Life Lately // 01 – Design, books and pens

Hello, how are you? Happy 2023! Join me as I start this series again, this time, away from Patreon.

I’ve been taking things slow, and I am not quite sure yet if I like it. I realised that Patreon has given me this sense of urgency every month, making rewards, scheduling them ahead of time so that I won’t be late, because I do not like being late.

Now that I do not have Patreon work, I can finally focus on other things that I have been meaning to spend my time on, including this blog. Before I started working as a Front-end Developer and started making art, my journey actually started when I got introduced to blogging. I enjoyed those days, I even made money out of it and I was able to buy myself nice things while I was still in college. Good times.

But of course, a lot of things has changed. Social media became a thing and I abandoned my blogs. I’ve attempted to get back to blogging a number of times but I just did not have the time and energy anymore. So here I am, trying to rekindle my love in writing a blog post once again.

Life Lately will be a series of posts I dedicate to sharing my journey, from the artworks and products that I create to maybe the most mundane parts and moments of my life.

So if you are reading this, thank you so much! I hope you somehow enjoyed reading what I have to share.

Book Corner

First book I finished reading for this year: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Rating: 5/5

I reached my goal in 2022 which is to read 12 books. I read 16 in total so it inspired me to increase that goal to 20 this year. It’s quite ambitious but I am excited to be reading new books! I think I would go easy on Fiction books though, they usually eat up my time. 30 minutes of reading always ends up to reading the entire book which is not good!

Currently Reading: Why We Sleep and The Little Prince

Troy was one of those movies that really stuck with me. I still remember the costumes, the characters and the story. How Hector died and how Achilles dragged his body with his Chariot, it was brutal but I liked the story. This book was an interesting take and it actually made me research more on the characters. I am not going to talk about it further to avoid spoilers but I will say that in the end, I thought that both characters: Achilles and Patroclus are both foolish and I just hated the way they handled things. Still rated it 5 stars because it’s not about wether I liked the characters or not, I enjoyed reading the story and it was well written in my opinion.

Pen and Ink purchases

I am using a Hobonichi Cousin as my planner this year and I wanted to add more colors to it. I really love watching Helen’s plan with me videos and I saw that she uses these brush pens so I purchased one for myself. I’ve been loving them so far and I have been using them everyday

Another purchase that I am really happy about are my Zebra Sarasa Gel Pens. The colors are beautiful! Sometimes I hesitate to use them because I do not want the ink to run out.

Also I purchased new fountain pen inks. A got a black one, and this deep magenta color “Merlot” from Diamine. I am not a fountain pen expert but the inks that I got looks really good on Tomoe River paper.

Designing new stickers

I feel like my Hobonichi planner has taken over my life because I find myself doing things for this planner. From pens, inks and now stickers.

I have been designing stickers that I want to use on my planner, this time I wanted the designs to lean more on the functional side but I still want to include a few decorative elements too. I already have one finished and I love how it turned out. I think it looks really cute and I am excited to share and upload them on the shop soon! I think I will make 2-3 more designs before I release them on the shop. If you are curious, I already have new Hobonichi products on the shop, you can check them below.

Something about work

I have been thinking about asking my boss if I could move my schedule from 8 to 5 and then one day, I got a message from our PM asking if we would like to come to work an hour earlier so we can finish early in the afternoon.

Our work schedule for years has always been 9-6. There’s nothing wrong with it but it also means that it’s already dark outside when I’m finished with work. I would love to go outside, play with our dogs and witness the sunlight slowly fade into darkness (whoa, dramatic!). So I am loving this new schedule so much!

Where/how to start?

I have been asking myself this question a lot. There are things that I have already started to do but there are still things that I seem to avoid doing even though I really wanted to do it.

I wanted to paint again. I really do. I keep adding it to my planner but I always put it off until I have to move it to the next day. The cycle continues and I can’t seem to stop it. I have ignored my gouache and watercolors paints for too long. I know it’s just a matter of starting but the resistance is so strong.

I am really hoping I can make time this week.

The illustrations

When I decided that I will be continuing my Life Lately series here on the blog, I knew I wanted to add some doodles to accompany the content. I also wanted to make sure that it will not take up too much of my time so I settled with simple outlines and colors. I’ve also wanted to try this style for a really long time and I am glad that I am finally getting comfortable with adding outlines to my drawings. It looks very different from my previous artworks but I love it’s simplicity.

Thank you so much for reading this very first Life Lately entry on my Blog. I am not sure when the next post will be but hopefully it will be next week.

Take care and happy journaling!