My business weathered the experiment better than my feet. One of the things that most excites me about design is that, in theory, I can do it from anywhere in the world–all I really need is my Macbook, an internet connection, and the contents of my head. The idea of being free to come and go as I please–of being truly mobile–is intoxicating, especially when I’ve become such a travel junkie. Not only does travel make me stronger and more independent, but the exposure to new concepts and cultures is certain to shape me as a designer. How could it not be beneficial to my career–wandering through strange streets, finding new museums, constantly photographing the new visual landscape? (Note to the taxman: I will hereinafter be claiming all air tickets as business expenses, okay?)

Prague is a city of animated and bizarre statues, like this one, which is much larger than it looks here. There's also Mucha influence everywhere! The main post office is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen (and it's open 'til midnight, but an angry Czech security guard wouldn't let me take photographs.)

Of course, it’s never quite has easy as it seems! While more and more people are becoming self-confessed “digital nomads“, it’s not necessarily an easy transition to make, nor is it an ideal lifestyle for everyone. I considered it for a good long while, but a number of factors (notably my attachment to the people I love, and to my shoe collection) led me to think of things on a more temporary basis. This summer, for example, I’m planning another trip–a full two months around France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.

I think I’ll be better equipped to balance the varied stresses of travel and work this time around. What did I learn that I wish I’d known?

Old (Renaissance) meets older (Roman ruins) meets new (construction) in Rome, Italy's city of perpetual cultural thievery. Note how they can't engineer a lamppost to sit in a straight line, and apparently this whole "internet" thing is equally challenging.

Reliable internet access is more vital than water, but sometimes harder to find.

Who needs water, anyway? If you’re in Europe, the wine is usually cheaper, and nicer. What they lack in outrageous wine prices, though, they make up for with utterly terrible internet access. I was surprised to find that Italy was far worse than any of the Eastern European countries I visited: I spent three hours running around the neighbourhoods around Termini, desperately trying to find anywhere that would let me beg, borrow, or steal their internet. Even internet cafes were useless; they just looked at me as though I’d grown an extra head when I explained that I needed wireless, unless their machines came with Illustrator and Photoshop and all my fonts installed. The little Croatian town I lived in for two weeks had only one “internet club” that was run by a fourteen-year-old who spent most of his time eating ice cream and playing video games. He didn’t understand why I wanted receipts for my payments, and would close the place down at the slightest instigation. (I eventually found a fantastic bar with wireless instead, but not until I’d already wasted a good deal of time and money cooped up in a little dungeon.)

When you’re plotting out routes and sights, do a little extra research and figure out where the most useful internet access points are. Take into consideration costs and availability of power outlets. Have a list of places ready before you land in a foreign city. Everything else you can gamble on–internet is a necessity.

Stari Grad (Hvar Island, Croatia), where my Grandad lives part of the year. He has no internet and no telephone, and when I showed up just before midnight one evening, he wasn't even aware I was coming!

Don’t count on being able to work, sleep, or do anything even mildly productive while in transit.

I planned for a great deal of night trains, buses, and ferries, thinking this would be a great time-saver. In some cases, it was: the ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik was one of the most fantastic sleeps I’ve ever had, and I could sleep on some of the buses I took, albeit fitfully. Sleeping pills will help (bring lots, as European pharmacies are rather a mixed bag), but sometimes the jostling, uncomfortable positions, and constant jarring visits from uncaring border guards demanding to see a passport will just get to you. When I got to Sarajevo after eight hours of fragmented bus-naps (and I was stretched out across the back row, no less!), I was so weary and exhausted that I curled up on a cardboard box in a park and slept for another two hours. (I was woken up by a little girl begging for money. I guess in Bosnia, sleeping on a box in the park isn’t enough to make you look like a transient?)

As for working, I could actually see that potentially being a little easier, although you’ll need to account for the lack of internet and power. Practise at home first–I often work on public buses these days. Cross your fingers that you don’t have a seatmate, or learn to control your elbows.

But generally speaking, assume that transit time is going to be lost time, and plan for it accordingly. If you can get anything done, you’ve come out ahead.

Statue Park in Budapest, where they hid all the relics of Communism. Soviet sculptors, from what I can tell, are typically either horrifically dull, or five year olds on bad acid.

Take it a little slow.

Beforehand, I’d only done short weeklong trips (Mexico’s Yucatan, New York City). I don’t think I really take vacations, per se, so I worked while I was traveling then still, but I did far less, as my time was so limited. If you’re planning to work while you travel, you need to account for the extra time.

If you want to work an eight-hour day, you won’t be able to spend sixteen hours sightseeing. However, if you can work, say, a six-hour day, you’ve still got plenty of time to take in your surroundings in the evening. I think here’s where you need to figure out what works best for you–if you’d rather do one day off and one day on, or work half-days every day, or whatever arrangement suits you, and your business, best. The nice thing about being nomadic like this is that you’re free to set your own rules.

Just make sure that you don’t end up feeling as though you’re wasting days, either by working, or by not-working. Even if you spend the whole day in a coffeeshop somewhere, you’re soaking in a little bit of the culture around you. (One of my favourite finds was S&M Bar in Budapest’s Jewish district, where they had teddy bears in cages, and the bartenders gave one another spankings when it was slow. Free wireless, right next to my host’s house, and cheap wine!)

A cat sits in the sunshine in the hills of Sarajevo. (Light on tourists, heavy on fascinating history, culture and Turkish influence.)

Make sure everyone knows where you are.

I’m the world’s least organized person ever when I’m home. When I travel, I become a different person entirely. (I actually wear little to no makeup, the same pair of almost-flat shoes, and a different perfume than the one I wear when I’m home, so I most likely look like a different person, too!) Juggling sights and an array of transportation timetables, it becomes necessary to schedule out the days of your trip.

When I left last year, I plotted out my route and my travels over the course of a few weeks, taking all timetables, schedules, and costs into account. Then, I worked the times and dates into a calendar, which I eventually finalized and put online using Google Maps. I was then able to share my schedule as required, which was great–it meant that my clients would know where I was at any given time. (Oh! She’s on a bus in Hungary. Alright then.)

However, I wasn’t as good as I should have been at sending this out to all of my clients, and in fact, most of them weren’t aware that I was traveling. This year, I’m sending my schedule, along with an explanation of how frequently I’ll be checking in, and how their problems will still be dealt with expediently, to all of my clients–regardless of whether or not they’ll notice I’m gone.

Enjoy yourself!

It can be easy to let the stress of work get to you when all your belongings are strapped to your back and everything is in flux around you, but if you aren’t having fun, you aren’t doing it right. Remember to breathe, look around you, and get excited about all the new things around you!

One of the loveliest, and most serene, places on earth. The water is bright blue and the perfect temperature, and the only sign of human life for ages is a tiny fishing boat moored a little further out to sea. In order to get here, you need to hike down the crumbling cliffs. After three weeks of nonstop, whirlwind travel, this is the first place I finally learned to stop, relax, and enjoy myself.

This is me--or was me, originally--done by the fantastic Sally Warren. I was hanging in a gallery (and may well still be)!

No, you (probably) won’t be seeing me in pasties anytime soon—I’m a live model. This means that I take off all my clothes in front of a bunch of strangers and stand (or sit, and lie) around while a circle of artists draws me.

Just to clarify a few things: I model for professional artists and students, not for some random dude with a pack of crayons and black satin sheets. Poses aren’t typically very “sexy”, and if they’re explicit, that’s only incidental. The entire process of modeling, in fact, isn’t nearly as sexy as most people think it is—the most comfortable and natural-looking positions are often those that put the most intense strain on your body, it’s often too cold (or too hot) in the room, various appendages will fall asleep left right and centre, and you need to be constantly thinking of what your next pose will be. There aren’t drop-dead-gorgeous “models” wandering around in the buff all the time; figure drawing is less concerned with physical beauty than it is with the line and shape of the body (and all its varied imperfections). Often the most interesting models are overweight, wrinkly, extremely athletic, or strangely shaped, and models wear robes during breaks. It doesn’t pay particularly well, and it’s definitely not glamorous.

Why do I do it, then? Initially, I tried it because it was something I’d never tried before, and something that scared me, which I count as a decent rationale for doing almost anything. I so wholeheartedly believe that you’ll only grow and become a better person if you’re constantly finding your boundaries and pushing them. I’ve never been terribly self-conscious, but the first time I dropped trou in front of a silent-as-a-tomb room, full of strangers, I was petrified. Not only did I have to get naked, but I also had to come up with a variety of poses, hold my body completely still, and make sure not to giggle, fall over, or fall asleep. (Later, of course, I’ve done all of these things.)

Once the initial terror wore off, though (and it never totally wears off—I’m still shy the first instant I take off my robe in front of a new group of people), I came to love modelling. As a creative person, it allowed me to simultaneously act as muse and as collaborator: I create poses with my body, and the artists turn me into art. It gave me a better sense of myself and my body: what it looks like, what it feels like, how it moves, how flexible it is, and how to stand in the exact same position for an hour without falling over. (The trick is tiny, tiny, imperceptible shifts in your weight, by the by.) I learned not to care as much what other people thought, or saw; there was one man who consistently drew me about thirty pounds heavier than I actually was, and I learned not to take it personally. I became more comfortable in my own skin, and more sure of myself. Modelling made me feel strong, sexy, and self-assured.

People often ask me if there isn’t a power imbalance that happens—don’t I feel degraded somehow, when a whole roomful of (clothed, mostly silent) strangers is sitting around staring at me, naked and posing for them? And actually, I’ve found it’s rather the reverse—typically, the power in the room is all mine. I have an entire room following my lead: they flip pages when I change positions, they talk to me if I’m feeling chatty (usually I’m not), and they draw what I make for them to draw.

I was once modeling for a group in Mahone Bay, and, during a break, one of the artists mentioned that he recognized my logo, tattooed to my shoulder blade—he’d emailed me just the day prior asking about having a website built. We later met up to discuss the project, and I was a touch concerned there might be an odd sort of power imbalance (very few of my clients have seen me naked). As it turned out, I was completely comfortable with the meeting, and there was no perceptible tension whatsoever. Quite often, boys have been hesitant to talk to me or even make eye contact, but I’ve never had anyone treat me with anything less than the utmost respect.

Done by a student at the animation school in Truro--their work is far more gesture-based and often times less "artistic". (I'm not sure who drew this, as a friend found it in their exhibition and took a photo for me. There are probably images of me all over the province at this point.)

Since I sold my car, I haven’t had much opportunity to do any modelling, as I typically did it in Mahone Bay and Truro, and I’ve come to realize how much I miss it—both for how it made me feel about myself, and for the way it allowed me time out to think about my work. It was a sort of brutal form of meditation, especially the longer poses, and it helped to focus on something other than the searing pain in my third vertebrae from the twist in my back, or the way my leg was spontaneously shaking from the stress. I’d work through design problems in my head as I was holding positions, then scribble sketches on scrap bits of paper whenever I had a break. I can’t tell you the number of designs that rooted from this process.

Sometimes, it really helps to get out of your comfort zone, and your usual workspace (both physically and mentally), in order to generate a solution.

So, if you’re a random dude with a box of crayons and black satin sheets, drop me an email! I need to get naked to jump-start the creative process.

In theory, this focus on time should engender the ability to delegate. If it takes you two hours to do something that you could bill, say, $120 for, but you can pay someone $60 instead to do (regardless of how long it may take them, and assuming that they’ll do it just as well, if you happen to be a control freak like I am), it should make sense to start passing off tasks.

The problem is, when you have a precise idea of how much that extra hour you spent sleeping cost you, you suddenly start to believe that sleep is anthema to your business and well-being. Three years of running a business full time have taught me, finally, that this is just a blatant lie.

Whenever I’m working, my computer is running a little timer at the top of my screen. Basically, every work-related task I perform is recorded and tracked. This is great, of course, and absolutely necessary for this sort of work, whether you’re billing a flat rate or by the hour. (And losing these records is horrible! Just horrible. Note to self: do a back-up right now.)

The program I use (Billings) has a little Dashboard widget (Workload) that displays how many hours I’ve worked in a day.

My Dashboard widget. The filled-up red bars represent hours worked; a full bar means I've put in over ten hours. (I have a lot of days that go "off the chart".)

Super-handy, no? It really is! It’s a great tool to keep me on track, and to quickly (and visually) check to make sure that I’ve put in enough hours to count as a full workday. The problem, of course, is that I’m sort of a workaholic. There have been weeks where the chart has been entirely red. There have been weeks where that has been my goal, which I think may be even worse. (I often wish the bars would go up to 16 hours, but then I’d end up aiming to fill all those up, and I’d never get any sleep at all!)

So, how to fix the fixation with tracking every hour?

1. Take days off.

See how there’s a big old empty space in my week? That was an actual weekend, which I usually don’t take (and will invariably not be happening this weekend—but hey, it was nice while it lasted, right?)

If off-time feels like idle time, it may help to learn new skills while you’re not working. My weekend off, for example, was spent learning bookbinding, which I’m now madly in love with. (A friend pointed out to me that some lovely texts are freely available on Project Gutenburg and that I can simply pop over and download them. So now I’m planning to design, print, and produce my own hand-made copies of books I adore, like Candide and The Metamorphosis and The Picture of Dorian Gray—but that’s another topic entirely.)

Many companies now are actually allowing their employees to “daylight“, eschewing the traditional model of corporate productivity in favour of one that is flexible enough to allow for creative endeavours that aren’t strictly related to the work at hand. Freelancers and business owners are often more strictly goal-oriented, but it’s highly likely that your work will improve in the long run if you’re exposed to a wider range of ideas and processes, even if only due to random stimulation.

I also find working on my own side projects (for fun and minimal profit!) is bar none the most effective way to avoid creative burnout and the inevitable breakdown of productivity, passion, and personality that ensues.

2. Track hours for essential tasks.

If you’re obsessed with hitting that “productivity mark” to the point at which other, life-sustaining type tasks are dismissed, it may help to count them as work-time. Showering, eating something that isn’t fast food, and doing yoga all count. (I keep meaning to start tracking these things—they may not be Billable Hours, but they’re necessary to the long-term functioning of my business.)

Things that keep you healthy and sane will, in the long-term, help with your productivity. That makes them productive hours, and if you can start viewing them as such, you’ll stop seeing them as time wasted.

3. Switch to a flat rate

The argument for, and against, a flat rate has been made many times, so I won’t attempt to get into it, but I would say that it’s certainly worth taking into consideration, and that whether or not it works for you will depend on your personal style of work and billing. Personally, I always swore I’d never do a flat rate (again), but I’ve recently switched over and have found it’s made a world of difference. (I also once swore I’d never start my own business, so, there you are). Switching to a flat rate allows you to focus more on getting tasks done in an efficient manner, rather than counting every minute, and it means you’re rewarded for using your time well.

I also end up making more money this way(!), which is always an added bonus, though not necessarily a primary motivator. My clients are happier, as the estimates seem more firm this way (although in actuality they’re as flexible as they were when I was using an hourly rate). If I forget my laptop on the bus and lose all my tracked hours, the whole world doesn’t fall apart (quite so much, at least).

But most notably, my obsession with “this hour spent taking a nice walk in the sunshine cost me how much?” is receding, and, unlike in hairlines, that’s a lovely thing.

The time-crunch, however, meant that I needed to accept imperfections. Now, anyone who knows me knows well that I’m a tiny bit persnickety: I’ll spend half an hour adjusting the kerning of a font until it feels just right, I’ll go back over a design that’s already been client-approved in order to “finesse” the whole thing, and I typically complain that Photoshop won’t zoom to a level any higher than 1600%.  While I really do believe that this is a valuable tendency in a designer (and, in fact, I suspect that most graphic designers are by nature a touch anal-retentive), it’s also a major hindrance in an industry that is so intensely deadline-driven.

Finished thank you cards, each one screenprinted by hand! I'm not happy with the heart design at all--the lines are simultaneously too thick AND too thin. I think I might prefer this redesigned with more of a skull/vine design in the bottom-right corner.

This is why often my self-driven projects are finished late: while client projects are often do-or-die, if the client is myself, I’m often content to let my expected deadline pass me by in favour of producing work that’s closer to “perfect” (it’s never actually perfect, of course.) This is why it took me three months longer than expected to launch my new website, and why my Valentines were barely even printed and ready to go by the fourteenth. Given that it’s easy to sour on your own work after obsessing over it too long, this delay is a dangerous thing. Wait too long, and the whole thing ends up needing to be scrapped and started all over again!

But with the screenprinting class, I had no option (other than flakiness, which I’m giving up as a lifestyle choice as much as possible). So I showed up for my second class with a design that wasn’t perfect, telling myself that it was just a learning project, and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t right. I’m just learning! It’s okay to screw up!

The thing I started to realize as I got into the printing process is this: everything that looks like a fatal error to me is basically invisible to everyone else.  (Not a major revelation, but something I ought to constantly keep in mind, because I never seem to remember it.) The fundamental flaws in the initial design weren’t nearly as glaring or as apparent to others as they were to me.

Then, as I proceeded with the printing process, I realized that I hadn’t been as precise with the first colour “plate” (the red accents) as I would have liked. (In screenprinting, each colour is printed independently of the others, much like a traditional CMYK plate-printing process that I learned about in school, but never actually had a chance to witness.) Accordingly, when I printed the black “plate” on top of the red, the registration often didn’t line up perfectly, and there was an overlap.

Then something funny happened. I could, in theory, have used an acetate sheet to register and measure the placement of every single print to ensure a perfect output on every single print. I thought about it, briefly, and then threw caution utterly to the wind, and just started printing willy-nilly. Prints came out with white where red should be, and red where white should be, and instead of breaking down into tears or tantrums, I carefully put them on the drying rack with the others. Not only was I not upset, but I actually discovered that I rather liked these mis-fit mis-prints! Whoever knew?

And really, where I’m so gung-ho on the handmade process anyway, it’s about time I learned not only to accept, but to embrace my mistakes. (Are you listening, brain? I’m talking to you.) Mistakes are often the most interesting part of a piece of work, and they so often generate new ideas and concepts that might otherwise forever remain undiscovered (gravity, nylon, penicillin, chocolate-covered bacon). And especially when something is handmade, part of its appeal lies in its imperfections: signs of the inherently flawed human touch. So often the aesthetics of error (cracks in pavement, burned-out buildings, rips in a sheet of paper) are more interesting, alive, and vibrant than the sterility of pixel-perfection.

Can you spot the errors? I bet I can find more than you can!

Now, if only I can apply that sort of thinking to everything else I do, I might finally be able get some sleep!

First lesson learned: just because you make something that people like, doesn’t mean that people will actually buy it.

This weekend, at a friend’s suggestion, I booked a booth at a local farmer’s market. For only $60, it seemed like a wildly clever business idea. How could I possibly NOT make a fortune?

Well, not only did I not make a fortune, but I actually didn’t sell a single card, unless you count the one that I traded a bookseller for a tattered copy of The Slang of Sin. There were quite a few people who came by and told me how much they liked them, and one person even asked how much they cost (they were next to a sign that listed prices, but that seems irrelevant).

"I just don't get it! Are my cards not pretty enough? Why does nobody love me?"

Midway through day two of sitting behind a booth, bored to tears and trying desperately not to leap on everyone who walked past, I realized that nobody would ever buy one. What was I doing wrong?

Second lesson learned: research your market.

Of course, I didn’t think to look around me, but once I did, I realized what I had done wrong–I’d come to the wrong place entirely. It wasn’t even so much that people weren’t buying from me, as it was that they weren’t buying from anyone. I’m still not quite sure how anyone at that market sells enough to make a profit, but perhaps they did better in other parts. The busy bits seemed to be the “food court” and the flea market tables.

Had I done my research and actually visited this market prior to committing an entire weekend to it, I may have had a little more luck with it.

The charming Miss Laverdure kept me company, and helped fill my table, on the first day. I doubt I would have survived the weekend otherwise. (She's also an excellent negotiator, whereas I just giggle and act like a moron.)

Third lesson learned: bring a book.

I forgot how boring it can be sitting around waiting for customers that never appear.

Fourth lesson learned: Don’t take it personally.

It was midway through that second day that I started really doubting myself. Four hours seemed like forever away, and, while I knew that I wouldn’t be selling anything that day, I was determined to stick it out ’til the better end. Prior to that point, my abysmal failure hadn’t gotten me down. I kept having to remind myself that the whole affair was an experiment, and that it’s okay to fail. (Not that I plan on making a habit of it.)

Apparently showing a little cleavage doesn't even help matters.

Fifth lesson learned: stores will sell your things FOR you if you just ask nicely.

Thanks, Duly Noted and Love, Me! Not only is it totally exciting to think that things I made are in a real-live shop, now I get to stay home and make more!

My Valentine cards took more time to produce & prepare than I’d expected, although I’ve heard so much very encouraging feedback that’s it’s been quite delightful, especially as it’s my first-ever foray into making & selling my own work. (If you’re interested in a card, they’re available on Etsy, or in Halifax at Duly Noted Stationary on Quinpool and Love, Me Boutique on Birmingham. I’ll also be selling them in person this weekend at the Harbourside Market in Dartmouth.)

I’ve been also working on a whole boatload of projects, in between all the inking and painting and panicking. I’ve got a few websites in the works, a logo, and a printed booklet with a short turnaround time, along with all the usual Wicker Emporium work. I’ve been meeting with all sorts of people to discuss new projects, and am working on finishing up some projects that have been dragging their heels for too long.

Outside of that, I just took my first screen printing class last night, and it was rather delightful. Given that my print work is all digital offset printing, I’ve never had an opportunity to apply any of delightful things I learned in school, like trapping and registration and colour plates, all of which now I have a practical use for. I’m getting more and more excited about doing more work by hand, and am hoping the print process will lead to all sorts of exciting new developments and discoveries.

In short, while sleep would be nice, I’m happy to be mad-busy and thrilled about my work again.

Thumbnail sketches. This is how things started. I hate showing people my sketchbook because things invariably look like they were drawn by a blind five-year-old. Basically, I'm just trying to get the composition right.

Of course, I forgot to factor in the fact that I’m a crazy workaholic perfectionist with an insomniac streak a mile wide whenever I get really passionate about a project. My little lark of a project kept me up late, made an utter warzone of my apartment, and still took far longer than I’d anticipated.

I made this card last year and still had the sketch in my book. I think that was done in pigment liner and watercolour, and was severely lacking in calligraphy and mass-production capabilities.

However, it did succeed in teaching me to use my digital camera more effectively, so I’m grateful for that. I took a lot of photos along the way, mostly because I became highly paranoid about committing to ink and mucking things up, and I thought it’d be interesting to share a bit of the process that’s involved.

Initial line drawings. I marked off an active "image area" space using my health card as a ruler so as to keep the illustrations roughly the same size.

I started by drawing “proper” versions of each illustration on this lovely smooth square bristol board. I’m anal-retentive, so I tend to prefer mechanical pencils (they’re also easier to find at the grocery store when you run out, although they typically stock a .7 lead and I like a .5 better).

Here's my roommate modeling her best "hungry arms" for me. I had her do a few different positions. You can tell how impressed she is about it.

I’m always surprised when drawing things by what I don’t know. Like “what an astronaut breathes from”, for example. Or how long the optic nerve is. This was an awesome lesson in anatomy, although I’m still not quite sure I got everything right.

My calligraphy tests for the captions. I can't do calligraphy without graph paper, so I ended up developing a style of lettering for each phrase, then re-inking it a few times on a clean sheet, scanning the sheet, and selecting the best one.

After developing line drawings I was quite happy with, I became paralyzed with fear that I’d screw them up in the inking process and would need to start all over again. I realized this was insane, but appeased myself temporarily by working on the calligraphy designs instead. My calligraphy’s still a little questionable, but I’m starting to get the hang of it, and it’s more interesting than my (slightly bizarre) handwriting.

No turning back now! Line drawings, all done in ink. I refused to use a ruler and was quite tired, so you can see where I screwed up, especially with the lines of the cage.

That dealt with, it was time to commit to the drawings, and start inking! I like using a proper dip pen, but that’d be too messy, so I used a 0.1 pigment liner instead. These are lovely creatures and I absolutely adore them–it took me a little time to find a good pen that wouldn’t smudge when erasing or inking over top. The inking process took FOREVER and gave me insane hand cramps.

Yep, I'm anal retentive enough to shade first in pencil. I might actually like them best at this stage.

Since I still was suffering a fear of commitment, I sketched out all the shading in pencil prior to inking the lines again. In some cases (the ball-shapes in particular) this actually helped quite a good deal, as cross-hatching in ink isn’t exactly the most forgiving method of shading.

More arduous work that took forever and nearly made me blind. I have strange depth perception issues anyway, so I typically work with my face about two inches from whatever I'm doing.

After that, I inked the lines with a pigment liner slightly smaller than the outline liner. I really wish I could find a liner smaller than .05, although I suspect that they don’t make one, and I should have just made these illustrations larger, then scaled down from a thicker primary pen.

Adding the red accents. I used pure red ink and it gave a lovely hue, especially when laid over the shaded lines. I'd originally planned to use a much lighter wash, and possibly use some other colours, but then I liked the red so much (surprise!) that I decided to keep it.

I think it was at about this point that I started saying “I’m nearly done!”, which probably went on for another two days until I actually WAS done. Even painting in the red was an arduous process, and I tried really hard to ensure that there was a good balance of colour in each. (This is why the little cannibal girl is a redhead, and not because I’m a raging narcissist.)

At this point, I thought I was done. Wrong.

Next, I scanned all the final illustrations and calligraphed captions into Photoshop at gigantic resolutions, in case I ever need to make a gorey billboard, I guess. I cleaned up major messes only, since I had doing tedious Photoshop masking work, pieced everything together, and printed it out. I also made a design for the back of the card involving a little calligraphy and a little handwriting.

Mistakes often create really lovely things, unexpected and impossible to reproduce.

My last step was to create a full set of cards, properly printed on my cardstock. This was, by far, the most arduous and painful task of the entire operation. (My laser printer is a beast. It weighs about as much as I do; people think it’s a high-tech humidifier, and it sounds like a jet plane taking off.) I ended up crying and yelling at my printer for about three hours, surrounded by an utter MESS of half-printed papers and falling-over cards. It wasn’t pretty, but I eventually (sort of) figured it out.

I’m excited to learn to screenprint instead of wrangling with this beast, but my workshop isn’t ’til early February, so the timing wasn’t quite right.

Finally! Finals.

And in the end–was all the effort worth it?

Of course it was! I ended up learning SO much, and, while I genuinely doubt I’ll make ANY money whatsoever selling them (the profit margins seem pretty low) the experience of selling them will give me an opportunity to learn a little about retail business, which I haven’t dealt much with since becoming a designer.

And now I can send out delightful cards to all my friends and enemies!

They come on white or ecru stock, with a blood-red envelope and a hand-painted heart sticker to close the whole she-bang. I am a sucker for pretty packaging.

(PS, if you like them, you can see more on my website here, or purchase them at my new Etsy store. I’ll also be selling them at the Harbourside Market in Dartmouth February 6th and 7th.)

In this charming economic climate, if you’re looking for a new job, it may be time to take a good hard look at your own resume, and ensure that you’re not committing any of these cardinal sins.

1. It isn’t proofread.

A resume that’s full of grammatical and spelling errors just screams “Hi! I’m undereducated and unprofessional, and you’d be embarrassed to have me representing your company!” Learn how to use apostrophes correctly, run your text through a spellcheck, and have a friend look over your resume before sending it out. Better yet, have as many friends as you can possibly charm, bribe, or blackmail to have a look at it—or have a professional write it for you.

2. It’s hard to read.

Most people won’t be reading your resume, they’ll be skimming it. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to absorb the information. Just say no to long blocks of text, and make use of section headers and consistent type styles for different pieces of information (job titles, company names, and dates should all have different type styles) to create a hierarchy of information that’s easy to read. Use a font size that’s large enough to be readable, and make sure lines of text aren’t spanning the entire page (for optimum legibility, lines of type should be between 50 and 70 characters.)

3. You’re using a generic Word template.

If your resume looks the same as twenty other resumes in the pile, you’re already at a disadvantage. Everyone judges a book by its cover, and you want to be War & Peace, not a Danielle Steele novel. (That said, you probably want to keep your page count a little less than War & Peace’s. Maybe The Metamorphasis, instead.)

4. You’re sending a .doc file.

Why is it still common to do this? Word files can contain macros, which can give your computer viruses. That’s bad—the last thing you want to do is give the hiring manager at the company of your dreams a virus. Word files also don’t retain their formatting very well—they’ll look different in different versions of Word. When people send me a .doc, I open it with a basic text editor, which destroys pretty much all formatting, but takes a teeny fraction of the time to load on my computer. Use a pdf instead, which will look the same to everyone. (You can export a Word file to pdf easily.)

5. It isn’t relevant

If you worked at McDonald’s six years ago and are now applying for a position at an accounting firm, they’re not going to care about the customer service and french-fry-handling skills you picked up there. It’s also unlikely that they care what you do in your spare time, unless the hiring manager is also a taxidermy enthusiast—but unless you know this in advance, keep the hobbies off the resume. Keep it relevant.

6. Your cover letter shows no effort

Find out who will be reading your resume, and address him by name. We’re all crazy egomaniacs, so we like this. Don’t use “To whom it may concern”, ever. Show that you know something about the company, and that you’re not just firing off a form letter at random. I once received an application from a person who regularly posted his cover letter as a Kijiji ad, and it was a touch insulting. Compare your skills and expertise to those outlined in the job posting and you’ll be essentially telling them exactly what they want, and that you have it.

In short, what you want to do is make sure that your resume is both well-written and well-designed, and that it represents you to the absolute best of its ability. If you’re having trouble doing this yourself, I’ve teamed up with Natalie Joan to offer a special deal: have a resume designed by me, and written by her, and save 10% off both services! For all the details, check it out here.

Good luck with the job hunt!

Of course, after spending forever (I stopped counting somewhere along the line) spent making it work precisely (and pixel-perfectly) to my liking, it’s now broken. Every single image in my portfolio is now displaying with jagged images. Cue panic! It was fine last time I checked! What on earth happened? I still have no idea, and I hate to think how long it may have been broken before I noticed. (Note to self: keep an eye on these things, alright? Sheesh. My contact form plugin had also deactivated itself without my noticing somewhere along the line. Not good.)

So I’m ditching the SimpleViewer. (I am guessing that much of my weekend will be spent tweaking and implementing the change, so things are going to look terrible between now and then.) I found an alternative that I think will be better, and simpler in the long run, although of course it does mean that I need to go through every portfolio post and upload new galleries: Gallifrey, based on Galleriffic. (If you’re nerd-chic and/or British enough, you’ll recognize this as The Doctor’s home planet, which rather delights me as I’ve just started falling in love with all things Tardis-related.) It works with Wordpress’ built-in gallery functions, is super-customizable, and will even finally allow me to implement my triple-bordered image display that I wanted initially for this site. Simpleviewer, you were fantastic, but it’s time for us to part ways.

When I originally designed this gallery display, most people didn't notice the difference between the triple-border here and the single thick border unless I explicitly pointed it out. Turns out I'm a touch anal-retentive.

Can Flash go into the ground already? There was a time when it was useful for websites, but with jQuery and a myriad of other frameworks as well-developed as they are, there really is very little excuse for it anymore. There are all sorts of reasons why Flash is bad: it’s horrible for search engine optimization, it mucks with usability, it’s often slow to load, it refuses to display on an iPhone, and it won’t print or display itself in a feed reader (at least, best I can tell). While the number of websites relying on Flash has decreased dramatically in the past few years, it’s still a little too prevalent. No more Flash, okay? There’s always an alternative.

Sometimes you just need to screw up enough to find it.