Where does the time go ...?

20th November, 5 weeks to Christmas, October long gone and still no sign of a business :-o

I promised myself to have all the boring administrative part of the set up done by January. But seeing how things are going and how little I did, I can't promise to meet my deadline.

I NEED A BOOST AND A GOOD PLAN OF ATTACK !!!

Back to ....

Temperatures are going down, the cars are horning in the early morning while the kids are running down the pavement....here it is, back to school or other call it "La Rentrée"

Yes, unfortunately the summer holiday is over and it is time to start seriously setting up the business.
Already you might say, well, yes I know the summer was short, I don't know about yours, but mine was good.

It started about mid July with a nice and romantic trip to Croatia with my other half

then went back in childhood for a crazy weekend in a Casa Rural with friends

to later turn 30 and surprisingly celebrate it nicely in family and friends,


then later had to pay London a visit, and fortunately met with friends and shopping treats up there (still love London Fashion !!), visited places I have never been in the 6 years I lived there, like Hampstead Heath...

then finally enjoyed The Costa Brava and its Parks, Nature and fantastic beaches.....

Ahhhhh it was nice...now it is a little hard to set the mind in working mode, but no worries, bit by bit, I will get back to business

9 months and 3 weeks

Yes finally it is over, the delivery has been very hard but that's it: I have obtained my master
So now I am a qualified Fashion designer, Creative Director :-D
It has been a very long and hard 9 months, especially at the end; I thought I was gonna loose it. But I got there and delivered the baby on time.
I am not 100% happy with what I did but, huummm if that was enough to get the tittle, I am happy !!:-D

I kind of already celebrated it by going to Croatia with my other half and spending a romantic holiday there, but some part of me still want to have a few drinks to conclude this again... Will see
Now I am giving myself some time off to enjoy the summer before starting really working on setting up the brand.
Ufff!! I am exhausted !

Nearly there ...

I delivered my final project memoir after 3 weeks of very painful work and almost no sleep. No need to tell you how exhausted I am. I slept 10 h last night!! The first time in the last 3 weeks :-)
Now I still need to prepare for the presentation in front of the jury next week.
Wish me luck !!

1 illustration down, 8 to go

14hrs !!

Sunday morning, 1:30 am, my desk is a mess and I just finished my "fichas tecnicas". It took me bloody 14 hours to get there. Big huge ooouuufff !!!
I still have the illustrations, about 9 of them and the business plan to write and all that in only 3 days !!!! :-/ :*)
OMG !!! Paaaaaaannnniiicccc !!!

Is it the end soon ??

1 week left until I have to deliver the final project and I feel like I have done nothing :-/ I have been working on illustrator for the last week and got my statement line almost done. Still need to do the business plan, the fashion illustrations, sew 3 pieces for real..... :-S
This is so frustrating!! I have so much left to do in so small time, I am starting to panic with a big "P"
I work everyday until 2 am and still I don't see the end. Is it the end yet ?

Drawing and drawing and drawing ....

Hand drawn 51 pieces for the final collection, now just about to do all of this again in illustrator...
So much to do and so little time to accomplish it. This is very stressful !!

Inventory in progress

For the final project of master ;-)

Plan of attack !

This is the last week of the Master and here I am building on a strategy to go through the next 4 weeks of my life and hopefully produce a final master project that will correspond to my standards. Time for a plan of attack !!
Hard, yes very hard as I feel so much like relaxing, putting my feet up and do absolutely nothing....I am exhausted and really fed-up.
Hey !!! I did not spend that tremendous amount of money and waisted all my evenings of the past 9 months to give up now!! So Ladyee, get the motto back to work and get it done !!
Wish me luck, the road is long :-/

In progress

I have rationalised my stress of the other day and I am now trying to do one bit at a time. Anyway I am no wonder women so I can't do everything in same time.
Yesterday I had a financial tutorial about costsheets and other aspects I need to think about while setting up a business... That was useful.
Today I took the time to enjoy the sun, rode to the center and discovered this interesting place : Eliurpi
This little taller-shop is run by its own designer Eli Urpi. This is perfect for my visual merchandising project I thought. This boutique instantly got my eyes attention, cosy, charming vintage style, so inviting !!! Shame it was not opened when I passed by, but never mind, there is a website and a blog where I intend to get in contact with the designer and see what more this charming rincon can offer.
 

Back at home and full of new tools and toys I can play with, I tried myself at watersoluble pencils illustration....huuummm definitely need to progress on that :$
Well now inserted an invisible zip with my new special machine foot... Not bad for a first time, I am quite proud of myself...

Now back to work while the positive spirit still shines !! :-)

The Finishing line

Who would have thought that it would be that hard ??!!!
I knew I was not going to enjoy it fully but I never thought that I would be in the brick of the depression. Really!!
I don't know if it's because managing a fulltime job plus evening school plus tonnes of homework well the whole situation that is driving me nuts or it is because I am deeply disapointed by the school and that is leaving me really puzzled or it's because summer is coming, a lot of festivals and activities in perspective and everybody seems to have fun but not me, because I don't have the luxury of the time to have fun...I don't know but I feel quite sad and I don't know what to do to get better. Maybe time will help.
This is the finishing line, there are only 3 weeks left of school but my stress level is reaching hights: I feel that I am not doing enough, I am so late on every project but I am so tiered and really can't do more that I am already doing. I believe it would be almost impossible to get everything done by the time I have left.
Maybe I am being too ambitious and need to reduce my wishes? I certainly need help! I had my boyfriend doing all the "house management" so I can focus on my design homework, I even had my family helping me on a tremendous project... Is that enough ?! Not so sure, the list of things is never ending.
I am meeting with someone today which I hope will be of great help and will provide me with experts hands.
Will see, my hope is huge!
TBC...

Spring is in the place

Kids are flirting, skirts get shorter, hair are floating with the wind, and with it the hoard of tourists .... Yes spring is here ! Finally !!

What a pleasure to walk in the street without a jacket, and to feel the sun slightly burning the skin... I love spring, the excitement that it brings and that soon summer will be here :-)

But the only downside of this is that my workload also goes crecendo and so until the 18th July, presentation of the final master project.
I sware I will throw a party just to celebrate the end of my hard labour, I so need it ! :-P B-)

I am on holiday :-)

Yes it's true I am on holiday but it took me up to now to realise it. Is this never happened to you before, that you are so busy that you don't even see the holidays coming ???!!
Well hummm for me this is the 2nd time. There is something wrong with me.
I slept until 9 am not bad not bad. I have downloaded blogger app so I can write more spontaneous post on the go like this one. And I just realised that there is some actions going on, on the rooftop of the building in front of my house .... they are recording a movie. And I have been watching them in my best night gown outfit (means my ideous red pyjama) for a good 10 min .....ouuuuucccchhhh I hope I am not appearing in the camera spot :$

YOLO (You Only Live Once) !!

So What's up folks?! How have been your beginning of the year so far ?

Mine, I can say, it has been quite busy and strange. I have been having mixed feelings, excitement, frustration and surely exhaustion.

First, I am still juggling work and school classes, but from a different perspective. I started working from home last month. It is quite a change. I still need to adjust myself but I quite like the fact that I don't have people watching over my shoulders every 5 seconds to see what I am doing. It doesn't mean that I don't work..I do work, I actually work that fast that sometimes, I don't have anything else to do, so after looking for an hour another activity, I end up doing stuffs for the master. So it is quite good.

On the other hand, how is the master going?

Ummmm !! I start feeling a little disapointed by the lack of organisation of the whole course and the poor consistency of some of the classes we have to follow this trimester. It is quite frustrating as we tried to flag that up to the Course Coordinator, but it seems that they believe this is fine...Talking to a dead wall here :-S
Never mind, I believe that if they can't solve it out (or refuse to do so) then I will just take whatever I can from the class, learn whatever I can and hopefully get the Degree at the end.
Talking about the Degree, we finally got the dates of our last assignment/exam/presentation...or call it like you want and it will be right in a middle of July. So I am not looking forward to May and June as I will probably be working like crazy to get the project finished and dusted. Yes....long hours of work coming !!
But we do say "YOLO !! You Only Live Once "  (like my sister Le Blabla de Salsita told me the other day on whatsapp), so no regret on anything I have done so far, even if I feel very tired and quite exhausted right now (awake since 6 am). I am convinced that I am learning from every steps I have been taking and this is life: it is not meant to be easy.
So far, I have been doing quite a lot of work which I never thought I could be able to do and which I can be proud of. I have learned to use Illustrator, some parts of Photoshop, I have drawn my first digital mini-collection, and I started to go through the fundamental structure of a business....You may judge from yourself here.

Extract from Mini Collection 60´s

Moodboard Inspiration Mini Collection Stone Island

I am currently working on setting up my brand/business model, and that will probably be my next post, but for now, please leave me a comment, tell me anything my work makes you think of.

Ciao.

Ouuuuuufff !!! Happy New Year !!

Here we are, in January 2013.

Ouuuufffffff !!! I don't know about you, but I am quite happy that 2012 has finished. To be honest it has not been a very good year for me and I am so looking forward to see what changes 2013 has to offer.

So how did you guys spend the last few days of 2012?

Me, I first jungled between my work and the master like a crazy girl and I am so glad to say that I have resigned from my job as it was wayyyyyyy !!! tooooo !! muuuucccchhh !!!
A lot of sad events happened between the day I told my boss that I was resigning and my last day, which makes me so happy and released to be out of it. I am not going to clean my dirty clothes on this page, but let's just say, Oufff  again !! :-)
Anyway, between all this, I secured a new job in another company and since the 3rd of January, I work from home. I will talk about this in another post, but for now, let's go back to the end of 2012.

So my last day at my hell job came and it was really like hell. I was supposed to leave work at 6 pm to get to the University at 6:30 pm, to do a presentation (about Choolips sustainable fashion label) that I work on every nights for 7 days, and unfortunately did not managed to do it as I left work at 8 pm...Absolutley gutted ! But my teacher, very nice and comprehensive, understood my situation and accepted my apologies to just review my presentation which I had printed out for him. Oufff again !!
The next day at about 11 am, I was already in the airplane direction Paris, where I went back to spend Christmas with my family. This quick break was so refreshing and very nice, without saying that I ate like a pig, normal at Christmas. ;-)
I took the opportunity of being in the capital of Fashion to go walking on the pavements of the "Grands Magasins", to see the famous animated windows of Paris. I have to say I was a little bit disapointed. I think previous years have been a lot better and showed a lot more creativity. This year, everything was only based on Louis Vuitton and Dior.
Here I got some pictures for you to see and judge from yourself.

Then after this few days, I came back in Barcelona to spend also very nice time with friends celebrating the new year, around a Raclette, a traditionelle French dish stolen to the Swiss.

And that's it, we jump into 2013 !

Happy New Year everyone, may your wishes come true and may you get an even better year than before!! 
:-)