Just a Little More Homework...

I still can't believe I'm done with school and officially an interior decorator! I am excited for the possibilities as well as the free time I'll now have. Then again, I have a growing list of steps that need to get done in order for me to succeed. These should keep me busy for a while:

(click to enlarge)

Since feeling a bit discouraged about my future, I stopped by the library and picked up several books on design and opening a business:

So far I'm really enjoying browsing through them. One thing I am learning though is that I still need to get more hands-on experience before I am ready to go out on my own. At this point my goal is to work for an established designer and learn as much as I can about the business. Still, it's never to early to start plotting my path to working on my own one day. 

Have you read any good books on the subject? What is on your to-do list these days?

Design Board - School Project

As promised, I wanted to share my final project for class, which I presented on Monday. I developed the concept board a few weeks ago for a fictional newlywed couple's new living/dining room. I am now taking the concept one step further and coming up with the final design plan for the client. The design board includes all of the items to be used in the space - furnishings, accessories, fabrics, flooring...everything.

(Click for larger image)

The colors play off the inspirational image, and I added gray to the wall and some fabrics to sort of cool things off and tone the bright yellow down. When I created the concept board, I was trying to keep to a yellow and gray palette, but ultimately I am glad I brought in a couple of accent colors. I wanted to keep things sort of fun since the couple is young, and the condo has wrap-around windows with lots of light.

floorplan and elevation

And there you have it! I still need to work on improving the way I design my boards. There were some really great ones in the class. It's sort of sad that this is the last assignment...so I will have to keep practicing on my own.

I actually did not receive too much feedback from the teacher or classmates, so please feel free to comment! I am very open to suggestions as I want to keep learning and improving. Also, if you have questions about any of the items on the board, please let me know.

Business Inspiration from Ruthie Sommers

As I recently mentioned, I am only two weeks away from obtaining my Interior Decorating certificate. I should be dying of excitement, right? Instead, I'm finding myself nearly paralyzed.

You see, becoming an interior designer has been a dream of mine since I was 8 years old. I just never thought it would be something I would do as a career, and instead I spent years trying to find just what that career would be. Three career attempts later, in 2007 I finally took the leap and started taking design classes in order to make this dream into a reality.

After all this time, it does feel thrilling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing that I am so close to finally doing what I believe I was meant to do. But instead of this light being bright and sunny, it's a bit gloomy. Blame it on this economy. All I hear is how designers are struggling to stay afloat and that nobody is hiring right now. People are telling me to stay put in a place where I don't want to be. I am seeing all of these roadblocks to having the life I want, and all of this negativity has been putting a damper on my spirits.

Source

Enter Ruthie Sommers, of Chapman Radcliff Home. Like many of us I'm sure, I've had a "design crush" on her since that first Domino cover. When I found out she is a UVA alum, like me, I was even more interested in learning more about her and how she got to where she is. Well, just today, in need of some positivity and motivation, I came across an article of how she built her business on Ladies Who Launch (great website btw).  

In the article, which you can read here, in addition to telling her story, she shares her secret to success:

That is exactly my problem: over-thinking. I analyze things like crazy, become so calculated in my actions that I allow fear to set in and it ends up stalling my progress. This needs to stop. I've been working too hard to just give up now. Sure, times may be a little tough right now, but it doesn't mean I can't continue to follow my dreams, or at least continue to take steps towards it. There are so many of us out there doing this as we speak, so it possible to do what you set out to do, regardless of the economy or other perceived roadblocks. I just need to stay positive and believe in myself! Thanks, Ruthie, for reminding me of this.


On that note, I hope you have a great weekend! I will be working on digging myself out of this funk and focus on what I need to do to succeed. If you have any words of advice on how you stay on track, I'd love to hear it!

Mood Board - for Class

Hello! I am getting a late start to the week here - my weekend ended up being so hectic and I feel like I'm slowly making progress on everything I need to get done. One of which was completing another concept board for my class.

As I mentioned before, this class is all about designing a room for a fictional newlywed couple. We could design as we wish with the floorplan he gave us. I decided to try to expand on a mood board I created last year. I thought the cheery yellow and grey color scheme would be great for their living/dining room, as it is a space with windows spanning an entire wall.

The room was inspired by the same Elizabeth Schuppe image that drove the original mood board:

To be honest, the execution didn't go quite as I envisioned in my head due to a lack of selection of fabrics at my two local stores. I just couldn't find quite what I was looking for, and when I would print fabric swatches off the internet, it just didn't look as presentable. So this is the end result, for now:

Next, we are using this concept to develop a full presentation board, which includes all of the items to be used in the room, including accessories. I'm hoping to change a few things from this board as well, so hopefully the end result will turn out well.  

I would love to hear it if you have any advice on where to get free fabric samples! I suppose that is one limitation from not going to a design school with a resource center.

School Starts Up Again

Hello, how was your weekend? Mine was rather quiet. It snowed all day yesterday, which gave us an opportunity to slow down a bit. Unfortunately we also had plans to celebrate my husband's birthday last night. We managed to still make it out, but many people canceled. We still had a great time and got there and back safely. The rest of my weekend looked like this:

Yep, school has started again. I'm excited, because once this quarter is over, I'll have my Interior Decorating Certificate in my hands! The course should be a lot of fun, too. Each week, we'll move closer and closer to completing a decorating project for a fictional couple. The couple just got married and is decorating their new condo (hmm, that sounds familiar!) The only thing the teacher gave us was this description and the floorplan. Everything else is up to us to dictate, including the style, colors, etc. He actually wants us to use the opportunity to develop our own aesthetic, so it really can be anything we want. I'm excited!

This week, we are drawing the floorplan to scale and writing up the design brief. In the upcoming weeks, we'll come up with the concept board, presentation board, etc. I'll look forward to sharing everything with you here!

What were you up to this weekend?

Mood Board - Monet Inspired

Good morning! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was great, with lots of eating, shopping and spending time with friends and family. Only thing is I didn't work on as many projects as I had hoped. It seems no matter how many days we have off, it is never enough! However, I had time for a sewing session with my mom, so I finally made pillows for the bedroom and living rooms. I hope to show you sometime this week.

I spent the rest of my break working on a design board for class. We were to design a living/dining room for a single male who loves to read and occasionally entertain. The teacher asked us to use an artwork or a favorite place to travel as inspiration. I ended up choosing a Monet piece, Bathing at La Grenouillere. I chose it primarily for the colors (yet again with the green!) Here it is:

Furniture and accessories are from Kravet, DWR, Room and Board, and Crate and Barrel. Fabrics are from G Street Fabric.

Close-up of artwork and floorplan:

Have a great week!

A Little Update

Good morning, how was your weekend? Mine was busy with projects around the house, unfortunately none of which actually got finished. Not only is the condo a huge mess now, but I have nothing to show you...

As for the update, I'm officially going back to school today! I had been trying to figure out my next steps since being forced to stop my Bachelor's in Interior Design, and I finally decided to just take classes towards a new certificate program in design & decoration at my local community college. They used to offer just one class, which I took a couple of years back, but just this semester, by coincidence, they've turned it into a program with 3 classes. So today I start class #2. I will certainly share what I learn in the class with you all. I can't wait to see how this will turn out!

Have a good week!

School Projects - Color Theory

I'm back, relaxed and ready for another week! The trip was wonderful, but now I am ready to enjoy the beautiful fall weather we are having, and to start my supposedly less stressful life (now that I don't have school.)

As promised, I wanted to share my projects from the Color Theory class I took this summer. I debated over sharing these because they are really not that exciting, but my goal with this blog was to share with you all the steps I am taking on my interior design journey, so here it is. I actually really enjoyed the class, and learned a lot about mixing colors and coordinating color schemes, even though many of them seemed more geared towards, say, graphic design as opposed to interiors.

The first project we did was the color wheel. We were asked to make them look interesting, so I did mine in 3D.

One of my favorite projects was taking an existing painting (mine is by Katherine Dreier) and change the color scheme. It went from a mostly primary scheme to a tertiary one with red-violet, yellow-orange and blue-green. I traced it, then painted it with acrylics.

This one is a visual representation of a song. I chose "Faithless" by Social Distortion. I won't go into detail of the meaning, but it has to do with being afraid of "breaking down your wall" and falling in love.

Finally, a project related to interior design! We could use any image we wanted (of anything), or create our own. Because I was itching to draw interiors, I decided to trace this bedroom picture, which you may recognize from Domino. The entire artwork was colored in pencils using the pointillism technique (a la Seurat) - yeah, it took FOREVER!

We did a couple more projects but they were not my best :). I definitely would not consider myself an artist - you should see what some of my classmates were doing. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into my school work.

School's Out - for a While!

Last night I had my last day of class at my current school... it's sort of bittersweet as I thought this program was the beginning of my future, yet it's come to a screeching halt. Having said that, I am excited to be free for a while! The color theory class was a lot of fun. I plan on posting some of my projects here soon.

I plan on using this semester to really think about my next steps. I've already started doing informational interviews. I am lucky enough to work for an architecture/interior design firm, so I have easy access; however our firm does commercial work and I'm leaning towards residential, and there seems to be a big difference in the type of credentials needed. I will be talking to a few more designers in the coming weeks, so that should really help me come to a decision.

I hope this break will also give me more time to focus on this blog! I am hoping to get on a more regular posting schedule.

I'll wrap up this post with my very first concept board, which I created for an I.D. certificate class - the class (and teacher) that gave me the confidence that I was meant to follow this path:

School No More

My apologies for neglecting this blog for over a week! Last week was not the best...

I met with my school advisor, who tells me that they will no longer offer a night program in Interior Design at my school! Now, I knew this was coming, but so far the classes were still being offered, and I thought I had gotten into the program on time. Not the case! Apparently the last time they offered the I.D. class I need to take next was the Spring semester, and from here on out it is during the day only (the middle of the day no less). Um, thanks for telling me!! (granted, I wasn't eligible to take it then because of pre-requisites, but it would have been good information to know!)

She suggests I basically have to make the decision between working full-time or going to school...Honestly, that is just not an option at all right now, which sadly puts my school plans on hold right now, given that this was only program near me that offered night classes.

So much has been swirling in my head. I'm considering applying for a MFA in Interior Design (I was going for a second Bachelor's.) The classes are still during the day but at least I'd feel like I was progressing with my education and could finish the program a bit quicker. But either way, I'd have to wait until I was in a better position to work part-time or quit altogether.

Another much more affordable and less time consuming option (and that I could start now) would be to go the interior decorating route. Honestly, I might enjoy that more anyway. I don't know...so much to think about! I still can't believe all this, but I'm not giving up my dream!

Sorry for venting, but thanks for listening. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

I'll leave you with a couple of pretty picture that cheered me up today :)

images from decor8

School's Out!

I've been busy wrapping up my class this quarter, and it's finally over! I typically take two classes per quarter, but this time I only took one class but it was so demanding, I managed to be busier than I was before. I'm excited about having a break before going into the summer quarter and hopefully I'll be able to work on some projects around the house!

Because I didn't take any art classes when I was in college the first time around, I've had to start completely from scratch. This means drawing classes, 2- and 3-D Design, Art History...all of the foundation classes. Here's a sample of the work I've done so far:

Drawing Foundations

3D Design

As you see, I haven't been able to jump right into Interior Design (though I have already taken Intro to Drafting.) But I have learned so much so far about composition, shading, scale and balance - skills that I will always incorporate into designing interiors. It's been a great experience. Next quarter I take Color Theory, and I am really excited about that class!

Drafting

So there you have it...a small glimpse into the baby steps towards my dream career!