Sometimes I fancy myself a designer.

Long ago, in a land far, far away, I had a job as an HTML programmer/web page designer.

This was a wonderfully paying part time gig that I had in addition to my full time bookselling gig.

And I loved it.

But sadly, I wasn't particularly good at it.

Luckily for me, this was back in the dark ages of the internet (like 15 years ago), and nobody else knew what all this internet business was all about anyway.  I used other people's ignorance to hide a multitude of my own sins - namely, the fact that most of my design work was mediocre and lifeless.

"Oh, that's as good as it gets," I would lie cheerfully.  "The internet won't support what you're asking for."  The clients would shrug and agree, because even though I didn't know all that much, I surely knew more than they did.

That job fizzled out a few years later, but I have always missed the chance to be creative that way.  Occasionally, an opportunity will present itself to me and I can put a few of my old design skills (or lack thereof) to use.

I will never be a professional - not by anyone's stretch of the imagination - but I do love messing with design stuff from time to time, and occasionally I'm even kind of proud of it.  Recently I bullied my friend Natalie to give me access to her blog and I came up with this:

I think it's even cuter than my own blog, so now I'm jealous.  Of my own work.  Go figure.  Also, aren't her social media icons TO DIE FOR?  I mean, don't die really, but they ARE stinking cute.

Also, every year I design my own Christmas card.  I think this year's comic book themed one will be hard to top in years to come.  But I'm definitely going to try.

I did a little thing a while back for my husband's boss, and it turned out ok, too.

Don't you love my creative use of the word "void?"

And here's a logo I did for a school.  Pretty cute, huh?

So I'm not in the professional category by any means, but I do like to play around with stuff like this occasionally.  I'm going to add this to my ever-growing list of things that put me into the category of "jack of all trades, master of none." 

Sigh.  Someday I'm going to decide what I want to be when I grow up.