i can’t believe that it’s already november (where has this year gone?) but that means it’s time for a new d*s desktop wallpaper! this month designer/artist camilla engman is our guest artist and she’s created a truly beautiful series of wallpaper designs with and without dates. i love the way the dates run across the islands on the bottom of the image (detail shot below) and the variation in patterns used for each little island, home or character. want to give your desktop a makeover this month?

CLICK HERE to download all of camilla’s wallpapers with or without dates.

thank you again to camilla for generously donating her time and work to our wallpaper project! you can also download date-less versions of august (deanne cheuk), september (lena corwin) and october’s (dan funderburgh) wallpapers right here!

good morning! i seriously can’t believe that it’s already october (where has this year gone?), but i’m thrilled that it means a new free d*s desktop wallpaper! and this month we have a wonderfully october-themed (halloween!) series of wallpapers from pattern designer dan funderburgh! i am a huge fan of dan’s work (and home) so i was delighted when he agreed to design wallpapers for us this month. and he didn’t design just one wallpaper, he designed a copper version with and w/out a calendar, a blue version with a calendar and a purple version without a calendar. so if you’re looking for something new and bold to decorate your computer screen CLICK HERE to download dan’s new wallpapers for this month! thanks again to dan for sharing his beautiful work!

*ps: andy’s guest blog post will be up around 12 today!

today i’m thrilled to introduce our second free d*s desktop wallpaper design for 2009- a beautiful design by lena corwin! we hit a tiny snag with the timing, so my apologies for the delay, but today we’re back on track and lena is sharing 2 beautiful desktop wallpaper designs with us, based on her popular travel series. i love the little details she’s chosen to include (keep your eyes peeled for work by amy ruppel, wayne pate and christopher david ryan) and can’t wait to load these onto my laptop this morning.

because our poll for the desktop calendar vs. no-calendar was so even, lena was kind enough to include 2 different designs: a calendar version and non-calendar version, both available in blue and beige. thank you so much to lena for creating this beautiful design and sharing it with all of us. click here to download the wallpapers, here to view more of lena’s work, and here to view her wildly popular pumpkin cranberry bread recipe from ‘in the kitchen with’.

*you can still download deanne cheuk’s design for last month (without a calendar) right here on the d*s desktop wallpaper homepage.

this month marks the 5 year anniversary of design*sponge and i can hardly believe that it’s been that long! when i started d*s i was working a full-time job and felt that my life was really missing the sort of passion and connections with like-minded people that i desired. ac suggested i start a blog as a way to find my voice and talk about the things i love, and i can honestly say i had no idea that 5 years later i’d be sitting here running this site and finding my life full of the sort of passion and friendships that i’d so desired. i feel incredibly privileged to still be here, working with such a fantastic group of writers- and readers.

when i started in 2004, i was speaking to a few hundred of you and i can remember the sheer excitement of finding out that there were other people out there who cared about chairs as i much did. that fact alone made me so excited to get up every morning and work. now, 5 years later i feel overwhelmingly honored to speak to over 42,000 of you on the site and 32,000 of you via RSS (thanks for your patience with the RSS drama this month!). it has truly been my greatest honor and pleasure to talk to all of you each day. my friends and family know how often i say, “if it all ended tomorrow, i feel so lucky and so happy to have had this job, and produced something i’m proud of”. and that wouldn’t be possible without all of you. so from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

and as a special thank you, i wanted to find a way to give back a little something special. inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, clotilde of chocolate and zucchini, this month marks the first installment of a special year-long d*s artist series. each month i’ll be posting a free desktop wallpaper hand-drawn and designed by one of my favorite independent artists. i’ve invited 12 of my favorite artists to create wallpaper designs made exclusively for d*s; they’ll each debut their design the first monday of every month and i’m hoping that these beautiful custom pieces will brighten up your computer and act as a small reminder that i am so grateful for the joy you’ve brought into my life, and hope their artwork will do the same for you.

this month we’re kicking things off with one of my favorite women in the art world: artist, illustrator and art-director extraordinaire, deanne cheuk. deanne has created not 1, but 2 special designs this month- a gorgeous dark watercolor wallpaper and a light, colorful wallpaper (details of both are pictured above). since deanne is our first stab at the project, she’s gone the extra mile of making calendar and non-calendar versions of her designs. so i wanted to give everyone the chance to vote here whether they would like the series to continue with calendars built into the design, or without them.

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next month we’ll continue with a new artist. so stay tuned for new work by artists like dan funderburg, camilla engman, julia rothman, lena corwin, nama rococo, christopher bettig, mike perry and, my personal art-idol, jen corace.

in the meantime, CLICK HERE to download this month’s wallpapers from deanne cheuk and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support over the past 5 years. love, grace.