Living the Creative Life

Okay, so I'm a liiiiitle bit behind on my February sponsor interviews. I didn't want you to miss out on any awesome people though, so here's a great interview from Amie over at Completely Unfinished !  { Blog } { Twitter } Q. You're a graphic/web designer! Is this something you went to school for or are you self-taught? How do you go about finding clients? Is it hard to find clients? I'm currently in school for graphic design and am very interested in how these skills translate into the real world. A. I went to school for design but a big chunk of my learning was teaching myself. I took a web design class in high school & I knew most everything that was being taught, so I helped out a lot of my classmates. I used to check out design books from the library and read them while everyone was eating lunch and paying attention in classes! hah. I guess that's when I realized I loved design and wanted to pursue it in college. I'm pretty new to t...

As you are probably well aware, I looooooove my cat ! Are you a cat person, too? Let's have an "I Love My Cat" Day!  I got this fun idea from Alycia over at The Curious Pug and I just love it! So send me a photo of you and your cat and I'll be posting them all this coming Monday (March 5th) . What a great way to get rid of the Monday blahs by looking at our cute kitten friends! You can email your photos to: desertrose0601 {at} gmail {dot} com. Please include: your name your blog address (so I can link back to you and give you credit for your photo!) I can't wait to see you and your cute little friend! :D

I don't know if it's like this in other graphic design programs, but in mine, there seems to be a very sharp drop-out rate. We began the year with about 60 first-years, and now, halfway through the year, there's probably about 30. To give a sharp comparison, there are only 9 second-years. You do have to petition to get into the second and third years, I know that much, but I also see a lot of people psyching themselves out and quitting early. Perhaps graphic design just wasn't for them. It's hard to tell. I feel like... we're kind of in a competition. I mean, not really, but kind of yes. I know they don't have a set number of people who they let into the second year, but in a way, the more who drop out, the more pressure I feel. The ones who were here just for fun are slowly falling to the sidelines and now those of us who are left are in a more heated battle to the end. Our teachers are very patient and gentle, but they do push us to try harder, be b...

My sister does tons of cross-stitching, and we were talking about this cross-stitching website the other day, and anyway... then I stumbled across this pattern , which totally reminded me of myself! Just a day-dream-y girl on the beach with a book. ;-) ***** Have you ever found a photo or piece of art that seemed to describe you perfectly? What was it and what did it say about you?

Yesterday I parked at the shuttle and took the bus to school. When I got back, my TIRE WAS FLAT!! Sigh... Just what I needed at 6pm in the cold darkness. Luckily my dad was home and only about 5 minutes away, so he came and rescued me. (I am absolutely fine with being a woman who doesn't change her own tire!) . ***** Do you change your own tire? Why or why not? If not, do you know how or do you just not want to? ***** In other news, we have a winner for this month's giveaway ! Congratulations, Tranae! ( Email me , please! Your Google account is coming up as noreply-comment@blogger.com, so I have no way to get ahold of you) .

Remember my painting project ? I finally finished it and turned it in last Wednesday! Our teacher kind of scolded us a little for not perfectly lining up the 1" cut-outs of each swatch when we pasted them all on the templates we were given. Oops! I should know better by now - it's a really big deal to create perfectly straight/squared-off things as a graphic designer. Anyway, most of the colors turned out awesome. I could've used a little more blue in the blue-green, but by the time the paint dried and I realized it wasn't quite the color that I was expecting, my blue paint had run out. Oh well... The purples were probably the hardest colors to get right, mainly due to their darkness. I kept imagining a nice, soft, spring-y color, but you'd have to add white to the paint to get that and we weren't allowed to use white for this assignment. My NEXT assignment is to paint a value scale of the color yellow. Two tints and two shades. I guess I bett...

Spring is springing here in Oregon!! We didn't have much of a winter to start with this year, but I'm looking forward to Spring just the same. Easter, new flowers, more sunshine... it's just a pleasant time of year! I think my favorite thing about Spring is the lengthening of the days. I don't mind the rainy winters we tend to have here in Oregon, but having the sun go down around 4:30 or 5PM can get rather depressing. You can tell Spring is coming when the sun stays around later and later into the evening (by summertime, the sun stays out until nearly 10PM!) ***** What's your favorite thing about Spring?