Short Blurb: Adobe MAX Day 1

I have never been to a design conference.

I’ve always wanted to go to one, but when you see how much they cost… <___<

Anyway, one COVID blessing, I guess, is Adobe MAX being FREE this year! Just need an Adobe ID, and the conference is your oyster!

I, so far, have watched the keynote. Conan O’Brian was hilarious (vice presidents of vice presidents), but the entire presentation was amazing and definitely got me yelling at my iMac the same way I did for one of the last PANTONE presentations I watched. (This is a positive.)

Some things to be aware of:

+ Illustrator for iPad

+ New Recolor Artwork panel

+ An improved way to create patterns

+ Photoshop updates including the Sky Replacement tool and Neuro Filters

I highly recommend watching the keynote, as it’s CHOCK full of information and excitement!

Also, Adobe understands the importance of coloring, so they put together a coloring book for all of us to enjoy.

So…enjoy!

Proposal Pumpkins

You always see on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok how these people get these lavish, elaborately planned and laid out engagement proposals from their significant others. Some of them might be less elaborate than others, but the planning is there and it is absolutely one of the sweetest things you might see in your lifetime, even if you see multiple versions. It sometimes gives you ideas of what you might want or want to do.

My boyfriend’s daughter sent me a text one day asking if I’d be able to do her a favor. She decided she was going to propose to her girlfriend and asked if I could put words on some decorative pumpkins she bought at Target. She had three of them and wanted them to have three specific sayings on them: “V-ever” (5-ever, but with the roman numeral), “will you marry me?” and “be mine”. Super cheesy, but at the same time, super cute.

So I agreed. I had just shipped off all of my extra art supplies (basically all of them) to California to a longtime friend who decided she wanted to go to art school. At the time I was working and figured she could use the things more than I could—after all, I had been out of undergrad for several years at this point and most of the supplies sat unused.

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However, now that I wasn’t working, it would be an extra expense for me to get the paints for this project. She offered to pay for them, but seeing as I’d be keeping the paints, I decided to just make it rain on Hobby Lobby and go get what I needed plus some.

I remember buying white and silver and black acrylic (along with ultramarine blue, canary or cadmium yellow—can’t remember, and some sort of “real red”) to paint the pumpkins. Small tubes is all, as the pumpkins were white and I didn’t need to gesso them or anything.

I started with sketches (that I no longer have) and sent them to her for approval. I did this for each pumpkin. When all was good, I mapped out the pumpkins with graphite and sent her photographs of those as well. With the thumbs up, I began applying the paint. Part of me wanted to etch the surface so the paint would grab. However, I was also afraid I’d ruin the pumpkin, so I just took a chance and left the pumpkin’s surface alone.

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I sent photos of the first pumpkin—it was OK, but the silver was very, very flat. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure entirely what I was expecting. Luckily, I had some glitters on hand (silver and white iridescent craft, as well as some cosmetic grade ones, if need be). I started mixing in the iridescent glitters, and while it looked great, the consistency became very dry. After a few minutes of adjusting ratios and even introducing water into the mix, I got a consistency I could work with.

I thought painting these things would be easy, but I wasn’t getting an opaque result with just one coat, and now that I’ve changed the consistency of the paint, wasn’t getting the coverage I’d normally get. These pumpkins ended up taking me a couple of days to knock out, but in the end they were worth it. She loved them and said she would pick them up from her dad’s when it was the day of the proposal.

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Fast forward—she ended up changing her proposal plans and did something that included her now fiancée’s two sons. The pumpkins were never used and we’re coming up on the one year anniversary of what should have been their engagement in a month. In fact, the 19th day of this month is when I started working on the pumpkins. It’s taken me a year to get this blog post up because I was waiting for the pumpkins to be used! But it’s the perfect time now since we’re already into fall and ‘tis the season, right?

In hindsight, I should have painted the words on with black first. Let it dry, then apply the silver. And if it needed more glitz, apply a layer of clear or something, and sprinkled on the glitter. Instead, what I concocted ended up being thick and difficult to paint on, so I ended up dabbing it on to keep the opacity. They didn’t come out bad, but they weren’t my best works of art. Oh well, I’ll do better next time! (Anyone need engagement pumpkins painted?)

Hobbies of Quarantine

Quarantine. It’s something we associate with lepers or someone who is insanely contagious….aka lepers.

But, alas, the good lot of us in the States and around the world are in quarantine to help flatten the curve, as they say.

Things are different. I’ve more or less slowed down my job hunt, as no one is really hiring. Their postings are on auto-renew for the most part, while other are looking for cheap labor or are scraping together work to create a job. Both are good for those who are just starting, but for me? I need to pick up where I left off.

Anyway, while enjoying this newfound time at home, I was able to finish up my spring semester at Temple, thus knocking out a whole year of graduate school with only one and a half left. I was able to maintain my 4.0, so I’m looking forward to doing it again in the fall. I also picked up a new hobby, which I’m going to turn into sales in my Etsy shop: creating wax seals.

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The idea is to illustrate greeting cards and sell a card, a similarly decorated envelope and a self-adhesive wax seal as a bundle to those who enjoy buying those things. An example is the card set I made for Mother’s Day for my own mom, as shown in the photo on the left.

Tied in with the wax seals and card illustrations is embossing. I watch a lot of creative stuff on Instagram and see a lot of people who hand-letter using embossing powders and heat-transfer foils. They looked neat, so I decided to try. I’m only as far as embossing, though, I haven’t made it to foils yet, but it’s coming!

Alongside those things, I’ve been trying to read more, but being sucked into the Animal Crossing hole has sort of commandeered that extra free time I had. The good news is, I’m coming upon a duration of boredom with the game, so reading may reclaim that spot for a few days. The book I’m currently engaged in is called Eyes of the Grave, written by a high school friend of mine, Chelsea Callahan, with whom I still keep in touch. It’s an interesting fantasy about a woman, Rebekah Devereaux, who is partnered with her estranged husband on a murder case where she sees herself as the murderer in these visions she gets when she touches the skin of the other person. I’m not giving this story any justice, and I’m sure I butchered the story a bit, but it’s worth a read and is only $10 on Amazon. I’m a little over half way finished and am pretty pumped to read the rest to find out what happens.

There’s been some freelance work sprinkled in here and there. I currently have a media kit I’m working on for a friend, a new logo design for a mobile cigar business, and the usual EGD stuff.

Finally, I’ve been super interested in racking up as many certifications as I can until things “go back to normal”, or at least, as normal as they can be. I finished up my HubSpot Academy social media cert today, so that’s exciting! I totally added this onto my LinkedIn page. I also found that Harvard University is offering free courses, so I’m going to be working on one course at a time with them. I won’t get a verified certificate (though you can for a fee), so I’m just “auditing” the class. Wonder if it made more sense to pay the $90 for a certificate… Anyway, my first course will be in computer science! It was between advertising/marketing and computer science for me when I was deciding what graduate program to pursue, and in this case, ADV/MKTG won the fight. But this way, I’ll be able to learn about CS and maybe have enough background to achieve something bigger in the future!

I’ve opened up comments on this post because I want to hear what all of you have been doing this quarantine season!