View Your Personal Brand with a Wordle!

I went to a RainCamp convention the other day for work, and it was full of useful SEO information.  The speaker also gave some fun websites to visit and play around with that are now available. For example, the following image is a Wordle I created using my blog feed. Visit wordle.net, copy and past a feed URL, your Twitter, or any amount of text content and the website will generate a Wordle. The words that are the biggest, you use the most, and you can organize the text in any color and format that you want!

I thought that this was completely cool. You can save your Wordle to a public gallery under any name, too! Very nerdy, but in a way, it is a great tool to help you figure out how you are being perceived at any point in time, or to understand your personal online marketing brand.

Apparently for me, I say "really" a lot. Don't know what that's all about! Luckily, calligraphy and wedding terms show up a fair amount of times as well.

So click on mine, go make your own wordle and see how awesome it is. And show me!! Comment what you find, or link me to your wordle :)

I Want But Really Need: A Business Card Holder

I know I am not the only chronic online shopper that finds justifications in all sorts of sh!t I don't need. (Which was almost the title of this feature, but I didn't want to offend. I know, boring. Gotta love professionalism) I am the ultimate impulse buyer. Probably because I've been there, and just want people to buy my stuff so badly that I want to help someone else out by doing that.

I ordered Marketing Associate business cards for my day job at Boston Logic. Yesterday I went to a conference, and unfortunately had to distribute my coworker's cards instead. Imagine how excited I was to see my business cards on my desk this morning. Great.

Anyway, I started browsing etsy for cute handmade business card holders that I wanted but really do need. I didn't see any at Staples that really blew my dress up, so I turned to handmade :) I found two that I really mostly need, as there's my artists cards, Marketing Associate cards, and while I'm at it I'll probably need a card holder for my desk, because, duh.

I really love this Mother of Pearl Business Card Holder, $19.95 from nacreart. All the colors are so mesmorizing, and I'm really attracted to the layout of shapes. Gorgeous. Oh, one day...The artist seems to specialize in a mother of pearl inlay technique.

Then there's the more simple cloth business card holders from GracieDesigns, $8, which are a bit less expensive. I like the simplicity of these, and I almost wish that they were available in a funky brown design to coordinate with my website, blog, and business theme. I also got inspired to maybe do some business card holders with recycled sail material, and embroider a number on those. What a simple, cool way to expand my recycled sail products line!

Then there’s the cool business card holder I’ll need for my desk, and I was thinking of something that would match the deep blue ceramic vase of my bamboo. (Yes, bamboo: it keeps me Zen.)  I love the colors in this Stained Glass Business Card Holder by LA Glass, $23.

So thanks for allowing me to vent this awesomeness before buying too quickly. It still may happen, but awesome. Great work, guys!

Charcoal Drawing

I'll admit it - this has been a tough week for me. I feel stuck for some reason, and I know it's the restless artist in me that is not being creative or challenged enough. I have to admit also that I was freaking out after going to art school and then getting a job that I go to every day that couldn't be farther from art. So I went to Blick on my day off yesterday to buy a pack of charcoal pencils.

I needed to draw. I thought I'd go through some old pictures I took in Italy and make a sketch of something. But after several years of figure drawing and portraiture, I needed to draw a face. And who better than my grandfather, who passed away last September.

I have a couple photos of him that I keep in my shelf along with one of his hats. I saw it and knew I had to draw it. I'm about 2 years old in this picture on Papa's lap, him pointing at the camera for me to look at and smile at the bottom. I have to admit I was a little scared as well - what if after all this time I couldn't do the one thing that I loved so much in this world? What if I couldn't give Papa what it was that made him so special?

You can check out the photo and the drawing and see for yourself. I am so happy with the way it came out - and I have to say, it really was like riding a bike. After the first few lines of suggesting the forms, I got right back into it. I sketched out all of the forms, became obsessed with the shadows. This is what I had gone to school for. This is what I had taken loans against to develop: there's no question in my mind at all that I truly followed my passion. Now I just have to reconcile it with my everyday - if that means squeezing in drawing between my calligraphy jobs, work, and the gym, so be it.

I guess that's all we can really do in life: find what it is that makes us happy, then follow through.