Design Tip: How to Change Adobe Illustrator CS6 Screen Back to White

Hi everybody! Adobe Illustrator CS6 just came out a few days ago and I couldn't be more excited about it. I will admit, however (and I knew this was coming so it wasn't a surprise) that I am not in love with the new black user interface. It is very similar to Photoshop and while I don't mind it in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements I find it to be too distracting when I'm actually illustrating or designing layouts. So the black background had to go.

Thankfully it was super easy to change. :)

If you find yourself in the same boat, here's how you can revert your screen back to white.

Go into your Illustrator preferences (found at the top left hand corner of your screen) and then "user interface".

I changed my brightness to light at 100% and then change my canvas color to white.

Voila! That did the trick. 

I haven't had too much time to really play around with this yet, but I do have to say that I am loving it so far. It seems to run even faster than CS5 and faster is always a bonus for me. I tend to have a lot of files open at once which can sometimes bog the program down.

Has anyone else downloaded this yet and if so, what do you think?

 

Cleaning House & Other Randomness

Hi everybody! It has been a crazy couple of weeks (crazy good of course!) so I apologize for not blogging as much. How have you all been doing? I have a bunch of new designs to add to the website (on both EBD and Ink Obsession) which I hope to get on soon. :)

I just bought a new external hard drive so one of the things I've been busy with is cleaning up all my files. I'm trying to just keep the bare minimum (basically the things I use daily) on my Mac, and I've been trying to move everything else off it. In doing this it has made me look a lot at my current designs. Not really so much for the clipart & digital paper packs, but the etsy shop sets, logos, invites, etc. I routinely "retire" designs, to make room for new sets and also to get rid of the things that don't sell quite as well, but I have a rather large list or "retirees" this time around. On one hand it is kind of sad, but it is kind of exciting too, because I love making room for new things. :)

So other than the usual of processing orders & designing away that is what I've been up to.

I do have a question though...if you have a shop, how often do you update your designs and do you ever "retire" them? And if you have more than one shop, how do you organize it? I like how I have my websites set up, but I'm not crazy about how I have my etsy shops. I want them to mirror the websites more and right now are just kind of a jumbled up mixture. I'm trying to figure out if I should just leave things alone or if there is a better way to organize everything on etsy. I'd love to hear how others do it!

Happy Tuesday! :)

Design Life :: Working at Home | The Pajama Myth

Whenever I meet someone new & we get to talking about our respective careers, I almost always hear the same thing, "That is so cool! You must work in your pajamas all day!". And while I admit I would probably like to do this from time to time, I never do.

For me, one of the most important things about having a work at home business is treating it like a business and giving myself structure. Now I can fully admit I have obsessive compulsive tendencies and this may not work for everybody (and I understand that this kind of goes against what is kind of fun about working from home) but that is OK. The reality is I wake up each morning with the mindset that I am going to my job. I just don't have to drive to get there. :)

Each morning starts out the same Monday-Friday, with waking up around 5am, getting a quick workout in, showering, eating breakfast, straightening up the house a little bit and then I settle down in my studio (with my coffee!) before 8am. From there I usually stay put until about 4pm, breaking only for lunch. For a long time I played around with the structure of my day, but I've found that if I treat my job just like any other full time job, and get all my personal/home responsibilities out of the way first thing in the morning, my mind is totally clear and I can focus on my clients and designs and I'm not worried about any dishes that may be lingering in the sink. :)

After 4pm I am a little more lax and run errands, make dinner and finish up on any housework and then try to just check my email once or twice after that. I'll touch on this more in another blog post, but when I didn't structure my day I found I was working from the moment I got up until I went to bed, with absolutely no life. Let's face it, that is no fun and you can burn out really quickly.

For those of you that work from home, how do you work best? Do you like to work in your PJ's and let your creative juices flow throughout the day, or are you a little OCD like me? :) I'd love to hear!