Hey Reader

So I went down a small rabbit hole this week trying to answer a question a Procreate Masterclass student asked me on a Tuesday night: "Do I really need to be on Spoonflower AND Society6 AND Redbubble — or am I just spreading myself thin?"

Real talk — I've asked myself the same question more than once. There are mornings I sit down with my coffee thinking I'm going to "check on my shops" and an hour later I've reorganized tags on three platforms and accomplished basically nothing. Cheeseball watches me from the windowsill. He is unimpressed.

This week is about making the shops you already have work harder — without you having to be online for it to happen.

Marina Solodka – Cutout Floral Matisse Called. She Answered. Black ground, bold cutout-style florals in lavender, orange, blue, and white — this is paper collage energy translated into repeat and it is confident. Three colorways available for licensing, which tells you she's thinking commercially. Smart. Full-Coverage Cutout Repeat Flat shapes, zero shading, maximum impact. The black ground makes every color pop harder than it would anywhere else. This is graphic design thinking applied to surface pattern and it works beautifully. Great for Apparel, Home Décor & Licensing Resort wear, tote bags, wallpaper, bold stationery. The kind of pattern that photographs incredibly well on product. Licensing-ready and she knows it. Show them some love on IG

Lizzie Clark | Surface Patterns – Golden Tulip "Some Patterns Want to Be Quiet. Mine Tend to Start Conversations." I mean, she said it herself. Mustard gold ground, cream tulips, hot pink stems cutting through like they have somewhere to be — this is bold without being loud. The caption stopped me as much as the pattern did. Stem-Based Toss on a Statement Ground The vertical stem movement gives it rhythm and the ground color does all the heavy lifting. Confident palette choice, clean execution. Sometimes two colors and a strong concept is all you need. Great for Apparel, Stationery & Home Décor Dresses, tote bags, wallpaper, notebooks. This one has a very specific buyer and she is going to love it unreasonably. Show them some love on IG

Andrea – Cosmos & Beetles Mini Collection She Narrowed It Down to Two. Both Landed. Teal and rust beetles, cosmos florals, a birthday greeting card coordinate — this is collection thinking done right. The hero pattern and the occasion piece share the same palette and illustration style, which means they work together without being matchy-matchy. That's the goal. Mini Collection with Coordinating Occasion Piece The beetle toss anchors the collection while the birthday card coordinate opens up a whole gifting market. One design system, multiple product applications. This is exactly how you pitch a collection to a licensee. Great for Gifting, Stationery & Occasion Licensing Gift wrap, greeting cards, notebooks, fabric bundles. Andrea keeps showing up in this roundup for a reason. Show them some love on IG

Tip #1: The Passive Income Ladder: Which POD Platforms Are Actually Worth Your Time in 2026

Here’s the trap most surface designers fall into (me included, more than once): we treat every new POD platform launch like a missed opportunity, and we end up with ten half-built shops, none of them performing.

The truth is, not every platform pays the same — and not every platform sends the same kind of buyer to your work. Knowing the difference between the POD platforms is the difference between real passive income and a really impressive list of usernames.

Here’s how I’d think about it in 2026, with current numbers:

• Spoonflower pays a base 10% royalty on what the customer pays for fabric, wallpaper, and home decor. If you cross $300 in monthly sales, your rate bumps up — Spoonflower’s tiered bonus structure scales the rate up to 15% for high-volume months. Best fit if you’re designing for fabric-buying makers, quilters, sewists, and home decor.
• Society6 pays a flat 10% on most products (5% on wholesale and trade orders). Their audience leans home decor and design-savvy buyers — wall art, throw pillows, minimalist and editorial styles do well here.
• Redbubble changed their structure in 2025. The default artist margin is now 20%, but if you set your markup above 20%, Redbubble takes a 50% fee on everything earned over that threshold. So in practice, you’re capped near 20% before it gets expensive. Fit best for apparel, stickers, cases — designs that translate to a younger, casual buyer.

Here’s what I’d actually do: pick the one platform whose buyer matches what you make best, and put your first 20 designs there. Optimize the listings. Watch what sells. THEN expand. Spreading 5 designs across 5 platforms is not a strategy. It’s a way to feel busy.

In my experience, the designers making the most consistent POD income aren’t the ones on every platform — they’re the ones who chose well and stayed.

Tip #2: The 'Always-On' Portfolio: How to Turn Your Shop Into a 24/7 Sales Rep

Most designers treat their shop like a gallery — pretty, passive, waiting to be discovered. The thing is, your shop is working whether you’re paying attention to it or not. Question is: what’s it actually saying to the buyer who lands there at 2am?

If your titles say “Pattern_07_FINAL_v2” and your tags are three vague nouns, your shop is whispering. Buyers don’t dig through whispers — they scroll past them.

Here’s the framework I come back to. On Spoonflower, you get 13 tags per design, up to 20 characters each, and the title is your front door. On Etsy, you get 13 tags and 140 characters in the title — and Etsy’s own SEO guidance says the first few words carry the most weight. Burn that into your brain.

A simple way to fill those slots well — surface designers use the TACOS framework (Theme, Audience, Color, Object, Scale). Five categories, every tag earns its keep:

1. Theme — boho, coastal, modern farmhouse, mid-century
2. Audience — quilters, dressmakers, baby quilts, kids’ rooms
3. Color — sage green, terracotta, blush pink (be specific — not “green”)
4. Object — wallpaper, fabric, curtain, fat quarter
5. Scale — small scale, large repeat, micro print

One audit you can do this week — pull up your three lowest-performing listings. Read the title and tags out loud. Would you search for that? If not, rewrite using TACOS. Long-tail beats generic every time. “Boho terracotta floral wallpaper for nursery” outperforms “floral wallpaper” all day long.

Your shop isn’t lazy. It’s just been mumbling. Give it some lines.

Pinterest Trends Is the Free Forecasting Tool Most Surface Designers Don't Know Exists

Quick show of hands — when you open Pinterest, are you scrolling? Saving? Falling down a rabbit hole at 10pm?

Same. (No judgment. The scroll is what it is.)

But there is a completely separate part of Pinterest that almost nobody uses, and it’s basically free trend forecasting for surface designers. It lives at trends.pinterest.com.

Not the regular Pinterest. Not your home feed. A whole different tool.

Here’s why it matters — Pinterest is where your buyer is planning. She’s on Pinterest months before she’s on Spoonflower or Etsy because she’s pinning her nursery, her wedding, her bathroom renovation, her summer wardrobe. The searches she’s doing on Pinterest right now are the buying searches she’ll be doing on shopping platforms three to six months from now.

Which means Pinterest Trends shows you what your buyer wants before she shows up to buy it.

Here’s the 10-minute ritual:

1. Go to trends.pinterest.com. No account needed. It’s free. (Pro tip: pin it to your bookmarks bar so you actually use it.)
2. Filter by your category. Home decor, women’s apparel, kids, holidays — pick what fits your work. You’ll see a list of search terms with little trend lines beside them. Rising = green and climbing. That’s your goldmine.
3. Pick 3 rising terms that overlap with your style. Maybe “coastal grandmother bedroom” is climbing. Maybe “modern dopamine kitchen” is rising in your region. Write them down.
4. Drop those terms into your TACOS framework from Tip 2. Theme, Audience, Color, Object, Scale — Pinterest Trends gives you the Theme and often the Color for free. You just pair it with what you already make.
5. Update three listings. Same three you’d already be auditing. New tags, new title language, pulled from where your buyer is actually planning.

The payoff — you stop designing in the dark and start designing toward a buyer who’s already raising her hand on a different platform. Ten minutes. Once a month. Beats a Pinterest scroll spiral every time (and uses the same app, ironically).

Until next week — keep creating! 🎨

P.S. — Quick heads up: I'm speaking at the Profitable Artist Summit and my talk is literally called The Artist's Permission Slip to Use AI in Their Business. If you've been side-eyeing AI wondering if you're "allowed" to use it — this one's for you. Free ticket here.​

P.P.S. If you’ve been meaning to get serious about your shop but the file prep keeps tripping you up, PatternPAL runs your seamless tile checks in the browser before you ever upload — amandagracedesign.com/seamlesspatterntester. It’s free to start. Future-you will be very glad you did.

Aaaand whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you ⬇

Introducing live, 90-min business sessions for creatives 💡 ​Learn with CSL →​

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