Guide

Selling your own designs

How people turn unique patterns and illustrations into extra income — the usual tools, where files go to print, and what to check before you upload. This page is a map, not a pitch for any one product. Some links may be affiliate links — details in our affiliate disclosure.

How people earn from designs

Most sales in this space run on print-on-demand (POD): you upload artwork; a printer makes the product when someone orders. You don’t stock inventory. Money usually comes from a markup or royalty on each sale.

Marketplace POD — you list on their site (they bring some of the traffic).
Fulfilment POD — you sell on your own shop or Etsy; a printer ships for you.
Fabric by the metre — buyers order cloth printed with your file.
Digital downloads — sell the tile or pack itself for others to print or use.

Income varies a lot. Volume, niche, file quality, and how many products you list matter more than any single “secret” tool.

Words & file basics

If you’re new to digital design, start here. We mean exactly what these words do in practice — not theory.

There are two common ways to make a digital picture:

Raster — the file is a grid of coloured dots (like a photo from your phone).
Vector — the file is a set of shapes the computer redraws cleanly at any size (like stretchy logo art).

Both can become a fabric print. What matters is: make the art carefully, then save/upload the type of file the print website asks for.

Raster: What it is: a picture made of tiny coloured squares stuck together — those squares are called pixels. A photo is raster. A drawing you paint in Procreate or Photoshop is usually raster too. Files ending in .png, .jpg, or .tif / .tiff are almost always raster.

What that means for you: the file has a fixed number of pixels. If you stretch it bigger than it has detail for, it looks soft or blocky — like zooming a phone photo too far. So for print, start with (or export) a large enough file.
Vector: What it is: a picture made of shapes — lines, curves, and filled areas — instead of a grid of dots. Apps like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and Inkscape are built for this. Files ending in .svg, .ai, or .eps are usually vector.

Why people like it: you can make the design bigger or smaller and it stays crisp, because the computer redraws the shapes instead of stretching dots.

The confusing part (this trips people up): lots of print websites do not accept .svg / .ai uploads. They only want a .png or .tiff. That does not mean you must “design in raster.” It means:
1) you can still draw your pattern in a vector app,
2) when you’re finished, you use Export or Save for web / Export as to make a .png or .tiff at the size they ask for,
3) you upload that exported copy.
Think of vector as your working file (like a sewing pattern), and the PNG/TIFF as the photocopy you post through their letterbox.
Pixel: What it is: one tiny coloured square in a raster picture. A file that is “4000 × 4000 pixels” is 4000 dots wide and 4000 dots tall.

What that means for you: more pixels = more detail for printing larger. A 500 × 500 file might look fine on a screen icon but will usually look poor on a big piece of fabric.
Resolution / DPI / PPI: In plain terms: “How sharp will this look when printed at a real-world size?”

Printers often talk in DPI (dots per inch). Designers sometimes say PPI (pixels per inch). For your planning, treat them as the same kind of question: “If my pattern piece is X inches wide, do I have enough pixels?”

Simple sum: inches you want × DPI the printer asks for = pixels you need on that edge.
Example: you want the design 10 inches wide, and the printer wants about 150 DPI → you need about 10 × 150 = 1500 pixels across (more is safer).

What to do: open that printer’s “file requirements” or “artwork guide” page and follow their number. Guessing wastes uploads.
Motif: What it is: one little drawing inside a pattern — one flower, one star, one cat, one leaf. A full pattern is often lots of motifs arranged together, then repeated across the cloth.
Tile / seamless / repeat: Tile (also called a repeat unit): one square or rectangle of your pattern that can be placed next to itself again and again — like bathroom tiles covering a wall.

Seamless: when you put those tiles side by side, you can’t see a hard edge or a broken line where they meet. The design flows.

Why it matters: fabric and many product printers take your one tile and stamp it across the whole surface. If the join is ugly, every join on the product will be ugly.

What to do: make (or export) one good seamless tile, then check it by tiling it on screen (our studio tile preview does this) before you pay for cloth.
Colourway: What it is: the same pattern layout in different colours. Example: your floral tile in navy-on-cream is one colourway; the same flowers in pink-on-sage is another. Sellers often upload several colourways so buyers can pick a palette.
Flattened file: What it is: a finished picture with all edit “layers” squashed into one single image.

In apps like Photoshop you can work with separate layers (sketch on one, colour on another). That’s great while editing. Some print uploaders get confused by multi-layer files.

What to do: when they say “flattened TIFF” or ask for PNG, use Export / Flatten / “Save a copy” so the file you upload is one solid image — not a sandwich of editable layers.
File types: PNG, JPG, TIFF, SVG: These are just different ways of saving a picture — like .docx vs .pdf for text. The letters at the end of the filename tell you the type.

.png — raster. Good general choice. Can keep clear/transparent backgrounds. Usually looks sharp.
.jpg / .jpeg — raster. Smaller file size. No transparency. Can look slightly mushy if saved at low quality — use high quality if you must use JPG.
.tif / .tiff — raster. Often used for print. If they say “flattened TIFF”, they mean one-layer TIFF (see above).
.svg (also .ai, .eps) — usually vector. Only upload these if the website’s instructions say they accept them. If they only list PNG/JPG/TIFF, export to one of those instead.

Rule of thumb: read the upload page. Upload exactly what they list. Don’t invent a format.
RGB vs CMYK: What it is: two different recipes for describing colours.
RGB = red + green + blue light — how computer screens show colour.
CMYK = cyan + magenta + yellow + black ink — how many traditional paper presses print.

What that means for you: lots of online fabric / POD printers want files saved in RGB. Some paper printers want CMYK. Colours can shift a bit from screen to cloth either way.

What to do: follow that printer’s artwork guide. If they say RGB, export RGB. Don’t convert “because someone online said print is always CMYK.”
Markup vs royalty: How you get paid when something sells.

Markup: the printer has a base cost (what it costs them to make the product). You add your profit on top — say £3 or 20%. Buyer pays base + your markup. You usually choose the markup.

Royalty (sometimes called commission): the marketplace sets the shop price and pays you a percentage or fixed cut. You have less control over the number.

What to do: on each selling site, find “seller fees”, “artist earnings”, or “markup” and read their current numbers before you price a big catalogue.
Licence: What it is: the written rules for who is allowed to use a file, and for what.

Examples: your AI app’s licence may or may not allow selling products made from its images. A font licence may allow personal posters but not fabric for sale. When you sell a downloadable pattern, your licence tells the buyer whether they can only sew for themselves or also sell things they make.

What to do: before you upload a design for sale, check you have the right to sell it — including any AI, brushes, photos, or fonts you used.
Export (this word matters): What it means: making a copy of your artwork in the format someone else needs, without wrecking your original working file.

Example: your master file stays as an Illustrator or Procreate project. You export a PNG at 4000 × 4000 pixels to upload to Contrado. If you need a different size later, you export again from the master — you don’t keep squashing the same PNG bigger and bigger.

Paper to digital — drawings, paintings, sketchbooks

Lots of people start on paper or canvas, then need a computer file for print sites. That journey is called digitising (turning physical art into a digital file). You can do it yourself, or pay someone to clean it up / redraw it for you.

The usual process (step by step)

Get a clean capture of the art. Either scan it flat on a scanner, or photograph it carefully (see below). You now have a raster file — usually a JPG or PNG.
Tidy the capture. Straighten it, crop the edges, fix white balance, remove the table background, brighten the paper, maybe remove coffee stains or show-through from the other side of the page.
Decide what kind of digital file you need.
Keep it as a cleaned-up raster (fine for many fabric / POD uploads), or turn line work into vector shapes (handy if you’ll rescale a lot or edit colours cleanly), or redraw bits by hand on a tablet so it looks intentional on screen.
Turn motifs into a pattern (if that’s your goal) — arrange them, make a seamless tile, check the joins, then export at the size the printer wants.

Step 1 — scanning vs photographing

Flatbed scanner (often best for paper): Put the drawing face-down on a home/office scanner or use a shop that offers scanning. Aim high: many people scan art at 300–600 DPI (the scanner setting — more detail is safer). Keep the lid closed so light is even. This is usually sharper and flatter than a phone photo.

Libraries, print shops, university media rooms, and some office suppliers sometimes let you scan large pages if you don’t own a scanner.
Phone or camera photo (when you can’t scan): Workable for sketchbook pages and paintings that won’t fit a scanner.

What to do: lay the art flat; shoot from directly above (not at an angle); use bright, even daylight or two lamps from opposite sides so you don’t get one harsh shadow; fill the frame; turn off heavy beauty filters. Apps like Adobe Scan, Microsoft Lens, or Google Drive’s scan mode can straighten the page and sharpen text/line work.

Thick paint, shiny ink, and textured paper are harder to photograph well — take a few shots and pick the least glare.

Step 2 — tidy-up tools (DIY)

After you have a scan or photo, you clean it in an image editor. Same apps appear later on this page — here they’re for rescue work.

Photoshop · Affinity Photo: Crop, straighten, remove background, adjust levels/curves so the paper reads as white and the ink/paint stays rich. Heal or clone out dust, hair, and page shadows. Export a clean PNG/TIFF when you’re done.
Photopea (free in the browser): Browser editor that feels similar to Photoshop. Useful if you don’t want to install anything yet — open the scan, clean it, export.
GIMP (free): Free desktop raster editor. Same jobs: crop, clean, adjust colour, export PNG/TIFF.
Procreate (iPad): Import the scan/photo, paint out messy bits, recolour, or redraw over the top on a new layer (trace your own drawing with a stylus). Many illustrators prefer this to auto-trace for painterly work.

Step 3 — optional: turn the drawing into vector

Auto-trace turns dark lines into editable shapes. It works best on clear line drawings (ink on white paper). Soft watercolour, pencil shading, and busy paintings often look better left as cleaned raster — or redrawn by hand — because auto-trace can make muddy blobs.

Illustrator Image Trace: Place your cleaned scan, open Image Trace, try presets like “Black and White Logo” or “Sketched Art”, tweak, then Expand. Check the paths — you may still need to tidy corners by hand.
Inkscape → Path → Trace Bitmap: Free vector option. Same idea as Image Trace: import the PNG, run Trace Bitmap, clean the result.
Vectorizer.AI · other online tracers: Upload an image, download SVG. Fine for testing. Always check the result at full size, and read whether the service’s terms fit commercial use.

If the auto result looks wrong, that’s normal. Paying for a manual redraw (someone traces it properly in Illustrator) or redrawing it yourself on a tablet is often the cleaner path for selling.

Where to get it sorted for you

If tech isn’t your thing, or the piece is precious and you only want to do it once, these are the usual places people go. We’re listing types of help — compare prices, turnaround, and whether they hand-redraw or only auto-trace.

Local print / copy shop: Ask for a high-resolution scan of your artwork (say what size the original is). Many high-street print shops and office suppliers can scan A4/A3 to a USB stick or email you a TIFF/JPG. This solves Step 1; you (or someone else) still do the tidy-up and pattern work afterward.
Online “vector redraw” / “raster to vector” services: You send a photo or scan; they return AI/EPS/SVG (and often a PNG preview). Examples people use in/near the UK include PrintAnyFile, LogoVector, and CAMERAReadyArt. Search “vector redraw UK” or “raster to vector service” for more.

Ask before you pay: is it hand-traced or auto-traced? What file types do you get back? Can you approve a proof? Do they allow commercial/POD use of the delivered file?
Freelance illustrators / digitising artists: On places like Fiverr, Upwork, or local creative Facebook/Discord groups, search “vector redraw”, “digitise artwork”, or “clean up scan for print”. Send a clear brief: size of original, what you want back (cleaned PNG vs full vector), and that you’ll sell on POD/fabric.
Evening classes / maker spaces / college short courses: If you’d rather learn than outsource: adult-ed “digital art”, Adobe Illustrator beginners, or library digital-maker sessions often cover scanning and basic cleanup. Good if you’ll digitise a whole sketchbook over time.

After it’s digital — next stops on this site

Loocie Design Studio — desktop only (not phones): split a sheet of drawings into separate motifs, and preview a seamless tile full-screen.
Repeats & checks — tools like Repper and Illustrator pattern swatches.
Where to sell — once the file is clean and tiled.

Keep the original. Store the paper art safely and keep the first high-res scan. Everything else should be copies you export from that master.

Making the artwork (starting on a screen)

Prefer to draw digitally from the start? Use the apps below. If your art began on paper, do paper to digital first, then come back here for tiling and export.

Some apps are mainly vector (shapes you can scale cleanly). Some are mainly raster (painting with pixels, like a digital canvas). Either is fine. At the end you usually export a large PNG or TIFF for upload — unless that site says it takes SVG/AI.

Adobe Illustrator: Industry-standard vector app for motifs and pattern swatches. Strong control over colour, scale, and tile layout. Subscription software.
Adobe Photoshop: Raster painting, photo textures, and pattern previews. Often paired with Illustrator: draw vectors there, texture or finish here.
Procreate: iPad raster drawing app. Many makers sketch motifs here, then refine or tile on a computer. Export a high-res PNG; pairing with a repeat tool is common.
Affinity (Designer / Photo): One-off licence alternative to Adobe. Designer is mainly vector; Photo is mainly raster. Same job overall: build motifs, export print-ready files.
Inkscape: Free, open-source vector editor. Enough for many motif and simple repeat workflows if you don’t want a subscription.
Repper: Browser pattern maker: upload a raster (or vector) source, choose a tiling style, adjust, and export a seamless tile or larger surface. Built for repeat geometry rather than freehand drawing.

AI tools

Generative AI can produce motifs, colourways, or starting textures from text (and sometimes from images). People then edit, crop, recolour, and — for fabric or wallpaper — turn the result into a proper seamless repeat in another tool.

Midjourney: Image generation from prompts (and image prompts). Often used for motif exploration. Check current commercial-use terms for the plan you pay for.
DALL·E / ChatGPT images: Prompted image generation inside OpenAI products. Handy for drafts; same rule — read the licence for the account type you use.
Adobe Firefly: Adobe’s generative tools, wired into Photoshop/Illustrator on Creative Cloud. Useful when you want AI steps next to manual edit layers.
Leonardo · Ideogram · others: Further generators with their own models and subscription tiers. Capabilities and commercial terms differ — compare before you rely on them for a shop.

Platforms that sell physical goods often have their own rules about AI-assisted or AI-generated art. Some allow it with disclosure, some restrict it, and policies change. Read the seller agreement for each site. Ownership and “unique” claims also depend on the generator’s terms and how much you change the output.

Repeats and checks

For fabric, wallpaper, wrapping, and many soft goods, the file usually needs to be a seamless tile — one unit that repeats edge-to-edge with no hard line. Tools that help:

Repper — build or explore seamless tilings from a source image.
Illustrator pattern swatches / manual offset methods in Photoshop or Affinity.
Loocie Design Studio — desktop only (computer + mouse/trackpad, not phones): tile preview to see a repeat full-screen, and sprite splitting when you work from sheets of motifs.

Before you sell, zoom the join, check scale at print DPI, and order a fabric or product sample when the platform offers one.

Where people sell

Below are common routes. Features, fees, and commission models change — check each site’s current seller docs.

Fabric and textile printers

Contrado: Upload and manage designs, print fabric, and apply the same artwork to a large catalogue of made products. UK-based; useful if you want both metreage and finished goods.
Maake · Prinfab · Woven Monkey: UK custom fabric printers — upload a design, choose a base, order samples or length. See also our print tools notes.

Product marketplaces

Redbubble: Marketplace POD: upload designs, enable products, they handle print and shipping. You set a markup on their base price. Built-in browsers looking for art and patterns.
Society6: Artist-focused marketplace, strong on home and wall products. Royalties and pricing rules are set by the platform — read their artist terms for current rates.
Zazzle: Another large custom-product marketplace. Design tools on-site; royalty structure differs from Redbubble/Society6.

Your own shop + fulfilment

Printful · Printify · Gelato: Fulfilment services that connect to Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and similar. You bring the storefront and traffic; they print and ship. You set retail price (and keep what’s left after product cost and marketplace fees).
Etsy: Marketplace for handmade, vintage, and digital goods. Many pattern sellers list both physical POD items (via Printful/Printify) and downloadable tiles or packs.

Digital design files

Creative Market · Etsy downloads · Gumroad: Sell seamless tiles, motif packs, or papers as files. Buyers print or use them themselves. Clear licence text (personal vs commercial) matters as much as the artwork.

Before you upload

Resolution — enough pixels for the physical size you sell (many textile printers talk about 150–300 DPI). A file that looks fine on a phone can still print soft on cloth.
Format — follow each printer’s list (PNG, JPG, flattened TIFF are common; some take vector).
Rights — only upload work you have the right to sell. That includes photos, fonts, AI outputs under their licence, and anything traced from other people’s art.
Platform rules — content, trademarks, and AI policies differ. Prefer services that publish clear upload and rejection criteria up front; opaque “declined” with no reason wastes everyone’s time.
Samples — when you can, order one physical piece before you build a whole shop around a file.

We deliberately don’t list every fabric marketplace here. If a site won’t explain a rejection, you’re better off reading the fine print elsewhere before you invest the upload work.