buying postcards vs jewelry

I can't ever spell jewelry.

Anyway yesterday my mom said she thought people who bought jewelry were practical whereas people who bought our stuff (postcards and cards etc) were impractical.

What?! I thought it was the other way round - people who buy jewelry just need a little something extra to look nicer. If you want it, you buy it. But if you don't buy it, it's not going to hurt you much. But people who buy postcards are actually buying new ideas and enriching their lives and making other people happy!

Now that I'm typing out my thoughts, I guess buying postcards IS kind of an idealistic thing to do. haha.

The Taiwan Hong Kong gap

I really love the Hong Kong way of doing things. We always say things in point form: 1, 2, 3, 4. It's "yes",  or "no". It's "meet me here at this time on this day."

I am still getting used to the Taiwan way of communication. Which is more along the lines of: let's get to know each other more. How do you feel? Could you explain more? Let's discuss over coffee and I'll tell you my life story.

I guess if you describe the Taiwanese as friendly and understanding, Hong Kong people are cold and business like. 

But I still really like people who are concise. It's easy on the brain.

Mind reading

I think illustrating or designing is never the hardest part of the job. The hardest part is the mind reading part - figuring out what people actually want.

I guess it's hard for people to tell you what they want because they don't know how to describe it. 

The worst is when people can't tell you what they want, but they can tell you what they DON'T want, (after you finish the picture).

I'm starting to understand their difficulty because we're asking Li's friend to write us some music. But how on earth do you describe music? The best I can do is, fast, slow, happy, sad....

 She must feel so frustrated now....

My drawing process

1. I make small sketches in my sketchbook.
2. Then I scan it and draw the picture in adobe illustrator, to get all the colors and composition right.
3. Then I print out the illustrator file actual size.
4. I use a light box and draw the picture with markers or color pencils.
5. I scan the marker drawing back into the computer and do whatever needs to be done in photoshop.
6. I get the final product printed for real.

So it starts out on paper (sketch),

becomes digital (AI), 

becomes paper again, (marker drawing) 

then digital (photoshop), 

and then paper again. (final product).

Colors vs numbers

We got our first blueprint of our calendar back from the printer's. The colors were kind of weird. Not exactly the way we wanted it.

But there's really no way to be exact with color. My blue is not your blue no matter how well you describe it.

We called the printer but talking about color is kind of crazy, like listening to food or smelling music.

At that moment I suddenly felt so much comfort in numbers. Those accurate, concrete, universal numbers I had in my excel spreadsheet. The exact numbers everyone else could read. It was a funny feeling.

Tax season!

This is our second year of doing our tax for All Things. It is still annoying. Although it is probably because we didn't do a good job of keeping track of where our money went.

I can't believe we used to just put the cash we earned into our pockets and spent money without keeping receipts. That's crazy.

And that's why our bank records were all messed up.

But it also makes me realize how far we've come. We didn't think that we would be making a stable salary from this business. But we are. So I'm thankful.