For ages I had been meaning to use my free months of classes with Skillshare that a friend had gifted me. And late last year I was invited to join 'In Da House' Facebook group to produce designs based on houses which are trending at the moment. I'm afraid I never did anything about either until two weeks ago. But the two options seemed to fit in quite purposefully when I activated my Skillshare account.

I chose to start with Elizabeth Olwen's Skillshare class as I do lack confidence creating patterns ( I know even now) She's a great teacher with many useful tips which I was able to incorporate when selecting my layout. However I decided to ignore her recommendation NOT to use Livetrace as I felt she was referring to pencil sketches. I pretty much rely on my brush pen or dip pen and ink.

I chose Paris as I have many many fond memories of time spent there over the last 20 years. The streets are so elegant, full of character, and with much attention to detail. You can read more about my process here on the Skillshare site. So I uploaded my final project and thought 'nice project' and didn't expect much feedback. There were a few 'likes' and nice comments so I was pleased anyhow.

However I got rather a shock when it was the featured student project on Skillshare's Instagram feed just a few days later. There were a flurry of more' likes' and more super supportive comments. It gets better... 'Parisian Houses' was then featured on their email as a trending project. I suddenly had new followers on my Instagram, and the numbers have been steadily climbing since.

All this was certainly unexpected and unplanned. But I'm very grateful for the way its all worked out- even if it could be a fluke.  I feel this could platform could be great for of self promotion. One thing I noticed is there are over 7,000 students enrolled into this class (at time of this bog) but only 157 student projects in the gallery. In fact this seems to be the trend. In the next class I aim to take by Mary Kate McDevitt there are well over 6,00students enrolled but only 50 projects in the class gallery. Why don't people post their projects? Since that is the only way other students and the teachers themselves will understand your process and the finished result. Yes by doing so you would be open to being vulnerable if you don't feel you aren't receive 'likes'. In this instance I choose to be brave and show the Skillshare community and feel I reaped some pretty cool rewards.