books — Hey There Michelle Blog

My boyfriend turned 50 years old on January 1st.

While decade birthdays are usually special in my book, a half-century decade birthday is triple special! COVID-19 ruined all hope of being able to throw my handsome SO a surprise birthday bash—something I was really looking forward to. I came up with what ended up being the next best thing: a family gift.

His kids will tell you it was all my idea, but the truth is, I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without their help. I also got his aunts and grandmother to contribute and in the end, a masterpiece was born.

The entirety of this book was handmade: the cover (binders board, book cloth, photo paper, PVA glue), the interior (invitation paper) and the text block (Epson Presentation Paper Matte). I collected images and messages from everyone and designed the layout in InDesign, printed everything out in-house (literally, in my house), and assembled the book on my own.

This project was the most emotionally invested project I’ve worked on in years.

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Special thanks goes to Titis Liz, Luz, and Penny, Grandma, Jocelin, Jasmine, and Ricky. Without you, this gift wouldn’t have been as special. <3

Quarantine. It’s something we associate with lepers or someone who is insanely contagious….aka lepers.

But, alas, the good lot of us in the States and around the world are in quarantine to help flatten the curve, as they say.

Things are different. I’ve more or less slowed down my job hunt, as no one is really hiring. Their postings are on auto-renew for the most part, while other are looking for cheap labor or are scraping together work to create a job. Both are good for those who are just starting, but for me? I need to pick up where I left off.

Anyway, while enjoying this newfound time at home, I was able to finish up my spring semester at Temple, thus knocking out a whole year of graduate school with only one and a half left. I was able to maintain my 4.0, so I’m looking forward to doing it again in the fall. I also picked up a new hobby, which I’m going to turn into sales in my Etsy shop: creating wax seals.

The idea is to illustrate greeting cards and sell a card, a similarly decorated envelope and a self-adhesive wax seal as a bundle to those who enjoy buying those things. An example is the card set I made for Mother’s Day for my own mom, as shown in the photo on the left.

Tied in with the wax seals and card illustrations is embossing. I watch a lot of creative stuff on Instagram and see a lot of people who hand-letter using embossing powders and heat-transfer foils. They looked neat, so I decided to try. I’m only as far as embossing, though, I haven’t made it to foils yet, but it’s coming!

Alongside those things, I’ve been trying to read more, but being sucked into the Animal Crossing hole has sort of commandeered that extra free time I had. The good news is, I’m coming upon a duration of boredom with the game, so reading may reclaim that spot for a few days. The book I’m currently engaged in is called Eyes of the Grave, written by a high school friend of mine, Chelsea Callahan, with whom I still keep in touch. It’s an interesting fantasy about a woman, Rebekah Devereaux, who is partnered with her estranged husband on a murder case where she sees herself as the murderer in these visions she gets when she touches the skin of the other person. I’m not giving this story any justice, and I’m sure I butchered the story a bit, but it’s worth a read and is only $10 on Amazon. I’m a little over half way finished and am pretty pumped to read the rest to find out what happens.

There’s been some freelance work sprinkled in here and there. I currently have a media kit I’m working on for a friend, a new logo design for a mobile cigar business, and the usual EGD stuff.

Finally, I’ve been super interested in racking up as many certifications as I can until things “go back to normal”, or at least, as normal as they can be. I finished up my HubSpot Academy social media cert today, so that’s exciting! I totally added this onto my LinkedIn page. I also found that Harvard University is offering free courses, so I’m going to be working on one course at a time with them. I won’t get a verified certificate (though you can for a fee), so I’m just “auditing” the class. Wonder if it made more sense to pay the $90 for a certificate… Anyway, my first course will be in computer science! It was between advertising/marketing and computer science for me when I was deciding what graduate program to pursue, and in this case, ADV/MKTG won the fight. But this way, I’ll be able to learn about CS and maybe have enough background to achieve something bigger in the future!

I’ve opened up comments on this post because I want to hear what all of you have been doing this quarantine season!