Andorinha

Self employment FTW!

2007-04-14T01:10:28+01:00

I'm still ridiculously busy, which, again, it's fantastic. To be honest, I don't think I've been this happy in quite a long time! The Almanac Project has fallen by the wayside, unfortunately. I just really don't have the head space right now, which is a shame really.

Spring seems to have finally hit Manchester, and today I went out without a coat on. I know, right? It's one of the greatest feelings in the world! Just nice, lovely sunlight, flowers everywhere, and *gasp* daylight until 7 p.m! It makes me so happy.

In the past few days I've shipped out two wholesale orders, one for Japan, and one for Surrey, which meant a whole lot of work, but a very satisfying feeling as well. Now I only have to finish up all the necklaces for consignment, some retail ones, and I can go and get married with an unworried mind.

I love this thrill - you never know how much you're going to sell that day, and you're not quite sure how much money you'll have to pay rent at the end of the month, and damn, do I work long hours now. Much longer hours that would work in a normal, office job. But I'm now making my living through my design, and art, and when e-mails come in from shops, or galleries (!) saying they would love to stock my things, it's a feeling like nothing else in the world. I'm loving it.

Case in point: I ran out of plastic yesterday, and the new shipping will only come in tomorrow morning. So, day off, right? Well, no. I got up early after going to bed at 7 a.m. to fulfil a wholesale order to go to the Post Office to send it, went to the city centre for some drinks and food with a friend, but then, of course, I also went around shops asking for the contact of their buyer! Got two good possibilities as well. I'll let you know how that went. (thank you to Adam for taking me around said shops! You rock.).

I really need to get registered as self-employed for tax purposes ASAP. I'll probably have to pay a fine because it's been a little more than three months since I actually started doing this properly, but, well, better late than never.

This time next month, I'll be in Japan! Also, I'll be married! How cool is that?

Oh dear!

2007-04-01T15:51:46+01:00

Shame, shame! Almost a month without posting! I'm still alive, if a tad exhausted, but in a happy kind of way.

Spring seems to have finally arrived (I hope so, I so hope so!), and the sun is shining and my windows are open, and it's the best feeling in the world. My arms ache from playing Wii, I'm back on my diet after the obligatory consuming of junk food during the travel day and the first day back (ugh, pimples), and my hands are a little bit worse for wear after cutting necklaces all day yesterday.

Which is excellent, actually! I have necklaces to send to the US, Japan, London and Portugal, to several shops, and it's such a fantastic feeling! I also had a big boom in my sales for a couple of days, after being featured at The Bag Lady, and Bits and Bobbins - thank you lovely ladies!

We've also been to Portugal, to sort out pretty much everything - we tasted and chose the food, bought our outfits, set the legalities in motion, ordered the favours and wedding rings, went back to the palace and figured out where everything is going to happen, and met with the photographer! Now we only have to figure out the flowers and the seating arrangements, and music in general. It was fun, if a bit tiring. I slept for about 12 hours when I got home on Thursday, I think.

There will be new necklaces in the Paraphernalia shop later this week, as soon as I get all the wholesale and consignment orders out. I'm also going to start working with silver, which is beyond exciting. I feel I'm ready to move up to more noble materials, we'll see how that works out!

Have a happy Sunday, I'll be back soon!

Allright!

2007-03-08T23:39:22+00:00

I've been busy, busy, busy, lately, promoting Paraphernalia and building my new portfolio, but, of course, the best publicity is the one you can't buy! I've been featured on the front page of Etsy not once, but twice this week! Huzzah! It was really quite fantastic.

After a couple of hiccups with my suppliers, all the orders should be done and ready to go tomorrow to their respective new owners, and it's always a big thrill to send my little old necklaces to the four corners of the globe.

The first time I was featured also gave me the much needed boost of finally putting up the new collection up in the shop, and it's also been selling well! It's called Fauna, and there should be some cute mammals up by the end of the week. I was also contacted to sell wholesale, and am investigating some consignment options, which I'm very excited about!

I got a whole bunch of prints in the mail yesterday, and I think it's time to open the Andorinha shop. Soon, very soon! Wedding invitations (in the form of postcards) have also been ordered, dress and favour buying scheduled in Portugal for the last week of March, and everything seems to be going swimmingly.

I'm tired, but elated. It's a fantastic feeling when things seem to really start going your way and you actually make money out of doing something you love.

I'll update more as soon as I open the print shop!

Aishite iru, Nippon

2007-02-26T23:55:24+00:00

It's official! We've bought our plane tickets today, and we're going to Japan on the 7th of May for our honeymoon!

We decided a couple of months ago that since we're having such a small wedding (which is mostly for our families, to be honest), we should have a fantastic honeymoon (which is all, all for us). So we started looking at the Intrepid catalogues, and fell in love with both the tours of Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam), and, of course, Japan. I know they are excellent tour guides, but after adding everything (they don't include flights in their prices, you just have to make your own way there) it was a whoppingly expensive trip. Mr. Cisco, however, is pretty resourceful, and was soon surfing the Internets to see just how much the trip would cost if we did it by ourselves. We finally reached the conclusion that if we bypassed even websites like Expedia, and booked rooms directly in the hotels' websites, the trip would cost half. Yes, lovelies, half. And we're talking high end hotels here, not traditional inns, which would be lovely, but we like our creature comforts, I'm afraid to say, and the really nice ones are more expensive than hotels. So we're staying in Tokyo, then Hakone (the picture up there), then Kyoto, then Tokyo again for shopping, all in Hyatts, and taking day trips to other lovely places. It's going to be fantastic!

Now, I should probably mention that, of most of our friends (with the exception of just two) we are the least Japanophiles of the lot. Two of them even founded a Youth Organisation dedicated to Japanese culture! And then there's the obsessives of Japanese music, fashion, manga and anime... I mean, all of them. They even speak the language, which we don't. And we get to go first, which is..ironic. I think it shows they are wonderful people that they're excited for us, and happy. We'll bring them back loads of presents!

Japan, of course, means very different things for everyone, us and our friends included. While we like anime, we're certainly not connoisseurs, and while I like jfashion as much as anyone, I don't collect fashion bibles and obsess about certain brands. But we're going for the culture, and the history, and the food, and by the sheer thrill of going somewhere on the other side of the world. We're going because we love the literature, and the cinema, and everything that makes Japan such an enigma. So I guess you can't say fairer than that.

Now we only need to books the rooms, and we're all set! Now to plan the actual wedding..

Avó Julia

2007-02-23T23:15:00+00:00

Today it would be my Grandmother Julia's Birthday. I miss her terribly, and sorely regret not having spent more time with her these last few years, and not having learnt more from her when I had the chance.

As with my other lovely Grandmother, I spent a considerably amount of time with Avó Julia when I was a child. Every weekend my Mother would drop me off at the house of one of my Grandparents, and I would always cry when Sunday afternoon came around and I had to go back home. Not because it was bad there, but because I loved my Grandmothers so much. With Avó Bié I would go to the movies, to the zoo, out to lunch, to see plays, the circus, concerts. With Avó Julia we'd usually stay at home, and she would teach me how to cook, how to crochet, to knit, to embroider, and she would do all these things with a perfection I haven't seen in anyone else in my 26 years of life. She was a beautiful woman, with an extremely sharp mind, a master organiser, incredible at maths and accounting, and she would've been an incredible business woman if she had had the chance. She made money stretch incredibly far, but no one that ever lived in or visited my Grandparents' home ever saw anything but everything of the best quality, the best food always ready to be laid out on the table, with everything, from jam, to chouriços, to olive oil and wine that they made themselves when in their house in the north of Portugal, with grapes, olives and fruit from their lands.

She was a very ill woman, which suffered a lot from asthma attacks and general respiratory problems, and a breast cancer survivor. But she wouldn't let anyone take on any tasks she thought she could perfectly well do herself, and refused to stay still. She was a survivor, a woman that was left alone with two children to raise in a city that was not her own, as my Grandfather travelled the world in his job. They were star-crossed lovers for years, meeting only when she went to get water from the fountain that her father preferred, as she was the daughter of the manager of a big estate, and my grandfather's family was quite poor, having lost his father quite early in life.

She was the most good natured, nicest, kindest woman I've ever met. I wish I had inherited her sense of responsibility, her perfection in everything she did, her incredible inner strength, her beauty and blue eyes. I wish I could call her and tell her that after years of not paying attention, I'm now learning to embroider, and sew, and crochet, which would make her very happy. I also wish she was here to go to my wedding, as I also know this would make her extremely happy, as she loved Francisco, and the fact that he wants to be a lecturer, and that our children would have doctors for Grandparents.

I really miss you, Avó Julia. I love you very much.

Photos, and Necklaces

2007-02-22T23:54:13+00:00

I've been waiting for ages to post any sort of update here, but as the news I wanted to convey are now a little delayed, I'll just do it anyway!

So, what's new? Let's see..

Thanks to Project 365 I fell in love all over again with photography, and also found out that, unlike what happened when I was previously in love with painting with light, I have moved from black and white and into bright, jewel-like colours. I can't seem to get enough of them - brilliant and overexposed, and my favourite colour at the moment is the bright, lush green of grass when it's raining, mid afternoon. There will soon be some prints for sale, I'll keep everyone posted. (I know you come here, but you just don't comment!) The Almanac Project is now only on Livejournal (and Flickr, of course), as I had to make way for this, which I created for one of my best friend's make-up studio, as a present for his birthday.

I've also decided to finally update the Luna Parc store, and dedicate 5% of all its profits to UNICEF. My inspiration for most of the items I create for it come from childhood memories and fascinations, so it seems fair, I think, and it's a cause close to my heart. I also created a Fauna collection to add to Paraphernalia, which just needs to be photographed and put up on the shop. I also had the fantastic surprise of a lovely girl wanting to purchase the entire Anatomica collection, which is a great feeling!

So I've been busy, as you can see! Tomorrow is a special (if very sad) day for me, but I'll save that entry for tomorrow.

I'll be back soon, promise.

2007-02-14T18:35:36+00:00

Andorinha

Ms Ladybug says hello

2007-02-04T00:20:18+00:00

Um, well, I'm pretty tired. I must be - I had lots of ideas about things I wanted to blog about and now, suddenly, my mind's blank. Another reason why I should always carry a notebook with me.

Of course, this would mostly entail taking a notebook with me into alpha state, which is pretty impossible. So, yeah.

Anyway. The greeting cards didn't really work out - I'm not sure why, the just don't look like I imagined them. Maybe I need the use ink colours other than black, or maybe I just need to learn how to use the printer better. It could be many things, but these will stay on the backburner for a while. Maybe for Christmas?

My new necklace collection also wasted a lot of material to get right, so now I have to wait for more to arrive, since I need to keep some in stock to cover the orders I have. No matter! I missed working with fabric, so I got into that again today, and I'm pretty pleased with the results! I should have them up on the shop soon-ish. I'm also going through a phase of dammit-I-have-so-much-stuff-made-why-isn't-it-for-sale-already? Actually, I know why. It's because the day after I always hate everything and it takes me a couple of weeks to sort of like my work again. It's also because I loose interest in what I've just done very quickly, and unless I put it for sale and have to make more, I usually move on to the next thing.

Why am I this complicated?

On something completely different: first signs of Spring! Oh, glorious, fragrant Spring, you can't get here soon enough! We're now halfway between the Solstice and the Equinox, and while I haven't been a pagan for years, the very visible passing of the seasons you get here in Britain makes one want to celebrate, or at least acknowledge, the festivals. So, merry Imbolc!

And now, some tacos! Talk to you soon, my ten gorgeous readers.

Yey!

2007-01-25T00:48:18+00:00

We got it! We got it! Finally! Now that's a big weight off my shoulders. The place is booked, so now we just have to negotiate with the catering company, design menus and seating charts, and the hundred million other things. But the place is booked!

Also, my engagement ring is on its merry way. It looks gorgeous, took me three days of obsessive googling to find, and it's very fairy-tale (in a good way). It has pearls and it has diamonds, so my Mother should be happy, even through it was surprisingly inexpensive (more money for food which is, you know, always good).

I have so many Portuguese tutees now it's not even funny. It's not bad money, and quite fun, but very tiring. It doesn't matter, though - I need the money. Really, really do - if the scholarship doesn't come through until the end of March I have rent to pay out of my pocket and this allows me to do just that.

All the material I needed has now arrived, so I'll start printing and making cards and lovely jewellery for Paraphernalia, hopefully tomorrow. I desperately need a glue gun. Really, really need it! It'll have to wait until I sell some things, I guess.

Have a great middle of the week, lovelies!

Tagged!

2007-01-20T00:12:27+00:00

Quiet days here at the household; we're still getting back in groove, but my head is teeming with ideas which will hopefully see the light of day very soon. End of the month, tops! The blog also has a spiffy new design, with a clay swallow Cisco bought for me in Evora a couple of weeks ago.

I've been having fun with the almanac project, but as most of my life all revolves around the computer these days, I may end up having to take pictures of my laundry, or the cat. Again.

I've been tagged by the lovely Carolyn! So, here goes:

Six weird things about myself:

1. I don't have routines, or daily rituals. Unlike Mr. Cisco, there isn't anything that has to be done a certain way, just, well, because! With the exception of straightforward things like shampooing before conditioning, or putting foundation on before eyeshadow, I'm completely chaotic. I've only realized this recently.

2. I've always wanted to be an artist, and make a living out of it. Which is funny, since I don't really have any artistic talent to speak of.

3. I have a terrible immune system. I thought I was impervious to bug bites, only to realize in the last couple of years that yes, I'm bitten, but my body just goes "meh".

4. I'm pretty much a self-taught everything. But I can't follow a manual or instructions to save my life.

5. When making a puzzle, I can't relate the image on the box to the puzzle pieces. So I do it by shapes and general colours.

6. When driving, I can't, for the life of me, tell what distance the cars behind me are in the side mirrors. So Cisco turns his head and does that for me.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I can think of at the moment. I guess because I'm chaotic, I'm not very weird - strange rituals and obsessions don't really feature in my life. I live with someone whose very slight OCD baffles me constantly, but also fascinates me because I don't get it.

I love him though. (everybody: aaaaaaaww)

Most people have already been tagged, so if you're reading this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged! (and let me know!)