The timing wasn’t right for me in so many areas of my life for so long. I’m not good at being patient but I decided to try it. I thought, maybe I should just focus on getting better in other areas of my life while my shop isn’t my favorite. I’m either full speed ahead with qk or it is at a dead stop. For the past month, I was pretty much at a dead stop. It’s not like I wasn’t doing anything. I was making things but it wasn’t coming together at all.

I am a huge believer in working when creativity strikes. Whether that is at 3 am and I’m tipsy at my apartment painting or at a coffee shop in the middle of the day sketching. I think you should work when you feel like it. (And by work, I mean sit down and paint or draw. Like actually make stuff.) I work just about around the clock with all of the other stuff that comes with having a shop. From blogging to taking pictures to posting listings, printing, shipping and answering emails…it’s a job. Anyway, it wasn’t working out and I was getting incredibly frustrated with myself and my work.

Thank goodness for patience and good people who believe in me and my art. I’m not even kidding when I say I feel like the parts of my life that I’ve been working on for the past nine months all fell into place this week. The past two months of my shop work came together randomly this week as well. It was like all of a sudden I had the spring collection I had dreamt up. It’s always a work in progress for me because I’m constantly adding to my collections. BUT I can tell you what a relief it is to have a vision and to know that I made that a reality. I have board after board on Pinterest of what I wanted this spring line to look like but I never really know if my Pinterest life is going to translate into real life. For awhile I didn’t think it was going anywhere.

Little by little, the wall in my room was filling up with new work. I would create a piece and put it on the wall even if it wasn’t going in the collection. That wall was the first thing I saw every morning I woke up. It was probably the best idea I’ve had to remind myself that this is my passion and I’m building this thing. I taught myself how to paint and let me tell you, that was a game changer because I can whip out a painting in less than an hour. I learned how to do VERY basic things on Photoshop such as making a pattern and removing a background (for those of you that know how to use Photoshop you can insert an LOL here…I’m an armature). So for me, these few pieces of work symbolize more than just putting more pieces into my shop. It is a collection that is about learning, patience, growing and changing directions. My first two collections were strictly fashion illustrations. There are no fashion illustrations in this collection. I had this idea in my head that I was not a real artist until I taught myself how to paint and I wanted to do something new. I slammed on the breaks and took a sharp turn and I am so thankful that it has been received so well.

xo-

qk