It's not often!

Hello, hello, hello. How long has it been? - like ages and ages right? - Of course, I want to say that i've been on a gigantic adventure, been to the moon, raised ten thousand for charity... but alas no I haven't. I have however been reading a bit. Since the ending of my lovely e-course Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design.. I'm flummexed. Departed from sane thinking, what am I doing, well, I tell you. I've been finding it really difficult to get going. 

The e-course was just so fab, but there was a plethora of information, just too much to take in in one sitting, let alone the 5 months or so I was taking part. I'm actually still digesting most of it.

At the beginning I did think, ha ha, this is going to be just perfect. Once I've finished the course I will have a boat load of fantastic things to sell to you all. I'd have a mountain of patterns, and loads of exciting people breaking down my door to buy them. But No. It is not yet to be. 

I have't given up hope yet. But life has sort of got in the way. Why?
Well simply because what we think will happen never does. What we assume is the next step, can never be. It's not quite so easy to be creative with a 2 year old at your feet. (and two more at school) So here I am flummoxed..

Of course I've been making the odd pattern. Some of which have received supper feedback from my co- patterners.. and thats fantastic, we all need it. But then I've waisted so much time on things of little creative calorific value and I really wish that the Twitterness, and that blasted FB would just switch off sometimes. It does however confirm my belief that even at school I was easily distracted - I'm still the same.

Anyway - going back to my statement above.  I've read my FB, my Twitter, I've read Pillars of the Earth, The Help, (supper fantastically bloody amazing by the way), and I've read a pattern, making book thing. I took the option like many of my fellow patterners to purchase the new book from Lilla Rogers. I Just like to Make things



Here is my review:

Beautifully bound, lovely illustrations, great photos and lots of inspiration. It goes along the lines of 'well after you've made all these lovely things, what are you going to do with them?' 



There are some sub heads - Getting into the process of being creative, being good and how to be great at what you do. Then it moves onto some nice interviews from successful individuals, how they got there, what they do etc etc... after that there is quite a large section on different areas to get your work into. Such as Picture book, home decor, fabric and such. Whilst it may seem easy to make patterns, design stuff, Illustrate happy thoughts, what are you going to do with them afterwards? - There are some exercises to complete to get you moving along and helpful tips on getting your plans written for goals and such. 
So if your just starting out - and want to know more, get yourself a bit of direction and see whats out there, this is for you. 



Downsides, there actually is not a huge amount of information that you might not already know, or can seek out easily on the web. It's not a 'grand plan' more of a 'dip ya toes' if you are just starting out and it looks lovely and happy and the interviews do have depth. The book is sort of fatter than the information, as it's all quite well spread out and loads of blank spaces.. (not entirely sure if you're supposed to be scribbling your new ideas in the margin, or dictating your grand plan to take over the world with your new home made dolls, none, of which you've actually made yet) - but I think if you follow it - do what it says to do, then it could be beneficial.



All in all, a nice read, interesting and colourful. Brilliant if your determined to make money from the market but not quite sure whats next, or how to go about it.

Coffe table envy - 4/5
Value for money - 3/5 (amazon did it for £10 at one point)
Information overload - 3/5
Keep forever to refer to again - 5/5

So that's it - hope it's given you a bit to think about.

See you soon
In the mean time - stay well, eat loads of scrummy food, (actually don't do that save it for Easter) -  be nice and make lovely things. 
And of course if anyone has any bright ideas as to  a)how I'm going to make money from my patterns - because despite reading the book above, I'm just on a merry go round.. my fault..or b) what I should be doing next - or c) what to become my mentor for a year and tell me what to do a bit then let me know.


Trina 
x

8 comments:

  1. too right - I spent an entire morning when i could of been designing arsing about on FB last week ;) still nice to see you blogging I cant even get the enthusiasm for that lol

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    1. Thanks Jess, I must say I'm finding it hard too. I think I need to go back to 'lists' to try and organise myself a bit more.

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  2. Thanks for the info on this book, was wondering about it, Bren X

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    1. Thanks for reading Brenda - hope it's given you something to go on, take care. xx

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  3. Nice blog post! What you said about FB and Twitter is so true....but you need it when working from home - trouble is it's like a diet and I say 'oh well, just a few tiny minutes connecting with friends' but it always turns into a lot longer! Jannie x

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    1. Hi Jan, yes, my problem is I seem to want to go into the kitchen ALOT - eating is very distracting too.

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  4. Hi Trina - just realised I haven't got the 'feed' from your blog in my side-bar - how did I miss it! - but I've put it right now.

    Enjoyed your post - really useful to have some idea what's in that book :)

    And you're not the only one easily distracted! I have to go to my pc and not turn on facebook in the afternoons to get some work done! But, as Jannie says, it's nice when you're working from home, to feel there's company out there if you want it :) I imagine it must be a bit like working in an open plan office - not that I ever have.

    I'm sure you'll gradually narrow down where you want to head and what you need to be working on to get you there, probably largely through conversations with the rest of us maybe? I've done it by deciding where I DON'T want to go!

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