Change Of Season

The sun is shining through my window, there’s a storm outside and I can see the trees swing from side to side. Still holding on to their already turning leaves, but it won’t last much longer I’m afraid… The day will come where shades of red, yellow and brown will colour the ground. The season is changing, I’m lucky to catch this ray of sunshine on what would usually be a typical English grey day. It’s probably one of the last attempts so I’m a sponge absorbing the nurturing ingredients of sunlight making me dreamy while I prepare myself for a day of creativity.

Yesterday and the day before I decided to stay away from my computer for a while because I felt the urge to be quiet and think. I’m good at reorganising my thoughts while I’m cleaning up at the same time. Throwing out all the things that ‘you think you need‘ gives me the freedom of detaching so I can let go and therefore it creates the much needed space in my head to deal with things that might be bothering me. A declutter session is like spending an hour with a shrink, and after, you feel relieved and determined to deal with what needs to be dealt with.

So because of those sessions, today, I enjoy the sunshine warming up and lighten the now empty corners of my mind while I focus on things that need to be done. Stuff that I might have postponed for another day or worse; try not to deal with them at all. I have a perfectly clean slate, a nice crisp page in my Moleskine sketchbook, a leadholder impatiently waiting to jot down thoughts accompanied by sketches and the in-between-thoughts doodles that will cause laughter days later when I go through my sketchbook in search of another unspoilt page.

I will use the wonderful skills that I was given, the creative knowledge that I’ve studied for and gathered over many years of experience to create business cards for a garden designer and a website for my friend. She is a [wedding] photographer and asked me a few days ago if I was interested in this project. I designed her logo, stationery, business cards and compliment slip using her beautiful pictures. She needs an online portfolio to show her clients, I’ll use the same design as I used for her stationery: stylish, classy and most of all professional looking.

It’s a website that will be so much fun to design, I’ll do this in the ‘quiet moments’ as a treat to myself when I’m allowed a break from the gloves website which is just one of those things that needs to be done… Getting paid for sitting in the sun and being creative… ain’t it fun? *kidding*

[Note: an hour later it pisses down with rain *LOL* but I’m happy I could enjoy enough sunshine to brighten my morning. And two hours later the sun is there again smiling at me for the rest of the day!]

My notes, thoughts, doodles and/or sketches…

My notes, thoughts, doodles and/or sketches…

My notes, thoughts, doodles and/or sketches…

Mental Detour

The weather has been pants for a few days now: I’ve had thunderstorms and vertical rain. I don’t really mind because I don’t have to go anywhere and have been extremely busy sorting out chores that have been on the to-do-list for ages already. I finally started to mend some dresses and skirts and I finally finished my chocolate satin dress. I don’t know what happened but last week one thing led to another and all of a sudden I was sick and tired of the mess that has been lying around for some time now waiting for me to fix it or finish it. Oh… I remember what caused it: be prepared to dive into my warped mind…

Last Friday I received a wonderful surprise in the post all the way from New York, the package from Ismoyo that I’d won a while ago. Thank you, it’s totally sweet! So I wanted to take some pictures, I always take pictures of everything and that’s what it all started: me wanting to take pictures. I have a small desk near the window where my sewing machine sits and it’s the best spot to take pictures since the light conditions are always perfect. But the desk was piled up with dresses that needed fixing. So basically I ended up cleaning up the mess. Halfway I decided to sort out my CD collection too, all the archive CDs that is.

And before I knew it I was throwing out stacks of old CDs that my Mac refused to read and burning Gigs to DVD, reorganising years of archiving. Then I got all hyper and realised that I only have two LaCie Porsches that I really needed to sort out because I don’t have the extra backup space anymore. Well I do basically but it needs a lot of reorganising. So while working on websites for clients I suddenly realised that if one of those Porsches would crash I would have a serious problem: I don’t have the extra backup available, the second Porsche became home to my music collection instead.

What happened next is that I started my online research for internal and external HDs to see if I could afford one. I asked Christiaan for advice since I had a slight idea what I wanted but wasn’t sure if that was the best option but he confirmed my feeling *thank you!*. So I decided to buy an extra 500Gig internal HD since that is the cheapest way for now and I do need to invest in this if I don’t want to get myself into trouble. Over the weekend I ended up wasting time waiting for others to help me so I lost a few hours there but have been catching up these last few days.

Why the detour you wonder? Because I need to get rid of clutter: all the clutter around me on desks, the clutter on my Mac which used to be organised but most of all the clutter in my head. I’m probably over-criticising myself again because some from the past told me I was the most organised person they’d ever met and I guess I can see why. But you see, I can’t design new projects if I don’t have a neat place to work: neat place clean of clutter means no clutter but room in my head… So I decided to throw out and declutter starting with the pile of clothes waiting to be mended.

And since I finally have a clean window desk I finally took some pictures. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get back to decluttering so I can start some web design soon!

I’ve finished my chocolate satin dress, more mending to be done…

Lovely surprise in the post all the way from NY

Cute Japanese generosity I received from Ismoyo, thank you so much! :)