Worktable Wednesday:Designing "The Look" Of My PDF's

I made an announcement last week that I'm going to be designing and selling PDF patterns. A lot of work goes into doing that and the Free patterns that I offer to you my blog readers and my email subscribers, so I thought I'd document the process. It's given me a whole new respect for designers who do this.

So to begin with I needed to design "the look" of my patterns. Yes that's a thing and I wanted a clean look that would work with all my patterns and be identifiable as a Sassy Packrat Studios Pattern.

I first picked the type font I'd use for my headers, which are the name of the pattern, and all titles, like Instructions, supplies etc. I chose the font I use in my logo, which I really love and made it a blue color that also come from my logo.

  All the secondary text will be in a medium gray color and the important copyright text will be in black. The red box above is where the beauty shot of the finished plush piece will go. I'm considering adding a few lines of a story about the plush character on this page. I also will add some snowflake graphics for this particular PDF.

  This second page is an introduction about making this piece and supplies/tools. I'm probably going to make this 2 pages with the supplies and tools on it's own page. There will be photos of the supplies and tools needed plus a written out list.

 The sewing instruction pages will have photos, graphics and written text explaining each step. All pages except the cover page will be numbered.

 This is an original design I used to make that was pretty popular, so I've chosen it for my first selling pattern. I'm re-designing it and it will look somewhat different than this, but it's a cute and easy to make pattern that doesn't require a lot of skill and will turn out well.

My goal is to have this pattern ready my the end of April. I'd love to have some pattern testers, is anyone interested? 

Here are the details: You get the pattern FREE to try, be willing to send me 3 photos of your finished piece and feedback on the pattern and process. After I've made tweaks I'll send you the final pattern for FREE as compensation for testing the pattern. I'll also keep you on my list for future testing. Sound good? Then email me with your interest. I'm Jennifer, sassypackrat(at)hotmail(dot)com. Thanks!

The Penguins Are Back!

I've gotten a lot of requests lately to bring my fat plush penguins back to my shop. I intended to do that around the Holidays but it didn't happen so I'm doing it now.

They come in 10 different colors and are in my shop now.

Been flat on my back again so have had a lot of thinking time and decided that I'd start offering patterns of some of my designs rather than let them sit gathering dust in my computer. I have to decide which ones and remake the patterns for all kinds of material, not just felt. This will take a bit of time as I am a crazy perfectionist and everything has to be just right or I won't do it. I'm shooting for Spring but It'll most likely be Summer.

So if any of my lovely readers have any suggestions on which patterns they'd like please let me know.