Inspiration Strikes: The moment of inspiration that sparked the creation of Grand Tropique pyjamas.

A tropical paradise, a dreamy escape… the story begins here.

This is #NudeyBeach at #FitzroyIslandResort, and despite all of the wonderful beachy clothes I packed for the family, the items that stood out amongst the linens, cotton, and fancy hats were two sets of #minecraft pyjamas.

Don't get me wrong, I love Minecraft. However, it doesn't exactly scream tropical family holiday. It was then I realised that almost all of our son's pyjamas were licensed prints — quality, non-licensed boys' sleepwear had all but disappeared from the market.

It was wonderfully hot, humid and tropical but unfortunately, our son is a hot little sleeper... stuck in thick, black, cotton and licensed pyjamas. Now, I love cotton, but did you know it's not as breathable as comfortable as linen or bamboo?

I felt super guilty as a parent because I laid in my own bamboo pyjamas, lapping up the humidity; I could only feel solemn that our boy wonder was feeling a little lacklustre.

Immediately, I googled boys' pyjamas, and it was very apparent that, similar to shopping for boys over the past 10 years, finding nice, quality boys' pyjamas was still extremely difficult. Stuff it, I thought. I will make them myself.

So I opened up Adobe Illustrator, having only had a few plays at it and created a new file. As a practise, I opened up a reference image of a beautiful palm tree and started learning about stroke weights and using curves etc really boring stuff if you are not a creative. Anyway, after I drew up this gorgeous palm, to be honest, I was really chuffed how it turned out. So as any creative would do, I did another.

I chose my second most favourite plant I had seen since moving to Queensland and it was the Heliconia. Well, now I was having a bit of fun so I drew up the cardboard plant too. Suddenly, I was arranging these lovely drawings into a repeating pattern. You know what? These could turn out really nice on pyjamas!

And within 2 hours I had created accompany embellishments and finished up the first file in my pattern making career.

So how on earth did I turn that file into the first deliverable sample? Well, it starts with one large sip of courage juice and a run in with a scammer! That's part two....