Month: February 2013

Today I’m going to do something a little different than what you usually read here on The Veda House. Over the past week, I’ve been super invested in an e-course developed by Kathleen of Kathleen & Jeremy / Braid Creative. This e-course has challenged me to really sit down and make some decisions about my personal brand and how to bring my personal brand to life in my profession. I’m going to do a full reviewing the course next week, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you a discovery I’ve uncovered while taking the course.

I was tasked to pretend I was hosting a dinner party and I was able to invite 6 people/personalities. Each attendee was supposed to represent an aspect of myself. I was challenged to define their names, expertise, core values, personality traits,pieces of advice, and even their favorite topics of conversation.

After two days of contemplating my guest list, this is what I came up with…

Guest 1: The Maker
She’s a weekend warehouse picker who makes furniture, hand prints fabrics and makes natural home fragrances on her stovetop.

Guest 2: The Detailed-oriented Designer
She’s an extremely organized graphic designer who designs with attention to fine details and has a minimalistic aesthetic.

Guest 3: The Bohemian Gardener
She’s a “figure-it-out-as-you-go” gardener who successfully grows succulents, wears sundresses, regularly visits the farmer’s market, keeps bouquets of flowers in her house, makes dreamcatchers, has a small plot of land at the city garden, and has a crystal collection.

Guest 4: The Quiet Observer
She’s a sit back and soak it all type of chick who is always wanting to learn new things.

Guest 5: The Visual Storytelling Stylist
She’s an obsessive documentor and curious curator who strives to freeze every beautiful moment with her camera lens, constantly creating romantic vignettes to drool over.

Guest 6: The Storm Chaser
She’s an adventure seeking gal who prefers to be out in nature or surrounded by water…who also rides a motorcycle.

I’m curious. Who would you like to learn more about?

Sound interesting? Wanna participate in this exercise (developed by Braid Creative) among many more, please stop by Kathleen’s blog and sign up for her next course.

If you’ve been following The Veda House these past couple weeks, you would know that I’ve taken the scary leap of quitting my day job and starting to work for myself. Last Friday was my last day at the Agency and boy oh boy, the day did not go as I had envisioned. I envisioned being able to walk away at the end of the day full of excitement and giddy emotions, but in reality I was overcome with these really sad feelings. I felt like I was letting go of a lot of really good people that I’ve built relationships with. My team there was definitely like my family away from home and I was taken back by the realization that I wouldn’t seem them everyday anymore. For whatever reason, I hadn’t even thought about that aspect of leaving. Aside from feeling a little bummed about losing that close connections with my “work family”, I was also feeling completely free to explore and build my OWN brand.

Over this past week I’ve received a few tweets, emails and blog comments from my readers asking what I’ve been up to and so I thought I’d share. I decided to start this new adventure with a clean slate, so I’ve been deep cleaning my entire loft building to make it feel workable. I’ve also been attending Kathleen’s E-Course about personal branding and I’ve been completely blown away by it. I’ll be writing a complete review on it in a few weeks, but I highly recommend it! I’ve been exploring food styling and photography. I’ve challenged myself to bake/cook two recipes this week, style them, and photograph them. Let me tell you…I love every aspect of it (which is a sign I need to spend more time exploring it). Lastly, I’ve done a little pampering like get my hair colored and meet up with a dear friend for a brownie date.

All in all, my first week away has been going just as planned….to not have a concrete plan and allow myself to explore. Yes, I’m maintaining my existing freelance jobs, blogging, keeping up to date on emails and exploring a new blog design for The Veda House, but the majority of my day is spent getting inspired. Cheers to that right?

Question: What would you like to see on The Veda House in the future?

*Photo above by Max Farago (more here)

Tomorrow is the day, guys. Tomorrow, February 15th is my last day at my full-time day job with the advertising agency and the start of a new and exciting adventure. To say I’m excited, terrified, and extremely relieved would all be understatements. I have a new sense of freedom to explore and bring my brand fully to life…finally!

It all started 3.5 years ago when I graduate with a graphic design degree from a large university. The summer following graduation, I traveled through Europe for 2 weeks with my boyfriend and his mother 🙂 Upon returning, I immediately started working as a digital art director at the advertising agency, slowing moving my way up through the ranks and learning a lot along the way. I learned a lot about designing within restrictions (ultimately making me a better designer), how working with a strong team can be your biggest asset, and how politics of business can quickly overshadow the excitement of the industry. I learned a lot about myself as a designer, about what I liked about the corporate world, but more importantly…what I didn’t like. By learning what I didn’t like, I was able to gain some insight into how I would ideally shape my future.

During my 3.5 years as a digital art director, I worked A LOT on my “time off” (nights/weekends). I took on exciting freelance projects that I sought out to expand my personal portfolio. I briefly opened a vintage home goods shop on Etsy to give me something to tinker with. I did a deep dive into photography and taught myself the ins and outs of shooting manual with my DSLR, and most importantly…I started The Veda House blog.

Over time, I feel in love with my blog and sharing design inspiration to the online world. I posted ALL the time and really looked forward to spending my down time in front of the computer. My little blog (that is still pretty little), grew very very slowly over the next couple years. I met a ton of creative people (a lot who are freelancers and designers) and ultimately feel in love with the idea of blogging/freelance design as a profession. I started working towards making that happen by blogging my heart out to grow readership and by building a network that could support a personal business when the time would come.

About a year ago, I was committed to making this leap into the freelance world but “LIFE” kept getting in the way. Work was insanely busy, I got engaged to my boyfriend of 10 years, plans of moving across country were brewing, and honestly…I was terrified of losing the stability of my 9-5. Fast forward to last November/December and you’d find me bawling my eyes out, stressed to the max and my fiancé pleading me daily to quit my day job and pursue what I’ve always wanted to do. Thank goodness I’ve always had his support.

I spent this last holiday vacation really lost, completely sick of everything design and in the middle of a full blown out breakdown burnout session. It’s taken me until now to pull myself out of it, but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. With a crazy amount of support, encouragement, and excitement from others, I’m finally making the leap. I’m going to start building my dream baby and I couldn’t be more giddy than I am write now…counting down the hours until Friday at 5:00PM!

My plan is to not really have a plan  for the first month and spend that time getting inspired again. I’ll be attacking my mile-long list of DIYs that have been piling up and I’ll be focusing on rebranding The Veda House. Come March, I’ll be 100% open to take on all new clients. I’ll be focusing my brand on designing and photography styling for small businesses and other home made brands. EEEE! So excited.

Stay tuned and I’ll be sure to keep you up to date with a new feature on the blog where i share glimpses into my day to day life in my home studio.

• Doesn’t this post by Savannah of MaieDae sound really really familiar?
• And because this had me crying with laughter…screaming goats (you’re welcome!)
• Inspring little interview with Bri Emery of Design Love Fest about making the freelance leap.