I live in an old house and when I say, "old," I mean 140 years old! So, as you can imagine, there is a lot of work to be done. Our to-do list is pages and pages long. Our house is full of character and quirks and oddities. One piece of character that I like (or liked at first) is a built-in pass through china cabinet from the kitchen to the dining room. On the kitchen side is sliding doors at the top and on the dining room side is glass doors on top with drawers underneath. Since my current kitchen has a lack of cabinet space, I use this pass through as my pantry. Pretty handy. Except that when I'm sitting on my couch in the living room I can see the dining room side of the pass through and therefore all that I keep in the kitchen pantry. Not pretty. So for about $20 for material and curtain rods, I made some curtains for the inside of the glass doors. Here is the before and after. Excuse the quality of the pictures and the nasty, half-removed wallpaper. Don't worry, it's on our to-do list.
And a close-up of the material and curtain rod. I'm not in love with the material but this was a spur of the moment project.
It's funny how something as small as not having to look at all the stuff in your pantry can make you feel better about your space - no matter what shape the rest of the house is in! What are your simple fixes?
So in my last post I thought I was close to a final logo. Three weeks and three more logos later, I'm finally there! What a rookie mistake - ha! Of course, the client wanted to see more because she didn't really know what she wanted. This is not an uncommon quality in a client. It's the designer's job to educate the client as to what good design is. It's also the designer's job to have thick skin for when the client obliterates the logo and wants you to do something crazy. Not in this case but it can happen. :)
The client basically chose the third choice from the previous post but she had a few adjustments. She wanted to see "bookshop" as one word and she wanted the circle to stand out more and to be completely closed...
But after seeing that she realized that she liked the square and colors of the second previous choice and she wanted to combine them. So the winner is...
I can actually say that I finished my first paying freelance job – I've got the check to prove it. Okay, the bank does. It's exciting to be doing what I want to be doing and it's ok that it's still just in my spare time and not full time. That day will come. Now onto a Save-the-Date card, wedding invitation and photographer's logo! Yippee!!
So lately I've been feeling quite uninspired. I didn't start this blog so that I could whine out in cyber space (I've got my sister's facebook page for that). I've felt like my creative brain has been on pause or maybe completely turned off. I've looked at blogs and talked to other designers and creatives but no matter what I did I just couldn't get excited about design. Of course, I was basically doing all the same stuff - which tends to be pretty uninspiring when you've been doing that same stuff for eight years. Although, I'm very happy to have a job and work with some very nice people. :)But recently I had the opportunity to design a logo for O'Seven Eleven Creations. After a ton of concepts and a lot of self-doubt, I came up with two ideas that I was pretty proud of. The final logo was "LOVED" by my client! And last night I went to bed in full-on bliss. Now I remember why I do what I do. Now I remember the high I get from good design and making a client happy. I could barely go to sleep last night because I was so anxious to get to work on two other design projects that I have in the works! And, you know what, this is actually making my current hum-drum job seem more fun. Amazing how that works.
Check out the final design:
So, what makes you rediscover your bliss, if you've ever lost it?
I found this fun quiz at RealSimple.com. What is your color personality? This is mine:
Not exactly sure how accurate this is but it does say that people can be a combination of color categories. I know I also like reds and oranges. What color personality are you?
In an interview with Clare Owen, an illustrator that I admire, she was asked what advice she would give to women starting out in the illustration field. She answered with this quote by Sylvia Plath: "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Clare went on to say, "For your best work, you have to be calm and confident. So try keep your head up and believe in what you do."
How do you get started when you're full of self-doubt or fear of failure or whatever you call it? I know I have my share of doubt and fear and excuses in general.
I found this illustration by Clare Owen and just had to share it! It's fantastic!
I really love the simplicity of the old-fashioned sewing machine and the feminine, limey green roses. The spool of pink thread is a nice touch. If only I lived in Australia I could afford to buy Frankie Magazine which featured this illustration as a pull out poster. But, alas, I live about a 24 hour plane ride away from Frankie so I think I will have to make due without this.
For those of you creatives out there that don't have a creative job or only have a quasi-creative job, this if for you...
Don't you wish we could all live on Bliss Road? Actually, it's about an hour and a half from my house and kind of in the middle of nowhere. So, in reality, I wouldn't want to live on Bliss Rd. I could have Photoshopped out the telephone poll but I thought, "nothing is perfect, even on Bliss Rd." I do love that blue sky behind the sign, though.*sigh*
Good Morning, Monday. Yes, it's the start of another week. I am actually excited for the start of this week. It's starting out on a very good note. My little sis (10 years younger than me), got engaged last night! I'm so excited! I can't wait to start helping her plan. I already offered to design her invitations, etc. And she's marrying the BEST guy, so that's a bonus. :)
This past weekend was a relaxing one. It was the first one in a lot of weeks where we didn't have a ton of plans. We cleaned, organized, went to a Great Lakes Loons game, watched movies, read books. I even got to try a new recipe which turned out to be delish so I wanted to share it...
I remember so much about my grandpa. He was a very special soul. He was so happy and a hard worker and would help anyone, anytime. He loved his wife, Felicia, whom he lost to cancer when I was six and he loved his second wife, Charlotte, whom he also lost to cancer a few years ago. I loved how he always made me feel like his favorite grandchild. I’m sure he made each and every grandchild feel as if they were his favorite. He had a way about him.
I never remember him being sick. Only full of life and very active. It’s probably good that I wasn’t able to see him lying in a hospital bed. A couple weeks ago he caught Legionnaire's disease, a nasty type of pneumonia. Now I can only remember him as an active, vibrant man. A favorite memory of him is eating breakfast with him and my grandma in their breakfast nook when I was a little kid. They would make cream of wheat and put maple syrup on it. They had these bowls with flowers on the bottom and they would tell me to “eat down to the flower.” I can remember climbing behind him in the breakfast nook booth and squeezing his neck. He always smelled so good.
I'm thankful that he was able to go to Florida to meet his third great grandchild and I’m so thankful that he was able to make it to my wedding last November. He got to see me so happy and meet my husband. Love you, Grandpa (Irving Alexander, July 16, 1928 - July 2, 2010). We will all miss you so very much.
Have a happy, happy 4th of July and appreciate every moment that you have with family!
Happy Friday to everyone. Since we have begun renovating the 140-year-old house (almost known as Bee Shangri-La), I have started to think about what my style is. I mean, I know what I like but this house might just be a blank canvas. We've merged two households and all of our stuff is pretty old so I'm hoping to get some new loot. I took this quiz from Ethan Allen that I discovered on a fabulous blog that I read. It's very fun and Friday's should be fun! The quiz said my style was "loft." It described "loft" as Energetic. Fashion-driven. Practical. Materials borrowed from industry, architecture, and nature. Clean shapes. Punches of color. Spontaneous and fresh. Kids and pets? Bring them on. It was sort of right. Of course, I took the quiz a second and third time and got two more different answers. But it was still fun looking at lots of pretty pictures!
So...what's your style?
Last night, the wonderful bee keepers came to our house around 6:30 pm and left at 10 pm with tubs full of bees, honeycomb and honey! Thanks to Swarmbusters we have 50,000 less house guests. Their card says, "Who you gonna call?" Funny! I guess you've got to have a sense of humor when you're a bee keeper.
When they arrived, they listened to our walls with a stethoscope to determine where the largest concentration of bees were. They decided to go out the upstairs window and onto the roof and cut a hole in the siding to get to the hive.
They were looking for the queen but never found her. They cut out the bee-covered honeycomb and filled up at least two Rubbermaid tubs with the sticky stuff.
Once they got all of the honeycomb out, they used a shop vac to vacuum out the remaining bees. Thank you so much, Steve, Roxi and Vern!
Stuff I learned about bees (that I didn’t know I wanted to know):
- Bee removal experts hope to find the queen but only find her 1 in 10 times. If they do find the queen, all the other bees go to her which makes moving the hive much easier.
- It’s against the law in Michigan for an exterminator to kill honeybees.
- Older honeycomb is a dark, almost brown color. New honeycomb is very light yellow, almost white.
- Honey bees really do only sting once and then they die so they only sting as a last resort. They will sometimes dive and bounce off of you, as a warning.
- Honeybees have different jobs - think Bee Movie. There are guard bees that stay outside the hive. Guard bees have the most venom. The worker bees that usually always stay in the hive have only a little bit of venom and then there are the drones (male bees) that have no stinger. The bee’s stinger can continue pumping venom into it’s victim for 30 seconds which is why it’s important to get the stinger out.
- All male bees do is eat honey and mate with the queen. Once they mate, they die. In the winter, all male bees are kicked out of the hive to starve and die.
- The worker bees only live 8 weeks. So the queen is having babies all summer. The baby bees look like a grub or maggot. They are put in a chamber in the honey comb and sealed off until they are mature.
- In the winter, the bees generate enough heat to keep the hive at 90 degrees. They live off the honey they made until they can make more honey in the spring.
- Honey is only gathered once or twice a year. Usually in July and then maybe in the fall, if there was a good August crop and the bees were able to get food from the blossoming plants.
- The hum of 50,000 stirred up bees kind of sounds like the hum of a fluorescent light bulb.
What an adventure! I must admit I was amazed what these little bees could accomplish and the flawless design of their honeycomb. They are truly the ultimate graphic designers. They're just not allowed to work at my studio!
Actually, they're not bumble bees. They're honey bees and they are living inside the wall of my 140-year-old farm house. Yikes is right! I spoke to a bee keeper today who said there could be 20,000 bees in my walls. Double yikes! Luckily, we're not living in the house at the moment because we are trying to renovate it and sell our condo.Dustin, my hubby, and I walked into the kitchen of the house on Sunday to discover at least 50 dead bees on the floor. Wondering where they came from, we walked around the house to discover this scene:
The picture will never do what we saw justice. I went out and bought the "spray at 22 feet away" RAID and sprayed them. The bee keeper told me, "all that stuff does is make them mad." Which is exactly what I witnessed. In his opinion, our only option is to have an exterminator come out and kill them. So now I have a headache from having talked to and mostly, left messages for, exterminators and bee keepers. I had one exterminator tell me that I should call other bee keepers just to get some different opinions as to if they really needed to be killed or if they could be removed. The first bee keeper said that it would be an eight week process to remove them! The really crazy part of all of this is that once the bees are gone (dead or alive), we're going to have to take the siding off and clean out the honey comb and all of the honey or else more bees will come. I guess "if you build it, they will come!"We also had trees removed and trimmed. Here are the before and after pictures. Again, it's hard to tell in the pictures what a huge difference there is.
Happy Renovating!!
I have had the creative surge lately. All you artists out there know what I'm talking about. The irresistible urge to create...something. Not that I've done anything about it, but I feel it, you know. It's a very interesting, unique, restless feeling that I think only creatives experience.I haven't picked up a pencil, pastel, charcoal, paint brush, etc. in a long time. "Long time" is probably an understatement. Probably not since, oh, I don't know, college! How sad. Actually, that's not true. I have done a few creative projects along the way but, for the most part, life has gotten in the way of creativity. And I should say I'm talking about the creativity that produces art that is not digital. Working as a graphic designer, I do get to be creative every once in a while.Anyway, I feel super rusty in the drawing/sketching department so about a week ago I thought I'd like to commit to sketching a little everyday. I bought my sketchbook. (Yes, I had to buy one. All of my art "stuff" is in storage). And I will post a sketch a week. No critiques allowed. That's the beauty of sketching. It's practice; it's warming up. There is freedom in sketching.So I had been feeling this way when, lo and behold, I find this link for a sketchbook project . I do believe this may be a sign. I find this project just fascinating! Check it out.Have a lovely, project-filled week.
Yesterday was the first official day of summer break . I didn't enforce the no-tv rule, yet. Mostly because I had a lot of work to get done. I know, not a good excuse. What am I going to do the rest of the summer?! But it was kind of nice having a lazy day where we didn't have to do anything until last night which was Emma's last t-ball game. Actually it turned out to be just a night of food and trophies but that was alright with me. The kids had fun. Emma got a trophy. Aiden had 2 cupcakes and a piece of cake or, basically, 3 pieces of frosting. Mmmm.
I have still been working on a logo and I do believe I've got it. What do you think? Can you tell what it is? It's ok if you can't. :)
I wanted something that was happy and simple and fresh. I heart gray but I also love color, too, so this marries my love of both. I dotted one of the i's with a color taken from the dots above so the graphic and the words are cohesive. The font may still need some tweaking but other than that I really like this one.
See below, the logo in different colors. It even works in black and white.
I'm reading the book, 48 Days to Work You Love, by Dan Miller. The forward is by Dave Ramsey. In it, Dave says, "Most of us spend too much of our lives in paralyzing fear, shame, guilt, and dread when it comes to our work. Work has become the daily grind instead of the great adventure it should be." So true! This quote really spoke to me. My wonderful and thoughtful husband got this book for me. I'm going to keep reading through it. It's been good so far.
Happy Designing!
For months now, I've been debating on whether or not I should go out on my own as a graphic designer. While I'm thankful for my job, it has become more of a "job" rather than a career I am passionate about. Due to the economy, my job description has changed quite a bit. I took the job in the first place because I could work completely from home! A dream come true! I loved the freedom of working at home and setting my own schedule but also the security of being employed and guaranteed hours each week. But then there were budget cuts and layoffs and I agreed to help pick up the slack. So I found myself going into the office a couple nights a week to do production and administrative work. It was actually a nice change of pace in the beginning, getting out of the house. But that was also when I was going through a tough divorce. Now I'm remarried and don't really enjoy leaving my husband two or three nights a week to go work in the office. He's not thrilled about it either.Going out on my own is scary. I don't live in a big city so, while there are opportunities, they require more work to get. But I miss feeling passion for my career choice so all the extra work it's going to take is starting to feel worth it. I've been pouring over blogs of designers and artists trying to get advice and inspiration. I am worried that I just won't be able to do it on my own but then again, maybe I'm up for an adventure. I have a lot on my plate right now: kids, new husband, new house, selling the old house, dogs and a nearly full-time job. Because my job has required me to go into the office on top of all my other work, I tend to be completely burnt out by Thursday.So I guess that's why I started to blog. To help me sort out my fears about starting my own business and working for myself. I'd also like to write about designs and resources and beautiful things. I've got the name: Bliss Point Design. Now on to the logo. Not as easy as you'd think!
Is Sarah going to go out on her own? Stay tuned...
I can hardly believe that tomorrow is the last day of school for my first grader, Emma. She had such a great year and had a wonderful teacher. We are looking forward to summer, though. We are going to keep busy with swimming lessons, the library reading program, a trip to see family and friends, VBS, camp. Not to mention we are renovating a 140-year-old house and trying to sell our condo! All this and no tv, since I've declared a "no tv" summer. Am I crazy? Yes, probably! Actually, I won't be that strict. I just want the tv off during the day on weekdays. There are just so many fun things to do in the summer and tv is a time-sucker. It's distracting for me, too, when I'm trying to get work done.
Here is one of my favorite pictures of Emma and her little brother, Aiden, taken last fall:
Happy summer, everyone!
And a close-up of the material and curtain rod. I'm not in love with the material but this was a spur of the moment project.
It's funny how something as small as not having to look at all the stuff in your pantry can make you feel better about your space - no matter what shape the rest of the house is in! What are your simple fixes?
So...what's your style?
I'm reading the book, 48 Days to Work You Love, by Dan Miller. The forward is by Dave Ramsey. In it, Dave says, "Most of us spend too much of our lives in paralyzing fear, shame, guilt, and dread when it comes to our work. Work has become the daily grind instead of the great adventure it should be." So true! This quote really spoke to me. My wonderful and thoughtful husband got this book for me. I'm going to keep reading through it. It's been good so far.
