Art Meets Website Design

On Monday we welcomed Heather from Art Cures All to lead a workshop on collage art. Our mentees got to design their collage from magazines, as well as take a sneak peek of Heather’s artwork. Each table was set up with a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, glue sticks, and finishing glue. It was exciting to see each person flip through pages and pages of magazines to find their favorite designs and photos to add to their collages.

Afterwards, Lu'Cretia, our Creative Project Manager, took over to lead a workshop on website design using Squarespace. We love that we can provide our mentees with this skill set as it will benefit them in the future. Lu'Cretia went over the basics of designing a website, what goes into designing one, and showed some amazing examples from some of our past mentees…Amanda Leon Calligraphy and Makeup By Mariah. Although designing a website is a process, we cannot wait to see what are mentees create!

Photo Credit: Mariah

Amanda | One Year Later

Amanda began her journey at TFD in March of 2021. In the beginning, calligraphy began as a fun hobby, then when doing calligraphy work for some of her fellow mentees, the dream became more of a reality. Now a year later, she has a thriving calligraphy business! Amanda has now officially led two workshops at TFD for new mentees, which everyone really enjoyed! The TFD team is so proud of Amanda and how far she has come. We are happy to continue to support her dreams!

“The starving artist narrative is false, you can be successful while pursuing creative passions.”

- Amanda Spring 21’ Mentee

Photo Credit: Jocelyn, Terrance, Maya

Mental Health & Creativity

Today, we welcomed back Sarah, from Yo Soy Ella, to lead a workshop called “Progress Over Perfection”. During this workshop, our mentees had a conversation about how you do not need to be perfect to succeed. Everyone has their ups and downs, but as long as you put your mind to what you want, you will succeed. Our mentees really enjoyed this workshop and the chance you dive deeper into what success means to them. Sarah has now led a total of four workshops with TFD, how amazing!

Our mentees made a transition to the tables to go over illustrator once more! Each group was given a prompt to create a design in Adobe Illustrator and present it at the end. Illustrator has so many unique tools to utilize, but we are taking it one step at a time!

Photos: Mariah

All Things Editing, Safe Spaces, And Intro To Graphic Design!

Photo Credit: @mariah_julianna_

Not only is photography difficult, but the editing process is a lot harder! During the first day of week 4 in mentorship, our mentees wrapped up the learning process of editing, partook in a safe space dialogue, and began the intro to graphic design! It is so awesome to see all that our mentees have learned in the past few weeks. We are eager for what is to come in week five!

Photo credit: @mariah_julianna_

Product Photography

Photo Credit: Mariah Julianna

Our mentees have been learning all about photography these last two weeks! This past week we walked our mentees through how to plan a photo shoot, and then on Saturday they put what they learned into action by working in small groups and photographed 3 different brands. We invited Amanda from Amanda Leon Calligraphy and Sandra from Papelitos Lindos to join the fun! TFD also has some exciting new merch that was photographed as well. This was a great learning experience for our mentees and we are so excited to share the amazing photos they took with y’all.

Photo Credit: Mariah Julianna