Sink or Swim

After researching for the right document management system for hours, I am now ready to call it a day. I guess my mind isn’t really into working lately, what with party invitations, messages arriving at my inbox every hour. All my friends are in holiday mode already so why can’t I? Well, it’s because I really need to finish some of the projects so I can get paid before New Year. Knowing my clients’ penchant for sending urgent tasks at the last minute, I want to send them something that they can review early so they can get back to me as soon as possible. After December 29, I won’t be entertaining nor answer work emails anymore.

A new project landed on my lap so I’m now shopping for a very nice e-Commerce WordPress theme. Luckily, there are so many talented designers and developers out there so I have tons of options to choose from.What’s good about these themes  is that all the features that you need are already in place. You can use them as is or customize them, which is what I’m doing to do to fit my client’s design requirements.

All these are from Themeforest.net

The Jewelry Shop

The Furniture Store

Clothes Shop

It doesn’t matter what your going to sell. As long as you know your way around WordPress themes, you can create some very serious e-Commerce websites with these.

Talking about room heaters has never been my expertise since we live in a tropical country. So when my colleagues discussed about room heaters while in the middle of the meeting, I couldn’t help but tune out. Little I know they were talking about a big project that needed a lot of research. When they called my name and asked if I’m okay with the unknown task, I immediately said yes without understanding at all. So now I’m on my 4th hour of researching for ecommerce plugins and still not even close to filing out the top three list that we should try. Lesson learned – never space out no matter how boring the topic is.

Every working mom needs the best multivitamins especially if they have a newborn baby like me. I never sleep for longer than an hour anymore but thankfully, I work from home so I don’t have to waste time to get dressed and commute to work. As soon as the baby is asleep, I can just go to my work area wearing my PJs and start designing. With that said, I need to finish the following before the day ends:

- Convert a design to CMS Made Simple

- Edit a Joomla template

- Send four design quotes to new clients

- Revise the initial logo studies

- Finalize brochure text and layout

I’m currently photoshopping one of the faces of the customer of my client. He’s a photographer and part of his package is to erase all skin breakouts, skin discoloration that you will end up looking like a model for acne gel. Although small time, I do enjoy working on these projects. They are not stressful and the deadlines are not that tight. It’s fun to “smudge, sharpen and blur” someone’s features without them looking like a different person. I’ve been enhancing my pictures to reduce the eyebags for so long, it’s already second nature to me.

After researching for the most affordable distributor water filter, I find that I have no strength left to do anything else. I just want to lie down on the bed and read a light book or watch a movie. Not that any of those are even possible with two kids in the house. But a working mother can dream. I really need to get things done before 2PM as I want to catch the early Christmas sale at the mall. Hopefully, the kids will be asleep by then so I will have a total of 2 hrs to do a version of those shop-all-you-can in 30 minutes games.

It’s 5:30AM but babies don’t believe on sleeping-in so here I am, sleep deprived and dizzy, yet trying my best to make the most of this hour. I started by browsing wedding dresses so I can get inspiration for a bridal site that I will be working on in a few hours. And that is how I stumbled upon this dress from Liz Fields’ web site. The outline and the electric pleats of her dress just gave me an idea for a web site background and now can’t wait to get started.

I hope this inspiration will last until I can use my two hands. As of the moment, my left hand is busy playing with my daughter’s rattle while the right one is typing away, replying to client emails at 60 words per minute. Can’t waste time when you’re swamped as I am.

My work load is overflowing, as always, which is why I couldn’t believe I spent my whole morning browsing through the demo reels at Go2Production.com. This company provides top quality TV commercial production, motion effects production, visual effects and 3D modeling among other things. Unlike other video production companies, they take pride in having their talents of directors, script writers, cinematographers, 2D and 3D artists, audio and visual effects experts in one location. They are obviously first class based from the video clips that I’ve seen. I am totally amazed and slightly envious of the team’s very cool portfolio. I know I should’ve pursued motion graphics when I had the chance.

But anyway, check out their post production visual effects section and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

(Now this, I may have a chance of doing. Perhaps as the assistant of the assistant of the assistant of the motion graphics designer.) Seriously, I love being a part of a company that’s filled with geniuses and very creative people. The best way to be really good at some thing is to learn from the masters.

Visual effects compositing by the way is the process of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images/clip. Go2Productions.com can clean the most challenging background or replace whatever element you need in order to execute a seamless motion graphic. Using Maya, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects, they are confident that they can meet any requirements.

Now that’s a fun way to earn money, don’t you think?