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.

A bit of work and a bit of fun

There is not much to tell about the rings I'm working on unfortunately. I'm still busy with manually adapting the details, but can't work on it for prolonged periods of time in order to prevent wrist injury playing up. I really want to escape to other activities, be it personal projects or professional ones (making my own website, etc), but so far I've managed to control those urges. Once three designs are up and ready and sent to the printer, I can devote all my time and energy to those causes (the professional ones, I mean). But until then, it's knuckling down to boring work. I mean, it'll have to be done óne day. No, not before the deadline of last week, no. I know. And my next design is going to be be a whole lot simpler, I'll tell you that.

On the other hand, my perception of time is once again too far ahead. Do you know that feeling, when you feel like you're already halfway through the week, while in fact it's just Monday evening? I often have that when a lot of projects are 'flowing': when things are háppening, impasses are resolved, decisions are made and results become visible; it seems like everything just starts doing that at the same time. It feels great, dynamic and rewarding, but it also means having to watch out not to overdo things and overwork myself, a threat always lurking around the corner. Darn you, necessary balance!

I did manage to squeeze in a few creative and fun activities though:

A new little drawing:

Random inanimate object photography:

Plans for a new website for our Tuna (music group, not fish), together with C.; I really want to start with that, finally a stress free (i.e. no paying client) web design project again!

And: my camera basket is done! Yes, the one that was supposed to be made once I had shortened my sewing to do list... I needed to lubricate my sewing machine and after that, I had to take a little test run. I didn't want to use one of my more 'serious' projects for that, so the basket was perfect practise material, easy to make and no need to be precise (I can feel you thinking: haha, good excuse ;) ). Now it stands on my desk to contain my camera and accessories, I like how it turned out!

A small tutorial will follow later, I always wanted to make tutorials but since I mostly sew in the evenings, pictures tend to turn out rather bad and that held me back. That, and most of the time trying out things for the first time (i.e. messing up time after time) and not wanting to make a second version for the tutorial. But then I thought about the book of Mme Zsazsa who often explains things with simple but clear and attractive drawings, and I figured I should give that a try. So... give me some time and the tutorial will follow.

Okay, now back to the sewing waiting list. There are some long overdue birthday gifts that really need to be made... In order to keep myself going I already cut out the parts for some projects and assembled some halfway done pieces. I also need to make the curtains for our living room closet since I finally found a somewhat decent fabric, you can see it in the background of most pictures. However, since the fabric is a bit too bright white, I'll have to figure out how to get a pattern or something on it, to make it less intrusive. Anyone any ideas?

Busy busy busy

What a week... I can feel the fatigue in my head and my joints, but I've worked hard, had much fun and learned a lot. Nevertheless, I'm happy that next week will be less eventful: finally time to work on my designs!

I worked on the webdesign job, I worked in the shop, I went to rehearsal, I went to the gym, I practised bandurria until I got blisters on my fingers, I practised singing until my voice went soar, I performed with the group (in the sun, with ice-cream afterwards), I dusted my camera off and made some pictures, I stalked a bird (more about that later), I fixed my bicycle tire, I worked out at home so fanatically (apparently) that I walked funny the next days, and I even went to the Open day at Shapeways (the 3D printing company) which was by far the most awesome event this week.

We got a tour through their Eindhoven office (the company started in Eindhoven, the Netherlands but now has its headquarters in New York), got to see the offices and the people working there, the 3D printing machines, cleaning facilities and everything else. The machines were impressive to see in action even though I already had seen similar ones before. It was really interesting to hear about everything they do and be able to ask lots of questions, and right now I'm just brimming with enthusiasm and inspiration for new designs.

I also got this little 3D printed intertwined cube thingy to take home with me (oh, the awesomeness of printed products!), and I just keep feeling and tossing and poking it. It's made in the material they call Alumide, and even though I wasn't impressed when I saw it online, I quite like it seeing it for real. 

 

The fabric in the background is from Ikea, I'm planning to turn it into a desk basket for my camera + camera-stuff as soon as I've made a dent in my sewing projects waiting list. Or earlier in case of little self-control (which is the usual).
And guess what this is? (Yes, except for a display of attempted organisation):

I made it! All parts of the patchwork piece are cut, I even had some tiny scraps left. Now I just have to decide whether I follow my original design and make big triangles out of two small triangles from the same fabric, or whether I mix up all the small triangles. Hmm...


About the bird: this week, when going home, I closely passed a western Jackdaw (a sort of small crow, in Dutch: kauw) that was just standing on the ground, looking a bit phased. Feathers ruffled and messy, looking like it didn't really know what to do.

I looked at it, it looked back with a look of "well, I'm not happy with this situation either, you know". I kept watching it, and it turned around and walked away from me. It spread its wings a bit and attempted to jump but nothing happened, so it just kept on walking. A bit worried, I parked my bike at home and walked back to the bird. Still strolling around with the same "what to do"-look, it was clear that the poor thing wasn't able, or didn't know how to fly.

So I called the animal protection service to ask what to do, and they told me that around this time, young Jackdaws are flying out and often need to learn how to fly. Their parents are still guarding and feeding them, and it is normal to find them walking on the ground, so it is best to let nature run its course and not interfere. I had no idea! Also, the reason why it was looking that phased might be that it had just fallen out of its nest. Ouch... Apparently all normal, but I'm just glad I'm not a bird.

Also, I've found a nice song for singing practise (let's train those vocal cords!), still need to find more. I hope that, once I've improved my singing technique a bit, I'll be able to play some chords on the ukulele at the same time.

P.S.: as I was getting more and more annoying by the ugliness of the blog theme, I really want to design my own. But I need to hold myself back because there are more important things to do right now and in the next weeks. Awww... (As a compromise, I've allowed myself to search for a decent template and try out some things for the time being, so don't be surprised if the blogs looks differently over time).