It must be me, but not completing a post, designed for a specific day, irks me. Instead of reworking it, call it OCD if you must, I’d just rather write something else.
I’d like to take this time to introduce myself. Hi everyone, I’m Kelly, and I am the owner and founder of Plentiful Designs. I am looking to set up a blog to help spread the word of all the cool projects I’ve done and discuss how I grow every day. Plentiful Designs is a custom art studio that ranges in all types of media and subjects. I am a one woman show, but have enough ideas to keep my mind going. Currently, I cater to traditional art, graphic design, and original crochet pieces.
My story takes place years ago, while I was a kid. I moved a lot, similar to a military family but not for the same reasons. We would relocate if my father had gained a new position in a new state somewhere. Picking up and going seemed to be the only thing I really knew aside from playing in the dirt and being a kid, until I found and practiced art. I remember in third grade while we lived in Boonton, New Jersey, I had received my first “How to Draw” book in my favorite subject, Horses. My father would follow along in the book and make his variation of a wooden horse instead, and the humor I found in his tries was what encouraged me to keep practicing. I became so good at horses, that I didn’t even think to do anything else until we moved to Oakland, New Jersey and I met my best artistic influence, Ashley Rosenfeld. She was a free minded individual and certainly the best friend I had ever known. Eventually in seventh grade I started trying other animals, learned shading from Ashley, and minor details that could dramatically change the viewer’s prospective. I’m not sure if I ever got a chance to thank her, but in every piece I cherished her two cents even if it wasn’t what I was looking to hear.
I had some battles as a teenager with my home life like any teenager would and found art as my gateway to peace and finally got to use it for something more than just ponies and dogs. I designed a few tattoos for friends, and filled up time working as a lifeguard in at least three different places. The time I would get to create art started to stand still, and I wasn’t sure what I could do with it going forward. I wanted to make sure that I reached my goal of being a well known artist, but how? I got into spray painting and was learning how to airbrush when I had been given the opportunity to work in the city at a company called MADA Design, Inc., through my next door neighbor, Christine. They worked primarily with Topps, and Rittenhouse, along with other artists and smaller companies, and I would become an intern helping with production. This was a big move for me, a small town girl going into the city for work; I have to say it wasn’t a dream. Going though and working with them for two days out of the week, Thursday and Friday, for two years grew on me. I couldn’t see living in the city, and maybe that was my draw back in the beginning more than anything, but each season had something to look forward to. Summer in the city is by far my favorite time of year. I had some pretty hilarious moments that were not hilarious when they were happening in other seasons. For instance, in the winter, I had a heavy ski coat on and the tiny strap of the purse that I would carry to hold my CD walkman would always fall off of my shoulder in that coat. It almost seemed like I just didn’t have shoulders. Well one time, I had to tie my shoes, and the strap fell off, I even made eye contact with it and swore at it. I tied my shoe and just like the cartoons, tried to stand up and fell over. My strap was now double tied into my obnoxious sneakers. FANTASTIC! There are other events too that I’ve been teased for, like meeting Stan Lee one time, and not knowing who he was. I sounded like such an idiot! And now-a-days when he shows up in his super hero movies, my husband tells me, “it’s your favorite guy!” Oh what I wouldn’t do to get him to drop it.
At MADA I was an assistant to a graphic designer named Alan. He showed me the ropes and was good to me. Maybe it was obvious that I didn’t know where I was and was just learning Photoshop 5 at the time that gave him patience with me, whatever it was, I appreciated it. There I learned how to “path” or cut out players from their backgrounds, change “Player DeLongName” to the player’s name and other important skills that I wouldn’t have had given my projected path.
I was going to school at Bergen Community College for my Associates in Fine Arts, taking the recommended classes to finish and be accepted at my next step in college. While being at MADA, I knew my time was growing short and I would have to stop all together, but knew it was for all of the wrong reasons. My parents got on my case for what my projected major was, and knew I had to change it. Originally I wanted to be a 3D graphic designer that would work on creating worlds in Maya or 3D Studio Max for companies like Pixar who was just starting out, or DreamWorks. My parents pursued me and eventually changed my mind in a nonsensical argument; I changed my new major to teaching art and went to school locally at Montclair State University. This change was hard to explain to the people I had grown close to at MADA but it was the only clear thing to do, thank them for their time, and go my separate way.
I started at Montclair in 2005. Being accepted with my Associates was the best feeling educationally. Getting to school and just focusing on my major is what collage really should be about, especially for undergrads, but it isn’t. My time revolved around a wide selection of education classes, art studio classes in EVERY media including metal, and student teaching towards the end. It took three additional years of overloading my schedule in the morning and evening with classes and giving me time to still work at the Wyckoff YMCA in the late afternoon to bring in some revenue with swim classes or guarding. To this day, I am not sure how I did it, but I did and graduated in 2008 with my Bachelors in Fine Arts and Education with my Certification of Education with Advanced Standing. I think it wasn’t until my graduation that I realized, college students graduate every semester, and then remembered how many schools there were across the country. In this moment, what felt like a huge success, just sank in my stomach knowing that the rat race was starting soon.
I must have sent resumes and online applications all summer with only one possibility two hours away in Piscataway. That fell through just out of a last minute change to the software I would be teaching fifth and sixth graders for twenty minutes. Oh how that moment haunted me. I had the plans all worked out for the project we were doing and then the day upon shaking my hand the woman I was conversing with dropped the bombshell. I must have sounded like an idiot, as if my whole life of training and what was written in my resume was complete bologna.
That year my then boyfriend and I were engaged to be married. Marriage prep is the most confusing thing in the world. The party planning and everything was so overwhelming but with the help of my parents, it went off without a hitch and we were married in September of 2009. 2009 was a hard year. There is a mix of all types of emotions such as now being married, learning what my role was now and how it changed from his girlfriend status, and balancing everything in a tiny apartment with the only amenity being a drive way to park both cars and a hot shower was difficult. We were also blessed with becoming pregnant with our first child, Zachary that year as well. I honestly had doubts about being able to carry with the array of sporting injuries I had acquired but I did well until April, even with a failure of a nursing staff around us and an OBGYN who held himself high on a bullshit pedestal. The doctor we had was solely responsible for the death of Zachary, and he “got away with it” by inaccurately filling out my paperwork. I know what happened. I was awake for all of it. There is a saying that some doctors say, “What do you call a medical student who passed with C’s? Doctor.”
I died when I lost Zachary and everything I thought I knew changed. I had to change jobs because I was having melt downs seeing other children, or happy new parents cherishing they’re little replicas. I shied away from teaching and just looked for a regular 9-5 job at an office somewhere, so that I could regulate my emotions, stress, and overall depression. In February of 2011 on the 21st, his monthly anniversary day, I started working through an agency at a company called EDist or Eastern Distributing in Operations as an Administrative Assistant. It helped me refocus and also that year I started Plentiful Designs. Plentiful Designs was going to be my escape where I could start working on artistic projects and post them online in my portfolio on meok.deviantart.com. It eventually dawned on me that I could start selling and listed them after instruction from my sister-in-law who turned me on to Etsy.com. The logo for Plentiful Designs and actually the name was decided on after I designed a couple logos for a photographer that worked at EDist next to me on the opposite side of our half cubicles in the sales department. I used her initials in some of them and came up with the squared off infinity mark that I use today. Then I came up with the name, and wa-la, Plentiful Designs was becoming a more professional shop.
I started with small things with big ideas. My whole goal was to create a custom work that could be used and reused but have the original flare that customers would be interested in. I dabbled in graphic design with coloring pages, airbrushing, digital touch-up, photo refinishing, and then into some artisan crafts with needle work by hand. I made my brother a Jake Blanket inspired by Adventure Time and views to my shop boomed from 100 to 1000 overnight. My husband said that it most likely was linked to a popular fan site and that’s why it was seen. Later on, I dabbled with invites, thank you cards, cupcake toppers, announcements, and seasonal tickets for parties, but found my niche after my mother-in-law had taught me how to crochet. After making a couple of traditional, follow the book patterns, I branched out and tried my own thing. It wasn’t easy and I do know that I gave up for periods at a time, saying, “Maybe this isn’t for me.”
During the two years that I was with EDist, I started creating more, some projects came to me and I would feel rejuvenated after each success. Once I started putting up some of these projects and noticed they were selling, I knew I could push the envelope. As the stress lifted, and I became pregnant, FINALLY, with our second son, Ryan, I felt my life learning how to live again. Ryan was also a preemie by two months like his brother, and was born in February of 2013. Having a preemie really changes your perspective on what parenting means to you rather than what a book has to tell you. It was scary for the first eight months of his life. Poor little guy had bad acid reflux when he was finally allowed home from the NICU and Intermediate Care that I had to spend most nights sleeping with him to keep him upright on our terrible, back breaking, failure of a reclining couch we got from Raymore and Flannigan. We were fortunate enough to get to borrow a reclining chair that my father-in-law had in their house which helped me deal with a couple months until he was able to sleep in a small, rocking basinet. That’s not what it was called though. It was maybe $40 and Fisher Price made it… it was kind of like a hammock that sat him up a little and had a defined seat for his bottom. That item was such a life saver.
I look at Ryan from where he was then to now being almost a year and a half and I’m so proud of him. I manage my time now creating projects while he’s sleeping or down for the night. Being two different stages of “mommy” for two different situations has taught me a higher level of patience with people. I give great customer service now, knowing that some people just have it harder than me but still want to take the time to make something special for a loved one that they care about.
Today I have a ton of ideas and I am still learning. This blog will be used to help DIY crafty people like me stay inspired and use references to create your own designs. I will be posting some of my most complicated and complemented original works’ patterns in the coming months with variegated ways to alter the design for size or color usage. I look forward to using this as a gateway to connect with DIY crafters and get my name out there.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing my crafting ideas with you.
Kelly
Plentiful Designs 