Thursday, June 9, 2011

New Direction?!?

*WARNING: a really long post with my thoughts, and babbling...

For the last 4+ years I have been wanting to illustrate children's books and young adult books. In college I studied illustration and loved almost every moment of it, I would be lying if I said I loved every second, because there were days I honestly was wondering why I was going into art, but it was totally worth it, I learned many skills that have and can help me in everyday life.
Also those 4 years I learned other skills through work and just experimenting with skills I learned in my art classes, such as design, color, and composition.  That I have discovered other professionals that I would also love to do. I have come to love photography, I wanted to take classes but with my busy class schedule and being pregnant my last year it didn't happen, so I'm trying to teach myself at the moment. Because of working in the floral department at Porters for many, many, many years I developed the skill of floral arranging, again I'm not the best, but I have done a few wedding bouquets in the passed. And also because of good old Porters I have come to love decorating. Than last summer, I spend a week at my sister-in-laws to learn how to create digital scrapbook patterned paper, stickers, kits, baby announcements, and wedding announcements, and I had a blast doing that. 
So learning all these skills, I tend to want to do everything. Moving to a new apartment, I want to make floral arrangements for it, I want to take some cool pictures than frame them on the wall, I want to do all the art that goes up, I want to create my own patterns for fabric, I want to pick out the color scheme and hunt down the furniture for it and make the apartment super cute. 
But to do all of that I need time, and money, which I don't have any of those...
So here's what I have been thinking lately... and sorry if this whole post doesn't make sense and you don't know where I'm going with it  {because I'm not sure where I'm going with it either I'm more just babbling} so I have been thinking: Ok, I want to do all of these things, but I can't do everything because I don't have the money, so how can I make money while doing something I love? The Illustration world is good money but it takes a while to get into the market {which I'm working on, but sometimes it takes years} so what can I do now? something that I love to do, but can make some money right away?
So I have been praying, hoping for some inspiration to where I should put my talents to, not only to help me but maybe to help for my family and provide some extra money. 
Well a month ago my mother-in-law gave me an illustration job, and I did a illustration that turned out well, I didn't think anything of it, than last week my sister-in-law, I mention before, emailed me and said she loved my illustration and asked if I wanted to start doing some illustrations for scrapbooking kits with her because I would do really well and she just started her own company and she's doing really well and I can start getting my name known, I can't help but be excited because I can make money by doing something I love. I not only want to do scrapbooking paper and kits, but I want to do children's wall art with the scrapbook-like style. 
So here is the illustration I did for my mother-in-law, and some things I have just played with, I'm still working on the art work I'm doing for Thomas' room but when I have it figured out I will post them.
I did the illustration on the poster
This one is for a boy room,  I'm going to make it a series. 


I made this one for a girl in my ward, she is expecting a little girl in July. 
  Well if you made it through this post and followed my thoughts, congrats!

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