Happy New Year Everyone! May it shine bright and be filled with lots love, laughter, and learning. I’m going into my fifth year of blogging (I don’t count that one random post from August 08′) and it’s fun to look back on my posts. My design skills have definitely grown and I’ve come across some stellar artists. I’m looking forward to another year. It seems like it’s my tradition to post my goals for the next 365 days, so here it goes!
- Be happy as much of the time as possible. Read The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
- Be grateful – find 3-5 things to be thankful for each morning
- Get a shirt design printed on Threadless
- Work 40 hours a week (freelance or full-time) and have fun doing it
- Post once every two weeks (or more)
- Pick up at least one new technique a week
- Become a whiz at coding (html, css, js, wordpress etc.)
- Finish Tomb Raider – Hardcore gamers don’t laugh, I don’t play that often and when I do it’s for about an hour and a half and I progress by 2%
- Take more photos
- Sketch more
and of course design stuff that kicks butt!
Speaking of designs, here’s my wallpaper celebrating 2014. It was inspired by this Illustrator tutorial: Create a Mosaic BBC Inspired Text Art Effect. It’s said to take 1hr 45 mins. It took me longer because I had some issues and deviated a bit. Here are some tips. I messed up a few times by going to the Offset Path in the Object panel, instead of the Effects panel. Also I don’t know if this is because of the version of Illustrator that I’m using, but in Section 2 – Step 2 you may have to drag the Offset Path into the correct fill in the Appearance panel (see image in that section). I also didn’t use the provided build-a-font method. I chose the font Bauserif and filled in its shape. I also broke up the shadow effects into different sections based on my placement of the number and my light source. Again Happy New Year and Enjoy!
A special thanks goes out to my cousin Cara, who always gives great feedback. My background was originally purple, which she was not too fond of (surprising since it’s her favorite color). I made some adjustments and voila!
Season’s greetings everyone! I hope you have a great Christmas and to celebrate I have created a Christmas wallpaper for your desktop’s pleasure. It’s actually an adaptation from my specialized Christmas cards going out to my clients.
I feel like my mind races at 120 mph ninety-five percent of the time, but before it gets in gear, I try to find some peace and quiet. This means as soon as I get up I try to isolate myself. I close the door and avoid family ( I have a big one). It helps me prepare for the day ahead. I get some meditative reading done, put things in perspective, affirm what I’m grateful for, and review my tasks for the day. One day this past week, it hit me, even if surround myself with silence, it’s still not quiet. I can still hear myself breathe and feel my heart beat. Yay for being alive! So that inspired me to create this wallpaper I call Silence. It took approximately 3 hours in Photoshop. Enjoy! Feedback is welcome.
Inside My Head 