As soon as Pattern January ended, I shot out of the gate with all sorts of projects that I have been wanting to do. Number one being my yearly sticker.
Last year I made 2025 stickers, and thought “how have I not already thought of designing a sticker each year?!”
They are great to put on journals, sketchbooks, etc. I’ve left the 2025 stickers listed in 2026 because maybe someone wants one to add to a journal layout or scrapbook from 2025.
When I designed that original 2025 sticker I was super into the idea of designing cheater cloth. When I was younger, I thought cheater cloth was so tacky. The word is right there in the title, it’s cheating, it’s not real quilting. Fast forward (and as I’ve found typical in my life) anything that I swear off and think is bad, usually comes back around. My mom started using some again in her sewing and crafting after she retired, and I started seeing vintage cheater cloth being used in garments, and like that ✨ my mind switched to it being fun and cool. I had the idea of designing a double wedding ring quilt in cheater cloth, inspired by the first quilt my mom acquired when she first got into quilting, a 1930s or 40s antique double wedding ring quilt.
I wanted to design all the fabric patterns in MY OWN pattern, and made headway before I suddenly started seeing other bigger artists and fabric designers apparently also had the same idea, not just cheater cloth, but specifically the double wedding ring design. The wind was blown from my sails. I may still finish it some day, but in the meantime, there was no rush. I ended up using some of the fabric patterns I designed to make the 2025 sticker.
All of that was to show the background of the original yearly sticker, as I never shared it on my own site, only on instagram, and I want to get back to posting here more regularly.
I drew the number shapes in procreate on my ipad, and then inserted my own floral fabric inspired patterns and I really liked it.
THIS year, 2026, I was so excited to make the stickers that I got carried away and designed a whole handful of them.
It started in my sketchbook with some scratchy colored pencil layered over watercolor, and then I adjusted the colors to make it in several options. Next I drew inspiration from a couple of my Pattern January pieces, namely the paper woven star check, and my stencil stack piece.
If that wasn’t enough, then there had been a lot of Paint-By-Number inspiration happening, when my sister and I bought kits for ourselves and our nieces. We’ve been doing art nights on Thursday with our middle niece, Rosemary (6yo), who is VERY into Bob Ross. We found a mini Bob Ross Paint-By-Number kit, so we started painting those as well. I love a vintage Paint-By-Number and I’m always inspired by people who have collected large quantities of them, and display them altogether. And I was getting too impatient to do the paint-by-numbers we bought to do together, that I ended up buying a little framed kit at Michaels.
I ended up drawing out a paint by number scene in blocky numbers for the year, and used my acrylic markers, that have a great opaque likeness to paint by numbers. As I tested the colors (sometimes the wrapper doesn’t look like the actual paint color) I ended up with these swatches that I ended up loving and adding to the final sticker. It is my absolute favorite one so far.
All versions of the 2026 sticker are available here on etsy
