One Year

I’m proud to have reached my one-year anniversary of self-employment. I have grown a ton this year creatively, learned much more about the businessy stuff, and worked on many exciting projects. It was also a year packed with lots of travel and cultural stimulation!

In February I visited Stockholm and northern Sweden and stayed at the Icehotel. I spent some time in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Rome, Italy.
In March my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary in the Dominican Republic.
In June my family started what we hope to become a new tradition by spending 4th of July in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
In October I fulfilled a long-time dream of experiencing the Day of the Dead Festival in Oaxaca, Mexico.

All that with countless trips to Chicago and Memphis, a weekend in Las Vegas, and a trip to Portland, Oregon made for a very busy year. I loved viewing design trends and architecture abroad. It’s inspirational to spend a few days outside your usual surroundings. But now I am happy to stay put for awhile, store the suitcases and enjoy the holiday season.

I gained some new tools this year to help me in my work… most notably a Wacom Intuos 3 Drawing Tablet. I love this tablet for digital illustrations, sketching, and photo retouching.

I also just upgraded to the Adobe CS4 Creative Suite. I’ve only had it for a few weeks but I am really loving it. The interface is tighter, the programs can actually handle being open simultaneously, and in already my workflow is faster. Can’t wait to learn even more about the newly added features.

Most designers or even anyone who has tried to design for themselves will agree that you are your own worst critic! I mention this because I have been working on a redesign for this web site since July. My goal is to have it up this month. Fingers crossed.

I haven’t decided whether I’ll take the blog to the new site or not. I’ve been very busy this year – which I am incredibly grateful for. But as a result I have neglected to post about a lot of the exciting projects I have been working on. The new site will enable me to update much more easily so I’m optimistic.

Hope you have a very wonderful holiday season and winter. Thanks for reading!