Meet Alyssa Laufer, AKA the Phillyfoodaholic (@phillyfoodaholic). She kept her social media presence as a food critic a secret (not really, it just never came up) with our newly formed friend group for a while. When she let it slip that she managed an Instagram that had over 1600 followers and was the reason she was able to try a lot of varying foods throughout Philadelphia, we all immediately followed her for support (and to drool during and after class).
Read moreHobbies of Quarantine
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!
Emchi Social Media
While driving through town one day, my boyfriend and I noticed a new nail salon had opened up. From the outside, it looked big, well-lit and really nice. The following weekend, I made an appointment.
Walking in, I was impressed—the color theme inside was pristine white, black and crystal. They looked to be full-service - hair, nails, makeup, the works! Every nail station was occupied, and a good number of the massage chairs for pedicures had a content customer seated, receiving their seemingly much needed ped pampering session.
A few minutes after signing in for my appointment, I was called to a station where I met one of the co-owners, named Peter, who was also happy working in the salon as a nail tech. After talking with him for a little bit, he learned that I’m half Vietnamese and could speak broken Viet. He, elated with this situation, began telling everyone around him about me and a relationship was formed. One of my appointments, sadly was not with Peter, but with a woman named Nicole with whom I would soon develop a different relationship—a working relationship.
Peter, his wife, and Nicole were working on a very important project: their own line of dip powder, a new, but popular, product in nail salons. They needed a designer to help with social media ads to promote Emchi (Vietnamese for little sister). In talking with Nicole, I told her what I did for a living and she asked for my phone number. I left her with a personal business card and from there we took off.
I designed the ads for every demo day, holiday, trade show, convention and anything they needed visual content for. These layouts went on their Instagram and Facebook to alert people of what, when, and where and it seemed to work for them because they kept emailing me back.