Hey there!

& welcome to the first of hopefully many blog posts that I will be sharing on here. I wanted to create a space for myself to share the things I’ve been working on (seriously or otherwise) without any sort of pressure for it to even be seen. Social media has had me in the dumps, and I’ve tried all these ways to limit my use, but I could never fully cut the cord. There’s still a part of me that wants to seem “relevant” and “active” online. But the truth is, I wasn’t using Instagram for those reasons anymore, it turned into a space for me to compare myself to others and ultimately feel worse about myself. I was getting too caught up in the anxiety of ‘what to caption’, ‘when to post’, ‘how to promote’. So I eliminated all of that and as of this month, all my accounts are pretty inactive (I’ll keep them enabled so I can check in when I need to).

So that’s where the blog comes in. Now keep in mind, I’m no writer. I’ll probably be sharing mostly photos of what I'm working on with some little descriptions of my process. It’ll hold me accountable to actually photograph my other projects (which I never do, even though I obviously have the equipment). Plus, I’ll still be keeping a nice little archive of how I spend my time (especially during COVID, when each month feels like a waste and I need a visual reminder of what I’ve done).

June was the first month since quarantine began that I snapped back into a creative space. I spent the first few months thinking things were going to go back to normal and when I realized that wouldn’t be anytime soon, I needed to make it work. So one of my biggest projects was actually setting up my website to make using and viewing this blog even easier! But the whole website needed a fresh look — so I drafted up a new logo that fit how I’m feeling a little better and added some new pages to show my own voice.. The plan is to eventually feature my props and graphic design work on here, but like I mentioned earlier, I’m the WORST at photographing my work. So it’s a process to even gather that portfolio! I had this vision for a very unique concept for a walk-through type website..? I’m not sure exactly how to explain it. But I wanted anyone interested in viewing my work to easily be able to locate what they wanted and see all the information available there. No clicking around or looking for other links. So that’s how I spent most of those days (and there’s actually still more work to do)

But my FAVORITE project I worked on this month were these self-portraits with my boyfriend, Bruno. We’ve been dating for over five years and living together for two, and hardly have any photos together! So I set up a few scenes in our apartment and put my camera on the tripod. I have a remote shutter, which would have been perfect for this, but of course I couldn’t get it to work with my set up. I had to hop up every 10 seconds to press the shutter again! This was really only a problem when we tried to get the cat in some photos. Getting her in position was hard enough, cats do not like to be told what to do! I’m laughing because we literally made her half a turkey sandwich, thinking she’d be so mesmerized by the human food and sit still. Nope. We would finally get her on the couch for a shot and then I’d have to press the shutter button and she jumped up every time! We ended up having to grab her and hold her down for a shot, and if you look at that pic you can tell she just LOVED THAT.

After our mini photoshoot, I was inspired by some minimalist portrait illustrations on Pinterest and made this little graphic on Adobe Illustrator. It’s not perfect (or even finished! Feet?) but I was pretty happy with how effortlessly it came together. I kind of like the whimsy of it. Maybe I’ll try this technique again in the future…

I’ve been teaching myself to knit and crochet, too. I think this started prior to June. But I’ve been working on a few projects that I plan on finishing … eventually.

And my plans for next month… a surprise (for my dad’s 50th birthday!) I’m so excited about this project, I plan on making a whole blog post just about it!

I’m hoping one day I’m so comfortable writing a blog that saying “goodbye” doesn’t seem so strange, but until then …