Cindy Ho Designs Reopening in 2013

Back in October 2011, my husband and I decided to start on a new adventure.   We have a growing family and needed more space.  It was either move or rebuild.  We chose to rebuild. 

The most difficult wasn’t closing my two stores for the year.  It was not having a home to call your own.  Going through this experience has made me appreciate how blessed we are to be able to do what we did.  When I posted on my West Coast Origami Blog, I really felt the toughest was not creating and doing what I love.  This was true.  However, without a place to call my own, without a place to relax after a stressful day at the office (my day job) it actually affected my mental well being.  I even stopped blogging regularly because I wasn’t able to do anything worth sharing.  Only thing kept me going some days is knowing I’m getting my studio very soon.

I did try to have a little fun.  My family drew and wrote messages on the frame just before the drywall stage.  I drew a sharpie version of my logo.  This is now hidden inside my studio wall, for the future owners to find after I’m long gone.   The builders must have found this amusing.

We moved in 3 weeks ago!  The day we moved in, happiness I’ve been for a year.  We are 90% unpacked and  I’m still working and organizing my workspace.  I will share photos once I’m satisfied it’s complete.  It’s not a big space, but it’s space of my own that I can create and really grow Cindy Ho Designs and West Cost Origami to the next level. 

For now, we decided  to try and get the house ready for Christmas and take the time to recharge.  Work to get my inspiration back and get back into my work at full strength.

Cindy Ho Designs – New Logo!

We made the decision to rebuilt our house a few months ago and one of the realizations is that I will not be able to support my paper craft and  origami business during the year we build.  I have to par down to a creative outlet that will take much less space.  I’ve always been self teaching myself graphic designs.  It combines my interest in computers and my ideas that I can’t express well into a sketchbook. 

I’ve been casually working on Cindy Ho Designs here and there but more of a distraction when I didn’t feel like folding or crafting.  The picture on the left is my original logo.  I know, it’s terrible.  It’s lazy work. 

When I told my husband I decided to switch gears, as always, he’s supportive.  I wanted a simple clean look and at the same time represent where I come from but no idea where to start.  He said I was always been a ‘butterfly kinda girl’.

So I started from there!  I wanted to bring into my logo of where I came from.  West Coast Origami is a hobby business that I started by accident and it’s been good to me.  I wanted to represent it in my logo.  The fore wing is an abstract origami crane.  The back wing details representations of the ‘west coast’, with mountains, rolling hills and water. 

Learning's From this Project

Ideas evolve.  I originally was going to do just a butterfly, but the details in the wings made the whole picture looked ‘busy’.  I realized that I like to see my name in the logo itself

The most challenging was choosing the colour.  I always thought it’d be purple, but it ended up to be blue, which gives a calming simple affect to my logo.

Starting on a New Adventure!

One day, my husband returned home, looked at me with a serious look on his face and said, “We need to talk”  My husband wanted my take to tear down our 50 year plus bungalow and build a new house!

Our current house is too small for our growing family.  We are nearly done with our mortgage.  Buying elsewhere would move us 1 hour away as we can’t afford our area with the upward pressure on housing prices

So, I said yes, with one condition.  I get my own space.  I get a space to work on my designs.  A craft room.  My own studio! 

A REAL WORK SPACE

I don’t have a space to be creative.  I have craft and supplies crammed in various areas of our living room, which is also our family living space.  And it’s a MESS with toys. 

Isn’t it awful? Running both my design and origami business has been inefficient.  Okay, I could do a better job organizing the kids things but I don’t want to pretend I’m superwoman either. 

So here is the first peek of my new craft room!

Okay, I do have to share a corner of this room with my husband for his desk.  I’m selfish, I really want this whole room to myself.  (now I pout with my arms crossed). 

I know, I really have lots of room.  I’ve seen beautiful craft rooms all over the web and the some only have a quarter of the space I get and they look stunning.  For months I’ve been looking at other crafters and designers on their awesome craft spaces and been posting them on Pinterest. 

I’m so excited!  We won’t be tearing down and building until next year but I will definitely blog about the process.  The downside is that I have to put both my businesses on hold for now, but it’s a short term sacrifice!

“Uncool” Email Domain Prejudice

I recently received a email titled Yahoos and Hotmails Need Not to Apply.  Having an ‘uncool’ email domain could potential move your resume into the recycling box!

It never occurred to me that using a Hotmail account affected my online presence, both professionally and personally!

When I began my career, Hotmail was one of the first web based email providers.  Most emails were server based so you couldn’t access them unless you were on the school or company network.  Internet at home, well, most of us didn’t have the service. It was important for me to have access to my personal email from anywhere I had access to the internet, which was school or work.

Things have changed and I still have my personal Hotmail email address.  I heard and read that people are moving to Gmail but It’s all about simplicity with me.  It’s just easier to have one email address.  I use a PC and they are all on the Microsoft platform.  When I opened up my West Coast Origami and Cindy Ho Designs, it was natural for me use Hotmail.  Microsoft made it extremely easy to access them on the email program and keep them separated.  

Reading this article, a lot of readers seemed outraged and dismissing the point.  If one person is prejudiced to out-dated domain emails, there must be more who share this opinion.  As a freelancer, I cannot afford to lose potential customers.  Having that said, maybe those same potential customers may be more challenging to work with if they contacted me prior to reviewing my portfolio.  Challenging or not, would you want to miss a chance on potential clients?

This article influenced me to get a Gmail account.  Not that I’m happy about learning a new email system, but I’m working to build a good online presence. 

As for recruiting a candidate for a important position in your company?  Why would anyone dismiss a resume just because they had an ‘uncool’ email domain?   Whether it’s Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, all it means is that person knows how to set up an account.  Unless their user name is unprofessional like Ilovetogetdrunk, I don’t think it matters if that person uses Hotmail or Gmail would it?

Made it on Cargoh’s Front Page!

Okay, I know I shouldn’t be all that excited.  I think how it really works is that Cargoh uses a formula that gives all listings an equal chance to be listed when you go to Cargoh’s home page AND that front page changes every 10 minutes.  If anyone can tell me if I’m wrong, let me know.

Even so, let’s just pretend that my product got put on the front page it’s due to popular demand! It was a boost to see my listing right there when I went to log in to my store.  Can you figure out which item is mine?

I’m sure if read my blogs regularly, you’d probably already know I’m a origami addict and guessed it’s the second one. If this card is familiar to you, you might have seen it in my West Coast Origami blog:

My Card was Featured in an Artfire Collection!

Did you have any nice surprises that happened expectantly recently?