Hello out there! I deserted this blog and I am quite sorry about that for anyone who still reads this.

I’m in the process of developing a new site for myself, and that will include a new blog. I hope to have it all launched by the end of this year. Work is keeping me busy (yay, I have a job!) and I’m super excited to be moving into a new place. Once I get my studio set up in my new apartment, I have some big plans to work out. I will share them with you all soon.

Have fun everyone… I’ll be back!

This week, I decided to use up some extra paper I had left from last semester and make myself a sketchbook! I’ve never done it before, but I did a little digging for a tutorial, and it was pretty easy!

Jessica asked me to post some process photos showing how I did it, but there are so many good tutorials out there, I’ll just make this short and sweet.

These are the materials I used:

Nothing too expensive or difficult to find:
1. Sketching paper
2. Cardstock (I used the leftover 100lb Classic Crest paper from Neenah)
3. Regular Elmer’s glue
4. Button/Craft thread
5. Regular sewing needles
6. Pencil, Eraser, Exacto Knife, Ruler, Bone Folder, Cutting Mat… the usual!
7. Sponge brush
8. Craft ribbon

And that’s about it! There are fancy bookmaking supplies you can use for the needles, thread, glue, etc. but it worked fine with just regular stuff you probably already have.

I just followed this tutorial for the punching of the holes and sewing of the signatures: Moleskine Reloaded. It shows you how to replace the pages from a Moleskine journal, and I followed it all the way through until the part where they start cutting up an old Moleskine. I couldn’t bring myself to do that so I just made my own cover out of the cardstock that I printed a pattern on. I made it the size of the pages with extra room for the spine. Here are the pictures of me putting the rest of it together:

The finished book, ready for the cover to be attached.

I glued a ribbon onto the inside of the back cover, spread the glue around the back cover, and aligned the pages to cover and let it dry. Then I repeated the same for the front. And here’s the final product:

I’m pretty pleased with how it came out for the first one I ever made. I’ll definitely be making more for myself and for gifts. I think I’ll try a heavier cardstock, maybe some different colored inside pages, maybe some fun illustration on the cover, or printing on the introduction pages of the book. I think the possibilities are endless and I can’t wait to try different variations! I’ll probably never buy a sketchbook again. (Sorry Moleskine, I’ve spent too much money on your fancy books but no more! …………….. Ah, who am I kidding? I will still buy Moleskines.)

Sorry for my lack of updates lately. I have been trying to spend less time on the computer and less time online and unplug a little bit. I’m happy to report that I have found a job that I will start in a couple weeks (hurray!). So I’m trying to recover from all the time online I devoted to searching for jobs and working on my portfolio and relieve some of the eye strain before I get to work! I have put the redesign of my website on hold as well for the same reason. I’ll go back to finishing that soon. I think I deserve a little bit of a break to celebrate, right?

So, what have I been doing then? Well, the little time I spend online now is filled with looking for apartments. My family likes to tease me because it’s been my dream ever since I was about 16 or 17 to design an apartment in all (or mostly) vintage (& vintage inspired) furniture and decor accessories. (Hence my love for thrift stores.) My goal is to salvage the majority of my furniture from thrift stores and refinish/repaint it all myself. But in addition, I’ve been having a little fun lately playing around on Etsy and Ebay and other sites putting together sort of my “dream” apt. I keep a folder on my computer of interior design inspiration and now I have wish lists on a bunch of sites of accessories I’d love to have one day. Tonight I started putting together a little collage of living room and kitchen/dining stuff. Yes, I’m a HUGE nerd but this is what I like to do. I decided I’d share it.

Click the thumbnail to view the full size!

Make fun of me if you want, but some day in 15 years when I finish my collection and it’s AWESOME, you’ll see!

My fellow designer friend Melanie has released the first issue of Offshoot, a magazine featuring “art and writing from across the globe.” She did a beautiful job putting it together and I was honored to be included in the ‘zine. Please check out all of the wonderful art in the first issue here and be on the lookout for my piece as well. Also, visit the Offshoot Blog for more information on the project and check back soon for more information about submission for the second issue.

Thanks again, Melanie!

My sister and I took a little impromptu trip to the art museum today. We were out doing one of my favorite activities, thrift store shopping, when I asked her if we could stop by the museum for just a quick walkthrough since I hadn’t been in awhile. Well, little did I know I’d come up with this idea to take some snapshots (on my cellphone, of all things) of various patterns in a lot of the ancient artwork and some of the decorative arts stuff. I’ve said, again and again, how much I enjoy patterns and decorative elements but unfortunately for my sister (who was kind of in a hurry…) I got a bit carried away with the idea. I’ll have to come back with a real camera and do this again with a little more time, but here’s a little collage of some decoration that inspired me today:

If I do this again, I should keep better track of where and what period in history these are from. I remember most of them, but not all. Next time!

Anyway, I think pattern can be a really important aspect of design. It’s not appropriate in every situation, but whenever I can find a good use for a pattern, I try to incorporate it. It can take certain designs to that next level of either sophistication or fun. (Or maybe I’m just weird.)

I’ve written here before briefly about some work I was doing to create a new website for myself and how I had thrown something together quickly to get a different site up as fast as possible. That probably definitely wasn’t a good way to approach a new site. To remedy my mistake, I decided that I was going to start from scratch on my site, and in the process, try to teach myself some new stuff. I’m not quite done yet, but for my friends who are working on building their own sites, I thought I’d share some discoveries I’ve made over the past couple weeks that will help me create a better site for the long run.

1. Indexhibit

My first adventure in trying to teach myself something new was experimenting with Indexhibit. Any of my designer friends who aren’t familiar with that should definitely look into it. Using Indexhibit, you can easily create a portfolio site with some very (and I mean VERY) basic understanding of PHP and how to set up a database, and then with a little CSS and Javascript, it’s pretty easy to customize it the way you would like. In fact, you probably don’t have to understand PHP at all, other than to just not be afraid to open up a PHP document and see how it works and know where to dump some code into the file.

The reason to use it? It’s very simple to update, especially if you want to be able to add new work quickly and not have to fuss with creating a bunch of new HTML pages. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but the work I’ve done with it so far has been very promising! With just a little bit of time looking through the forums on their website and looking at examples of other portfolios built with it (you can see examples on their website as well), it’s simple to figure out. I think the only drawback about it is that a lot of designers/artists use it, so you really need to spend some time customizing it to make your site stand out from all the other very similar portfolios. (Or better yet, just let your awesome work speak for itself!) But if you just need to get a portfolio site out there to send to employers, you can have it up and running very quickly. Awesome.

2. Movable Type

Working with Movable Type has inspired me to write this post! I am just so ecstatic right now because in a matter of minutes, I understand tremendously more about how Movable Type works than I ever did about WordPress. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that I know a lot more about working with blogs and such now that I’ve been trying to get WordPress to work for me for several months but regardless, I finally understand how to completely customize a blog the way I want to. Now I just need to do the work to put the design together, and soon enough, my blog will be moved from WordPress to Movable Type. Once I get it running, perhaps I could elaborate on how I made it work for me and offer some advice to anyone who is looking to do something similar to their site. But seriously, if I can figure it out, anyone can.

Hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks, you’ll notice a drastic change in my site and blog! More on my process for this very soon.

I’ll introduce this blog entry with a little bit I just posted this on my Twitter:

“A thought: I’m thinking that thinking (and overthinking) too much is both a strength and a weakness, I think.”

Now, I wrote this as a way of mocking myself because it’s a few minutes from 2 AM, and I can’t sleep because I’m, you know, thinking. Well, if I force myself to put together a coherent blog post about what I’m thinking, knowing that there’s a significant chance someone might read it, I might be able to come to some sort of conclusion and then, oh, there may be a chance I will finally be able to rest my very tired little head. Blogging may be the new cure for insomnia; who knew!

Onto the topic I’m tackling tonight as I’m trying to sleep: What makes a good (or… great or… successful or… talented… I’m not sure if the right terminology!) designer? Maybe the better question is, what makes the type of designer that I want to be?

I keep jumping around with my ideas on this topic, so in no particular order, here are some possible answers to this question:

1. Someone with artistic abilities to make something look “good,” no matter the consequences*
2. Someone who makes something functional, that communicates effectively, no matter the consequences*
3. Someone who is a savvy business person, no matter the consequences*
4. Someone who pleases the client, no matter the consequences*

*Consequences = Losing all of the other 3 options in the list. Example: For 1. Someone who makes something look good, but isn’t functional, loses/wastes money, and doesn’t please the client… and so on!

This is getting quite confusing now, at this late hour. I feel like I need to break out a flow chart for this, because I’m losing my original point that I wanted to write about. After all, I’m a visual person.

For now, this is the conclusion I’ve made: The best possible designer is a person who can do all 4, and thereby, leave behind no consequences. But is that really even possible? As I think about projects that I have done, or even, maybe more importantly, think about work done by people I admire, I think that is a lot to live up to. Don’t you? So, now that I’m fresh out of school, and I’m thinking about what I want to do with my career, the answer to “what type of designer do I want to be?” is just that: someone who THINKS about and understands the consequences, even if he/she can’t eliminate them all.

So maybe thinking isn’t so bad after all.

Here’s to hoping when I wake up in the morning that my conclusion somewhat made sense. It probably doesn’t, but hey, I’m just starting, there’s a lot I don’t know, but I have the rest of my working days to figure it out.