Guess who's back!

Yup. Yours truly. I'm baaahaack!

Since my previous post I have been über-busy with all the preparations and first steps of my web design business. But alas! The long days of working and sweating over design mockups and programming training are almost over, and the long days of working and sweating over client design mockups and debugging are almost starting. The main difference: I'll get paid. At least I hope so.

In case you were wandering "did you really need three months for that?" well, I did plan the launch to be in only half that time. However, en route my body and mind performed their united "hey you there, get back here!" routine again so I needed to take things sloooow for a while. Yeah, life and health and sanity and such. The good news is that now I'm both rested ánd well-prepared, beat that!

Since all this work left little time for other projects, I'm slightly behind on pretty much all of my plans. I hope I'll be able to pick them up slowly the next weeks. There might also appear some older creations that I had already photographed and subsequently forgotten about. I'd tell you what kind of projects if I hadn't forgotten about them.

One thing I do remember is going to the textiles market with a friend. Though the reason I still remember it might be that it happened a few days ago. Ah well. In case you are now looking at me with the stern look that says "didn't you already have waaaay to much fabric while doing pretty much nothing with it?", it wasn't my fault. I was morally obliged to tag along for mental support to my friend who needed to stash big time for her sewing plans. And the reason I came home with a big stash of cloth as well was, ehm... Well you don't need an excuse for stashing really nice €1 per meter cloth, really. I just need to find more storage space, that's all.

Among the new supplies is a piece of unbleached cotton (Dutch: kaasdoek). Which is very convenient in the kitchen as well as for drying herbs as my friend told me. Herbs. Whenever I stumble across the word 'herbs' I think of Eddy Izzard's sketch:

The man is a genius.

*Disclaimer: I am Dutch but only speak two languages, the other six have long been forgotten ;). 

A change of pace, and post cards

Hey hello, it's been a month! Lots of things happened so I kind of forgot about this blogs existence. Whoops. To sum things up:

I decided that I will indeed go back to school again in September, for the Master's course Advanced Product Design at the Technical University Delft, which is basically thé hard-core industrial designer course. I'm really looking forward to it!

My part time job at the cooking supplies shop (which was pretty much my sole source of income) suddenly went bankrupt. So, no more job. Apart from the fact that this sucks - not just for me and my colleague, but even more for the couple who owned the store and had both been working full time on it for 13 years- it means I will have to find a source of income for the months until September.

Since I highly doubt I'll be able to find anything interesting for just a few months -retail is very slow during this time of year, so I doubt I'll find something equal to what I was doing now, leave alone find a temporary (ánd part time) job as designer with no formal experience- I've concocted a new plan *drum roll*:

Web design!

Yep, I've embraced my old 'frenemy' that is webdesign for paying clients. At the time, doing client work next to my part-time day job robbed me of all my time for working on my product designs. This, paired with too low prices and not being prepared well enough for client work (read: communication problems and clients expecting more work than they had paid for), led to a lot of stress and frustration on my side.

At the same time, I still liked web design, I just didn't like it when paying customers were involved. The websites I made for people on a voluntary basis were a lot more fun and virtually no stress. The things is, voluntary web design doesn't pay the bills.

But... right now, things suddenly are a lot more favourable. No day job, so I could spend 3 days a week on client work and the rest on product design. A serious focus on web design also means I can afford investing the time needed to prepare a strong business identity and a standard for dealing with the clients. I could basically prepare a lot of things that would lessen the stress and frustration I had in the past. Checklists to discuss before accepting projects, clear contracts, packages for clients that state clearly what is paid for and what not. And a set time when I'm available for calls and when not, plus a separate phone, so I won't be called when doing groceries...

So right now I'm working on all of that. Business plan, contracts, an acquisition website, business cards, etc. And not completely unimportant, I'm training in designing layouts and improving my technical skills so that the design process will go faster and smoother later on. In other words: I'm busy, busy, busy, but I'm actually having a lot of fun while doing everything so that's all right.

Oh, and I've also been doing other things last month. Things like cooking and baking, even though I've already forgotten what exactly (there is a chance I'll find pictures of them somewhere, so they might be posted later on) and I designed two post cards:

a 'get well' card, and a 'birthday' card:

Once again available in printable format on the 'Downloads' page.

On another note, I completely forgot that May is almost approaching and that I haven't done a single thing for my May wallpaper yet. Bad blogger, bad!

...I'll start on it right now. I promise.

Product pictures

The majority of the product photographing is done.

Done. Finished. Closed. Thank. Gód...

Over time I had become a bit quite very extremely stressed out about the product pictures. I guess that's what you get for being an impossible perfectionist while at the same time being not that stress-resistant ánd of the avoidant type. Procrastination, self-doubt and stress galore. Really, any longer and I would've gotten some serious wrinkles.

Which is why I shot these pictures with a plain white background. Much easier, faster, and less stress. I will create the "scenic" pictures with props when I have the time and feel like it later.

So the action plan for my next designs is to decide on the product description and product photo setting right after ordering the design and shooting the pictures immediately after receiving the products. Which is, by the way, also the advise that I got from one of the more experienced designers/sellers on Shapeways.

Right now I only have to make the scenic pictures, tweak the product descriptions and markups in my webshop and integrating everything in my personal website. Oh, and not to forget doing the whole social media & marketing thing. After all the stressing out, I'm now in a state of not really caring anymore. Luckily, I know from experience that this is the perfect state of mind to finish tasks like this. Prevents me from over-thinking again: enough is enough!

The 6th of december is the deadline for ordering things at Shapeways (where I have my webshop) for those who want to receive their order before Christmas. For me, that means that until that date I'll continue to market my designs. And at the 6th of December, midnight: radio silence. I'M DONE! Well, then my 2012 jewelry collection will be done at least and I'll give myself a few days off. And after that I'll continue with the next phase of my plans: focusing on product design! Hopefully with a slightly less demanding schedule...

But before I forget: here are the photo's of my 2012 jewelry collection!

Pendant 'April'

Pendant 'Santiago'

Pendant "Blanche A"

Pendant "Blanche B"

Pendant "Twain"

Pendant "Maya A"

Pendant "Maya B"

Ring "Maya"

 

Ring "Robin"

 

Ring ¨Dia"

Ring "Sydney"

I'm very happy they're all done now, and what's even better: now I finally get to wear them! Whoohoo!

...Okay, maybe it's better to wait until the scenic pictures are done as well. Hmm.

Oh, and many thanks to J. for all the help!.

Photoshooting

I've (finally) decided on my shop colours! Red, black, and wood colours, beige en brown. Warm and strong colours, but not too feminine. The dark grey in the logo en website are not a bad combination with this, but I might change the colour to a warmer dark brown just to be sure. We'll see how it looks when the photo's are integrated in the website.

It is also a good colour scheme for fall, winter and the holiday season, I think. Maybe around spring, I'll change to a grey with lighter blues and greens? Would be nice to do things like that in the future.

But, for now it is dark, warm and red colours. I tend to move to those colours anyway. Dark orange en red hues have always been favourites of mine, and when I walked around in the IKEA for props, those came naturally together. Did I say I'm really happy with it?

So... I'm currently in the process of creating stages for my jewelry and making decent product photo's. It's really difficult because I tend to over-think on the stages while I should just try things out, while at the same time I also want the shop pictures to look cohesive. Demands, demands! Ah well, they'll be done when they're done.

I also went to a make-up make-over/photoshoot: me in full make-up? Whaaat?

Okay, if you don't know me in person this might not have come across as shocking, but for those who do it certainly must have been unexpected. I'm really not adverse to using make-up, I just simply never use more than a teeny bit of eyeliner and maybe some concealer where necessary. Too much of a hassle, and an abundance of make-up usually looks weird on me anyway. But last week I went to do a photoshoot at a drugstore (they had a special event) where a make-up artist did my make-up and a photographer shot some pictures, I certainly liked the result. Wow!

So: now the challenge of learning to recreate that look. And find a hat. I want a hat. Really.

Okay, now from airs and graces back to the mundane: due to consistent design-activities-induced negligence in the household department, our house is currently in a state of Greater Mess (instead of the usual great mess) and some major maintenance would be in place. I tend to lose track on what needs to be done and become overwhelmed by all the chores, so I decided to make things a bit more fun & organized. And with fun, I mean a cross-check list with all the tasks that are not the normal daily/weekly cleaning chores. Not to be crossed but to be stamped or something. With a self-made stamp or something, I don't know yet. Something fun, at least.

Looking fun enough already? Some examples of the chores include:
- slap the big pile of mood board pictures I cut out earlier onto a big sheet of paper (i.e. make a mood board, but don't take too long)
- empty the stairs of 'needs to be taken up/downstairs' stuff
- sew a second curtain
- sew a third curtain and get J. to go to the hardware store for curtain rails (despite all emancipation, he's the in-house technician and I do not wish to be bothered with such tasks. My excuse: he's better at these things than anyone I know, including me)
- make an easy to access drawings & drawing paper filing folder for on my desk (as I'm starting to draw more nowadays, this is becoming a necessity: drawings everywhere!)
- file the big pile of 'finished but to needs to be saved just in case' administration
- collect old shoes to take to the recycling bin (you know, the ones that are completely worn down but still kept 'just in case' and subsequently forgotten for years)
- and of course the many 'empty and deep-clean this tiny little corner of the house, that specific shelf, that box over there, etc etc' tasks

I'm going to try doing one of these tasks every day. It should all take less than an hour, otherwise it'd take up too much of my time and energy, and by having both big and small tasks, I should be able to adapt it to my energy level each day. To make it even more attractive I might have to come up with little rewards, but at the moment I really can't come up with any. We'll just see how it goes!

And lastly, a little creative mini-project. Some time ago, I received a letter from my friend F. (btw, she has a blog as well, in Dutch though: Festina Lente). An actual handwritten letter, not an email! Receiving (and writing) a letter is just so much more fun than emailing. It made my day (thanks F.!). Of course I wrote a letter back, and because I felt like doing a small creative activity, I cut a bookmark to put in the envelope as well. I've made bookmarks before, and I love doing this (I've made a pile of those before). You can make it as simple or complicated as you want, and the end result is always useful!