 and Session 2. Save your seat for the live email list build at Creative Systems Lab.
