| 5 for 5 | spotlight + giveaway

| 5 for 5 | with wendy chung of dozi design leave a comment below to be entered into a drawing
to win a beautiful 2013 day planner.
dozi is a small design studio in san jose, california, specializing in
simple + delightful paper and textile goods.

Was there one moment when you knew something special was happening – that your art was to become your career? I think it was in the first couple of months after I had opened my Etsy store, I realized how much I enjoyed every aspect of the shop. I loved the freedom of designing whatever I wanted and the satisfaction of packaging and shipping each order.

What inspires your work? Shapes and colors in ordinary objects around me - the pattern on a wicker chair, or the shape of a cup. I also love being stretched in my idea of what is beautiful&nbsp by exposing myself to artists who have a very different style. And traveling! There is something about being immersed in a different culture that really opens up my mind.

Would you share a bit about your creative process? It varies quite a bit just depending on what I feel like. Sometimes I'll be "working" on a design in my head for awhile, thinking about it in the moments before I fall asleep or in random moments throughout my day. Other times I'll sit down with my sketch book and doodle away. There are also times when an idea comes to me suddenly and I go straight to the computer to work it out. Ultimately I will always end up with page after page of designs in Illustrator before I start narrowing things down. An important part of my process is self-critique - asking myself if I really love a design, and ruthlessly filtering out the not-so-great ones or tweaking the ones that have potential.

Describe your workspace. My workspace is part of a long desk along one wall of our living room, which forces me to keep it simple and clean. I find it hard to work when there's a lot of visual clutter around me, so I actually prefer a lot of white space and very few decorative or inspirational pieces in the area. I found that there isn't actually a whole lot that I need regular access to when it comes to making things
for my shop or shipping and packaging orders so I try to only keep the essentials in the drawers.

As an aspiring independent artist, was there any advice you received or any lessons learned that you’d like to pass on to other hopefuls? Be true to who you are, know your limits and be honest about what isn't working or what just isn't you. Don't feel like you have to wait until everything is perfect to start something, just start with something simple and keep adjusting and learning until you find something that works.