I've just been working on stuff, you see. One of those bits of stuff is evident in the picture above... see the bunch of squiggly lines down the bottom? That's mah paisleyz on the cover of the launch issue of Peppermint magazine!

The magazine is launching this Friday in Paddington, so I might scoot along to pick up a copy. I also contributed my pretty face drawing and some hand lettering for the fashion editorial. Peppermint is going to be pretty rad if you're into green fashion (encompasing vintage, ethical, fair trade and hand crafted prettiness) and the first issue is freeeeee. You can get one from the following places:

BRISBANE
Bliss Ecowear - 15 LaTrobe Terrace, Paddington
Retro Metro - 297 Given Terrace, Paddington
Blue Lotus Cafe - Shop 16, Kelvin Grove Urban Village
Lyssy May - 676 Wynnum Rd, Morningside
Kropp Organic Hair Salon - 112 Bennetts Rd, Morningside
Box Vintage - 29 Vulture St, West End
The Region - Boundary St, West End
One Colour - West End Flea Markets

GOLD COAST
Inverse - 21C James St, Burleigh Heads

MELBOURNE
Bird Girl - 155 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
Meet Me At Mikes - 63 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
Thread Den - Level 1/16 Errol St, North Melbourne
Sankofa - 3/245 Adderley St, West Melbourne

ONLINE
www.ecodepot.com.au
www.ibutrade.com.au

NEW ZEALAND
www.endemicworld.com
www.kowtow.co.nz

And also from the Peppermint website, where you can organise a subscription for yourself.

I promise not to neglect you for so long dear blog. I just don't know what to write... I have a few things happening but nothing I can really blog about, nothing seems interesting enough!

Thank you notes for our wedding (yes, late but what else would my friends and family expect from me?)





Some drawings of pretty gals.



More magazine doodling.



Felt paisleys.



My rat Willis died on Saturday :(

I've also been quite busy with freelance design work! If you want to check out my portfolio, it's over here on natalieperkins.com.

Pens. PENS! I love pens.
I used to be the stationery queen at one of my old jobs, and I got to order all the stationery for the company. I pretty much hated it, but I loved flipping through the catalogue looking at all the pens.

The other week I ordered some stuff through JetPens, and was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of my package only a few days later. Living on this brown island, you get used to websites that don't ship to Australia and incredibly slow shipping times so it was nice to receive a couple of packages (one was this gorgeous brooch from Elsa Mora!) so soon after ordering.

And now, some pen porn!







What tools do you use every day?

Adobe are conducting free eSeminars for Australian and New Zealand designers in July - you can register for quite a variety of online seminars catering to web and mobile developers, video and print designers and photographers. I've signed up for all the design seminars already, as well as the Creative Fesival which is kicking off the month on July 1.

Sorry I haven't been regularly posting lately - I've had computer dramas and a bit of work on my plate!

Dripbook just sent an email announcing that they are coming out of beta!

I've blogged about Dripbook in earlier entries but for the uninitiated, Dripbook is a beautiful little site offering a really compact and portable portfolio facility. They offer creatives a simple way to package their works on site in the form of flash books and also the ability to export your portfolio to your own site with minimal fuss. The diversity of creative workers using Dripbook is quite staggering - I have come across stylists, fashion designers, industrial designers, illustrators, photographers, make up artists and more. I'm a big fan of Dripbook, I even have bumper stickers (no really!)

On July 1 they will be launching version 1 after being in beta testing mode for the past year. Basically, what it means is you will no longer be able to register a free account, and the cost of a Premium account will double - however current Premium account plans and fees will be frozen. They have announced that they'd prefer to focus on providing even more services to creatives, which is exciting to see but sad at the same time.

I have a number of Dripbook invites if you're curious about signing up to use either the free service or one of the premium plans at the current prices that will be frozen after July 1. If you would like an invite, please leave me a comment and be sure to pop in the form your email address and a website (like flickr) where I can see a little bit of your work. I will be the only person who can see your email address, and I promise not to sign you up for spam galore :D

Want a Dripbook account? Go!

Admcom have heralded 2008 as the Year of Creativity and I've taken up their invitation to be someone else. Of course, I needed new business cards to complement my new career, and AdmCom delivered with their hilarious business card creator.

No more minding my Ps and Qs! I'm removing any guise of censorship on definatalie.com! Go sod yourselves and take one of my cards on the way out!

The typography on the card was kind of bollocks so I, erm, fixed it.

[via the awesome Brandflakes for Breakfast]
(I secretly want to work for them. Shhh!)

This is just a note to let you all know that I'm going to be participating in the Thirty Day Challenge this year. If you are keen to track my progress, please feel free to check out my team's blog - "Blogging the Thirty Day Challenge" and to subscribe to it in your favourite RSS reader. The reasoning behind setting up the blog was to be as transparent as possible about the techniques behind 30DC, and to open up an honest dialogue about social media and marketing.

The 30DC is a free exercise in internet marketing which starts in August. At the moment we're in pre-season training, which is a series of blog and video posts about the free applications and programs you need to install to participate. Not all of the programs/ apps are essential but they make life easier. A big part of the challenge is using the Flock browser, which is a pretty easy transition for me as it's based on Firefox but has bonus social media stuff included.

Disclaimer: All my links to the Thirty Day Challenge use my member referral link and every time one of you lovely people signs up using my member link I get points. Apparently there's going to be a prize for the person with the most points, so if you're happy to support me please feel free to use my links - but if you want to join up, and don’t want to give me a point for doing so, you can click this link.

Also - I'm going to try to restrict my 30DC activity to our team's blog, but I think at some stage I will probably be using 30DC tips and tricks for my online presence. If you think I'm getting spammy, or if it's making you uncomfortable, please let me know. I don't want to damage whatever reputation I may have, and I feel it's important not to get spammy and to maintain trust between the people I associate with and myself!

Your name in lights by cheechman via flickr.

Tracy over on Red Bubble asked in the forums:

A little while ago I set myself up with a free website to display some of my stuff, but I really would like to have a swish bang site like some of the ones i have seen from other bubblers.

Where do you go to find cool looking websites to make your own? and at what cost?
If paying for a site, does everything come with it like a template thingy for you to add your own stuff or is there different fees for different things?

I thought this was an awesome question and one that warrants further exploration, so after dashing off my quick answer to her I thought I'd sit down and write a more comprehensive guide to getting your portfolio on the web. You might be a photographer, print maker, painter, illustrator, sculptor, jeweller, cake maker or stylist - but unless you're a web designer there's no insta-magical way to showcase your portfolio on the net. (Even if you're a web designer it's not insta-magical!)

Your name, in lights

The first thing people usually think of when they are pondering a web presence is registering a domain name and setting up a site on their own hosting. This is the most expensive option, and also a road paved with tears, late nights and caffeine. Buying a domain and hosting will set you back financially within minutes, and if you haven't got html and css coding skills it'll mean you're out of pocket before your jpgs even hit the server. Don't get me wrong, this is the most professional route to take but you must consider all the pros and cons before you get out your credit card.

If you don't have web site building skills, please do yourself a favour and pay someone with those skills to build you a beautiful site. Sure, you can buy a template site out of the box or find a free one - but do consider the following:

• How many other people are using that template?


• Will you be able to grow your website with a bog standard template?


• How much time and patience are you willing to invest in googling when something goes wrong?


• Does a template present you and your portfolio at their best?

Finding a CMS to call your own

Don't think that TLAs like CMS are just for big business. Content Management Systems are good for creatives too.

There are few free CMS (Content Management Systems) that are specifically engineered with artists in mind. The best one I've seen by far is Indexhibit. Red Bubble user mimobase has used this application to build his personal website mimobase.com with fabulous results, in my ever so humble opinion.

Little known fact: You can use most blog platforms as CMS for portfolio sites. Wordpress and Serendipity in particular are reportedly very good. I use Serendipity for this here blog, and I enjoy it very much but I haven't put much thought towards using it for managing portfolio content to be honest.

Keep in mind - even if you use an open source or free CMS, you'll still need a domain and hosting.

Free stuff makes the internet turn 'round

In this day and age you've got so many free options with regard to establishing an internet presence that you'd be silly not to explore them before shelling out your hard earned cash money.

If you want to start a zero-outlay site to display a schmick looking portfolio fairly easily, I highly recommend tumblr. Tumblr doesn't have a categorising system, but tagging is available so you can do some quasi-categorising if you tinker with your theme.

There are a number of templates that would be rather becoming of a portfolio:
Screenshot
Box Factory
Museum

There are lots of free portfolio communities out there. You don't have to purchase a domain or hosting, however the trade off is that you don't have very much flexibility when it comes to customising your page.

Dripbook
Coroflot
Behance

Whatever you decide to do, keep in mind that if you can't code it - hire someone who can to do it. All too often I come across poorly designed and/ or coded portfolio sites that don't reflect very well on the creatives they are representing. Don't be afraid to get in contact with a web designer to discuss a portfolio design that can be customised to suit your specific needs - after all, creatives like us need to support other creatives too!

I just got an email about the Adobe Online Creative Festival, which is taking place on Tuesday 1 July between 11-4pm. The best thing is, it costs approximately nothing for 5 hours of networking, master classes, tips and tricks and live guest speakers. All you have to do is register!

You will definitely (definatalie!) see me there!

I hear you - the guffaws, the disbelief! Natalie, a guru of time management? Well according to Inspiration Bit, I am - so there! Watch in amazement as I meet the following criteria:

Are you juggling a busy family life and career?

I have dinner with my family every week (mostly) so we can catch up with one another. My family is very close, and I really have to credit them (and Mum's puppies) for keeping me sane at times when my stress levels spiral out of control. My career is also taking off, whether I'm aboard the metaphorical aircraft or not... at my day job I'm actually taking on more responsibility by managing our Print and Creative departments. In the non-daylight and weekend hours you might find me designing logos, web sites and book layouts as a part of my freelance practice. I don't even advertise, people come to me!

Are you working full time and still manage to blog?

Yes and yes. Although I'm still working on a definite plan of attack for this blog. Work informs my thoughts all the time though, you'd be surprised how many drafted blog posts I have squirrelled away. Not only do I manage to write, I manage to read. In fact, I need to read, to absorb the myriad information available to me on the net. My google reader is chock full of feeds that cover fashion, advertising, branding, business, design, inspiration and advice. I usually lunch at my desk and browse around, taking notes about the things I'd eventually like to flesh out in this here blog.

Do you have your hands full with multiple projects but succeed in keeping all of them under a reasonable control?

I've had to start scheduling offers of work for the future, rather than taking them on all at once.

Can you still find time for your favourite hobby despite the loads of work and tons of daily responsibilities?

My hobby is my work! I haven't yet decided if this is a positive or a negative... I do find that the things I work on outside of my day job are much more akin to my own design ideologies. Corporate design can be dreary, but it still offers me problem solving opportunities every week. In my own time I tend to work on the frivolous ideas and fun things I day dream about.

Now I've satisfied the requirements, I'm going to delve into my tips for time management as part of Inspiration Bit's Group Writing Project.

You can't manage time, it just is. So "time management" is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do.
DAVID ALLEN

• I'm a serious creature of habit. This helps with time management if you slip into the good habits rather than the bad...


• Take advantage of your email software. Flag items you can't deal with at the present time and mark them to follow up by a certain time.


• Think about how to efficiently use your time. I hate sweating small stuff like filing, so I usually do all my paperwork/ invoicing/ yucky stuff, pile up the jobs/folders, and then run all of it to the filing cabinet. It's little stuff like that I even have to remind my own boss about. Dealing with one job at a time, and running between the printer and filing cabinets wastes so much time - it doesn't even make sense to me!


• Don't put off the sucky tasks. If it's not something you can cross off your list with a few small actions, get a head start on it and lay the foundations. Don't leave it until the last minute because it's one sure way to elevate your stress levels and ensure a compromised outcome.


• Graphic designers are visual people - so I arrange my queued job folders in order of priority in my "toast rack". I have another toast rack for jobs that are pending approval, and others that have been sent to print.


• I am a compulsive list writer. I take an insane kind of pride in my lists too - I usually put aside five minutes at the end of my working day to review what I've got to do the next day. I assign priorities down the right hand side of the page and I even do a bit of doodling as a bit of a "mind dump".