This year Catherine from LimeDoor Studio and I are engaging in a Surface Pattern Design Challenge that we created for ourselves. 

Working together keeps us accountable and focused.  We wanted a way to create regular work & to have constructive feedback on our designs, while building a portfolio of work.

The best way to grow your skills, hone your skills, learn new skills, and perfect technique is by practice. 

We are also working on finding and perfecting our signature styles.

It is one thing to create individual, standalone designs, but we aim to create 
Collections of Designs that work together.

Hero, Secondary, Blender.

The challenge is also to work with more limited colour palettes that coordinate with each individual collection. 

To give us plenty of scope to work within our own themes, the challenge involves each theme starting with a different letter; within that constraint, we can use any theme we like. 

We also choose to give ourselves individual tasks like technique, styles and methods, for example, using blending modes