The Dutch Kiwi

I have been mostly focused on Spoonflower for my surface design career. I did dabble in Red Bubble and looked into many other options without any success. I have decided to give another option a try. Patterned.com Of course the first design I loaded and used as my shop banner was the Croissants! They are still available on Spoonflower in the Croissants Collection too.

I can't believe we have come to the end of another year! It must be time to do the sums and calculate how 2025 went. Art Deco Scalloped Flowers Blue Gold on White Large One of the largest sales of 2025 of 12 rolls of wallpaper! Total Sales for 2022 to 2024 First a quick recap of the last almost 3 years results; 2022 - 15 sales - $25.80 (9 months) 2023 - 56 sales - $109.31 2024 - 137 sales - $435.50 You can read the whole post  Does Anyone Make Money on Spoonflower? Croissant Soft Textured Blue Medium These soft and flowing croissants may not have made the biggest sale but they have definitely been the most consistent. They have featured in most of my monthly 'designs sold' posts.   Total Sales for 2025 Now the big results! Same as the original post, I will do the number of sales per month and the total at the bottom. January - 6 Sales February - 24 Sales March - 9 Sales April - 3 Sales May - 5 Sales June - 3 Sales July - 5 Sale August - 13 Sales September - 9 Sales O...

Welcome to the first 'Designs Sold' last month post! I will be carrying on with these posts this year. I find it great to look back and see what has sold to know what to work on and stay motivated. The first month of 2026 has made a good start. With 20 sales of 11 designs. Featuring some regular sellers but also some new designs. Art Nouveau Monotone Retro Floral Peacock Teal Large The first sale was this lovely monotone teal design which was a re-colour of my Retro Nouveau design challenge entry. I love the softness of the monotone as the design elements look a lot like shading rather than hard lines.

I have been down a rabbit hole learning about Southwest and Prairie inspired colours and designs. And loving it! All for the next Spoonflower Design Challenge , called Country Retro. The brief encouraged the use of warm colours of oat, buttermilk, denim blue and wheat gold. They are optional and you can use any colours you like, but I loved these suggestions! This lovely soft and warm plaid is called, Prairie Sky Plaid Oat and Misty Blue X-Large, you can click on the image to go to the design on Spoonflower. This plaid is available in three colours and four sizes. The sizes are X-Large, Large, Medium and Small. I am a member of a Spoonflower Facebook page of both designers and makers who buy designs. I noticed a post asking for smaller scale designs as many are just too large to use on smaller items. I am always happy to resize a design smaller, but I understand the delay and effort of having to email a designer may put people off. So I have decided to go one extra size smaller tha...

Carrying on from the nursery theme of the Monogram Alphabet Letters design I dove deep into the soft modern nursery design aesthetic. I settled on the three colours and white of course. The colours I chose are all based on the soft linen vibe, Natural Linen, Blush Linen and Sage Linen. This is an even softer sage than the sage of the monogram letters.  I did not quite realize how many designs I was making but it ended up with 99 in the collection. I have made sure to include several different sizes and most of the designs have the colours on white, and then the inverted white on colour. This made for a large number of designs very quickly!

I love a monogram design! There is something special about using an initial to personalize a space. I wanted to create a design that worked for a nursery and also stand the test of time. I settled on a soft sage green with white monogram letter.  I made this cute little nursery mockup on Procreate using an AI generated nursery image and adding my design as wallpaper. I'm pretty happy with it, but I think I'll have a go with a higher quality stock image next time.

Welcome to the first post of 2026! Another whole fresh new year! I just need to round up the last of the designs sold posts of 2025. December had a total of 10 sales, which is not too bad. Again the value of some of the sales was higher, which is a nice little step up on the  Design Sales Graph . There was also a cancelled order for November, so I have deducted it from December. So really it was 11 sales! Autumn Pheasant Scene First up is the autumn themed hunting design on Polartec Fleece. A warm snuggly blanket maybe? 

Back in October I wrote a post about my lack of effort in promoting my designs called,  Does Following Designers or Favouriting Designs on Spoonflower help?  This is about 6 weeks ago, so I thought it was time to do a little check in on the numbers. I recorded the level of followers and favourites for each of the platforms I was using, the results are below! Scandinavian inspired simple flowers in soft green yellow medium My plan was to interact daily and I have done that. I receive emails from Spoonflower with all my favourites and follows everyday. I have gone through all of them, returned all favourites and follows. I also made an effort on Instagram, not quite everyday but much more often than before.

A total of 8 sales again this month. This is the same as last month but the value of the sales is more, so that is a win! You can check out my Design Sales Graph here if you are interested.  Croissant Soft Textured Blue Medium   x 3 We are starting with the most popular in the sales trends, the croissants. This month it sold on three separate occasions.

Time for a little refreshing update! This is an older tulip design that I used in the new banner of my Spoonflower shop, they make such gorgeous little napkins! I wanted to incorporate both the Dutch and Kiwi (New Zealand) parts of The Dutch Kiwi. My original logo was of a Tui, a New Zealand native bird, based on a photo I took at the very bottom of the South Island in a town called Bluff. It was part of a 30 day caravan trip around the South Island just after covid restrictions lifted to allow us to travel around the country. We took a day trip to Bluff to check out the very bottom of the South Island of New Zealand. While watching the kids look through all the beautiful stones at the beach, I sat on a bench near a large Harakeke (flax) and this beautiful Tui came and hung out with me. Singing a beautiful song and drinking the nectar from the flowers. I was looking at my logo the other day and realized that most people outside of New Zealand would not recognize the Tui as a New Zealan...

Retro Nouveau Design Challenge I am getting in early for the next design challenge on Spoonflower. The Retro Nouveau Design Challenge  is one I was very excited about. I thought I had never drawn an Art Nouveau inspired design. But, once I looked for inspiration I found that there are many similarities to one of my favourite styles, Art Deco. Art Nouveau Retro Floral Warm Earth Tones Large  This is the original colour way that I drew. I liked the warm earth tones and this seemed to tie in well to the Nouveau themes I had seen. After many edits, extra layers to add a little more detail and take some away again, it is finished. I began to play with the background colour to see how it would look on a darker background. Art Nouveau Retro Floral Dark Earth Tones Large And that is how I ended up with this darker earth tone version. I love the extra more obvious detail in the first design but the elements pop so much more on the darker background. I have been running a poll on Instag...

Designs Sold on Spoonflower in October 2025 In October I made 8 sales, just one down from September. Things are looking a bit more stable again. I have decided to up my game in regard to social media and interacting online. Hopefully we will see the results here over the next few months! I wrote a post about it,  Does Following Designers or Favouriting Designs on Spoonflower help? In New Zealand we are only a few short weeks away from the summer holidays so I will have a lot more time to create and interact soon. Here are designs that sold in October 2025:   Croissant Soft Textured Blue Small I have recoloured this design adding three more colours, I wrote a post about it,  Delicious Croissants with Soft Texture - New Colours!  This was because I noticed them featuring regularly in the monthly sales posts. This month is no exception and 3 of the 8 sales this month were for the croissant design. Croissant Soft Textured Blue Medium  (x2) Textured Waves in Aqua Tea...

I have been noticing some repeat sales by posting the monthly sales posts. You can check out Designs Sold - September 2025 here . So as I mentioned in that post I think it might be time to revisit this design and add some new colours! This is the original  Serene Soft Green Cream Wave Swirl Design  This design placed 27th in December 2023, and has consistently featured in sales. Mostly swatches but a few larger orders too. I thought maybe people need other colour options to suit their needs. So I have made eight different colour ways. I have left the scale the same as I like a nice large scale for wallpaper. I am always happy to re-size a design and make it smaller if needed! Serene Soft Wave Swirl Design- New Colours Here are the eight new colour options! I hope there is one that is just right for you. If not, feel free to contact me with your wishes and I will create it for you! Serene Soft Dusty Blue Wave Swirl Design Serene Soft Navy Blue Wave Swirl Design Serene Soft Sag...

Does it make any difference to your Spoonflower sales if you are more active by following designers and liking designs? I am not sure. Does a design having more hearts help in search results? Wallpaper in Retro Textured Scallop Waves Teal Mauve M I have no idea to be honest, but I think it is time to up my game and see! Time to make a social media and interaction plan. Obviously, I will still only follow designers whose work I admire and only heart designs that I actually like. I don't think I can bring myself to randomly like whatever for the sake of sales. It has to mean something right? I will probably need to set a reminder and make sure to do it everyday! Fabric in Boho Floral Woodland Ditsy Dusty Dark Blue I guess I need to check my current followers and favourites to have a starting point. I think I will start with Spoonflower and Instagram. On the off chance I still have some motivation and time left I will add on the Facebook page.  I will still take part in all spoonflowe...

Croissant Soft Textured Blue Medium Wallpaper These delectable croissants with their subtle warm texture, one of my best results in a design challenge on Spoonflower. They placed 29th in April 2024. I have notice over the last few months that they are consistently featuring in my 'designs sold' monthly posts. I looked up the search term 'croissant' by best selling and they were the first result! Croissant Soft Textured Blue Medium The croissant design is available in three sizes, small, medium and large. Since they were selling well and showing up in the search results, I decided it was time to add some more colours. You can see the whole collection called Delicious Croissants by clicking this link , or each photo will take you to that particular design. Croissant Soft Textured Sage Green Large Spoonflower has a more recent feature where they group the same designs of different colours together automatically. That way if you were looking at the large size in one colour ...

Still a few sales coming through. Not enough to be totally excited but still hopeful. I think it might be time to put more effort into promoting and marketing, rather than only creating and relying on organic traffic. That might be a plan for next month to see how much difference it makes! You can check out the Sales Graph if you are interested! I made a total of 9 sales in September 2025. Serene Soft Green Cream Wave Swirl Design A regular feature in this little line up of sales is the Serene Soft Green Wave Swirl Design. I am beginning to think I might need to revisit this design and make a few more colours and sizes! Croissant Soft Textured Medium   x 2  Another regular feature is the lovely croissants. They are already available in three sizes so I don't think I need to add more. A lovely soft flowing design for both fabric and wallpaper. It would be just perfect in a dining room or kitchen. (S) Soft Green Blue Grey Textured Ogee  The symmetry and softness of th...