Beginning of the month is both scary and exciting. It is scary because there are always incomplete things, things that needs to be done and put on track. On the other hand, it is exciting because it is new, full of possibilities and new beginnings. Shall we see what happened this month behind my small biz? Here it goes!

Documenting the life

I am not a day to day memory keeper but I document as I go. In January I promised myself to at least put one or two layouts to my album for that month. And I kept that promise. Starting little and building upon it works, at least it gives that confident to move further and look ahead. This month I was able to document both Janaury and February photos. I kept them simple and put it in a 6×8 inch album. I used very minimal embellishment in order to just give just the idea of what was that day about.

What happened that triggered me to keep up with my memory keeping is that I made my promise public last month in my January monthly notes. I realized that making a committment in front of an audience, even when the audience doesn’t care about your goals, makes you take a step and go further down that road in order to accomplish that promise. And I am very happy with the result! You can find my pocket layouts in the coming days in my TDP gallery.

Life of a designer

Scrapbooking design

If you follow me on social media you probably get the feeling that February was a busy month because it was the Pennysaver month over at the Digital Press. It was such a sweet treat for our community to provide scrapbooking designs with a really great deal. I was very busy behind the scenes producing new goodies and releasing them out to the world.

I humbly would say that the products I’ve made this month were one of my favorites so far but I think I’ve pushed my limits to a place that I cannot afford. I’ve produced three full collections and on the side there were layout templates and tags. That’s too much to keep up with on the long run! So I am thinking that those extras would only stay for special occasions.

The Nest

As mentioned above, there were too many things I released out in the world in February. I accomplished to produce three full collections; Tranquil, L’amour and Passport and also there were February layout templates as usual, and additionally there were Globe journaling tags. I served all of these to the Nest members this month.

Fore designers I’ve created Flowers No.13, Ribbons No.13, Puffy Sticker Styles, Puffy Leather Styles and Wood Veneer textures which I think very helpful and fun to play with! So, the Nest goals are checked!

What’s New?

While I was designing these collections I’ve tried new techniques. One was to incorporate my Ipad drawings into my scrapbooking designs. I drew several flowers on Ipad, brought them in Illustrator and turned them into these beautiful patterns. I kept one of them as raw sketch because, well, sometimes beauty lies in imperfections. And i love how things can get easy with Ipad drawing. I can draw on the go, or whenever I want to draw without opening my computer.

Another thing I tired and indeed was trying since the mid-January was to incorporate hand lettering into my scrapbook designs. Still in the process of learning and adjusting my lettering but so far so good. I’ve learned that I should strive for improvement, not perfection because there is no such thing as perfect. It just doesn’t exist.

Learning

I want to underline that I don’t have a design background. Therefore, I learn things on the way as I go. And indeed, I don’t believe that designing should be something to study in school. It’s a passion one can seek and follow the path to become “a designer”. So you are watching my journey in this path. And in this path there is constant learning. I remember my first scrapbook “designs”. I can’t help laughing at myself! Now those are collecting dust in a corner of my harddrive.

The important thing is to move on and make better things, learn better ways and keep improving. With these ideas in mind, each month I am learning new things about designing. In February I took another course on pattern design which teaches new Illustrator pattern feature.Oh, this new pattern feature is so amazing! If you are also crazy about patterns and pattern design, go take a look at Create Beautiful Patterns with Illustrator’s Pattern Tool class by Shelley Seguinot. It will make your life easy as a designer.

Colors. Obviously color is a very big part of the design life. But it’s also tricky and hard to make the right combinations each and every time. Bonnie Christine made a great job again with her new course Master Color with the Recolor Artwork Tool in Adobe Illustrator and I didn’t think a second to join in! Matching colors, using colors in illustrator effectively,  making color swatches etc. I learned very neat tricks from this short class.

Scanning. Do you know how it’s hard to find information on scanning 3D items with a regular scanner? If you’ve never done this before, you should know scanning dimensional items is a big headache. But it’s great to have friends in the industry who can give you advises on the topic. Thank you Kim Broedelet of KimB Designs for amazingly helpful information I could find nowhere else! Wait better scanned flowers from me now on! Only I have to make the flowers first ha! That’s another big challenge. Don’t you think?

Cooking behind the scenes

And I love this part! Do you know the feeling when you have something new but you can’t announce it to the world yet? Nowadays I and a handful of amazing designers have that feeling. I just can’t tell you what it’s all about yet, but I can assure you that it’s something you will like, it’s fun and inspirational. It seems like I will be busy with working behind the scenes for this project throughout the March!

Community Links

There are too many inspirations out there regarding scrapbooking. As I did last month, I also want to mention some of my favorite inspirations around the community in February. The first one is a challenge by Julie Love Gagen. She had 28-Day challenge throughout the month. It was so inspiring and I adored her journal book! This layout by Artful Leigh but especially the pink floral paper she used kept popping up in my Instagram feed in February. I truly had a crush on the paper. As the title says, what a sweet little album this is! This album made by Nicole Kehr and she also gives little details about her mini album on the Sahlin Studio blog. Totally adorable!

And that’s a wrap of February my friend!
If you want to have more closer connections with me and exchange ideas and inspire each other, feel free to connect with me over the social media; Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.