Spreadin' myself around....

....Like the common illustration lady of the night that I am.

Just thought I'd better update with what I've been doing with myself in the past week or so since becoming unceremoniously unemployed. Aside from crying.

Jokes.

I've been on a massive self promotional push, basically.

• I now have a profile over on Society6, that place where all the cool kids are at. Join me, follow me, mmm.

• I'm also on CR's Creative Handbook, although no work posted up there yet; technical hitch.

• I'm up on IdeasTap now, a new site that showcases emerging artistic talent.

• I have just sent out 60+ self promotional postcards to Art Directors who I think would like my work. I wanted to send more but oh em gee stamps are expensive these days! 60 2nd class = £18. Now that's not a lot but I have many grand schemes in my head for cool self promotional mail outs (including badges woo) and I so don't have the budget yet. So I'm starting small and targeted, hoping I get a few nice clients who will give this talented graduate a break (heh) and then I can build my empire from there.

• I've also been compiling a list of awesome design studios who might want to hear from me, looking for someone for a placement/tea maker. That could be me. The list is one thing, it's writing emails/sending cool stuff to them that will take time, I'm not the kind to do a generic 'dear sir' email, that's lame and never got anyone anywhere.

• The piece-de-resistance is my super cool Mini Portfolio that I am going to churn out like a factory queen and send your way. That's more art directors (who I think need the extra effort to be impressed), and illustration agencies too. I would love to be represented by an agency and this is the way forward. Also any super cool studios might get one. Bear in mind they take an hour to make each. I'm spending all this evening doing some. They're cute though.

See.

• Applying to any placements in London that I know I'd be good at and applying lots. Even the unpaid ones (Boo). I have a thing against unpaid placements; I think it devalues the work and it's a joke that graduates have to work for free to be taken seriously in this industry. You either do the free placement or get nowhere. Sigh. But as I'm close to London right now and can sort of semi afford kind of to work for free a bit, I should do it. Because someone else will. And they'll get the awesome job.

Depressing news:

I didn't get the amazing placement at AMV.BBDO. This was upsetting. It was a 3 month, 3 day a week, paid placement, working in the Art Production Dept, helping out on all manner of daily tasks and sampling the life of a busy advertising agency. Basically my ideal job; I would have loved to have got it, and I would have gotten so much out of it. Anyway, turns out they're not taking anyone on! So at least it wasn't a rejection because I was rubbish. So there. Tres upsetting :( On the look out for more things.

There's a job going in Peacock's in Leighton Buzzard. Where I live. I really should apply. It's upsetting to work in retail when I've got so much potential but needs must. I can't be all high and mighty about it, I have to suck it up and do it because no one else is paying me right now.

A little help?

Oh, it seems to be 2010. How did that happen?

Hello there! It has been a while, almost exactly a month since my last post. This is of course because something called Christmas happened, which we all know is the best time of year, except if you work in retail, then it is the worst. So I literally stopped internetting for about 3 weeks - didn't even check my email or nuffin. The hours that I wasn't spending at work I was doing christmassy/relaxy things with family, and it actually felt great to completely unplug. It also meant that I did almost nothing creative, except wrap some presents rather beautifully, but honestly, I feel no guilt. Christmas was hard. I got 6 days off over the whole xmas/new year period, which is a lot less than most of you, I bet. This is the problem you see, if I was still a student I'd get 2 or 3 weeks off, and if I had a decent job I'd get about 2 off as well. But, as a recent graduate and bottom of the pile, I had to sell sell sell to you consumer people. Ah.

So as a result of this, here are some facts:

I have 500+ unread emails in my hotmail, all of which are newsletters of some sort. Ugh.
I have 1000+ unread items in my RSS reader. Yep. Clearly I was the only one who stopped blogging over christmas. You crazies.
I had about 35 comments waiting for approval on this blog, 34 of which were spam. Which I don't mind because a few of them were hilarious. Most are just in chinese which means nothing to me, but some seem to be written by spam bots who string several unrelated words together to form nonsensical sentences. Which, me being me, I find fascinating and am going to make a new illustration project from because they are great :D
I have 0 job offers. (unsurprisingly, lols.)
I have about 7 new twitter followers, how I don't know because I stopped tweeting for a while too.
I have a brand new shiny digital camera (its pink!!) which I got from father christmas so I can post even more amazing pictures. Ah. Did I tell you its pink?

So, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, let's get this show back on the road.

Oh, yes. My job wasn't extended past christmas temp. The most gutting thing ever. So last day was yesterday. So I'm FRIGGIN UNEMPLOYED AGAIN. However, I'm still waiting to hear back about an interview I had at none other than AMV.BBDO before christmas so mega fingers crossed for me. More on that later.

So I'm spending my new found free time so promote myself to commissioners and get some illustration jobs, hopefully. Again, more on how I'm going to do this in the next post, which is tomorrow. I'm literally going to do the 9-5 thing at my mac up here in my loft and work my ass off to become rich and famous.

2010 = Rachel gets awesome jobs, moves out, finds some sort of boy-type. Trust me.