ELLI TRAN, 19  /  DIY & STYLE BLOGGER  /  COMMUNICATION AND MULTIMEDIA DESIGN STUDENT
LIVING IN THE NETHERLANDS


ABOUT ELLI

My name is Elli Tran and I am the owner of this blog 'DIY with Elli'. I was born on November 22nd 1995, so currently I am 19 years old. My ethnicity is Vietnamese, but I have been born and raised my whole life in this small country in Europe called the Netherlands.

In my spare time I like to travel around town, shop online and offline, play the guitar/piano/ukulele, bake cookies (I really suck at baking though), sport (I like all kinds of sports, especially volleyball, I have been playing volleyball for almost 5 years now but I quit my team because of some circumstances), watch movies and YouTube video's, blogging, listen to music, photographing, editing, going out for lunch or dinner and much much more. Although, most of the time I spend in my bedroom, watching YouTube video's, surfing on the web and chatting with some friends and my boyfriend. I like being lazy around the house like many other people, but I also love to go out for shopping, grab some lunch or dinner somewhere and just having any other fun activity outside the house (except clubbing, drinking and other late night parties, I just don't like that, just my personal preference).
Also, I spend most of my nights working in a restaurant to earn a bit of money. I have had a couple of part-time jobs in the past, such as a shop assistent or a cashier, but I quit them all because of personal reasons and now I have been working for over a year in this restaurant and I am fine with that.
Besides that, I have also been doing some small designing projects for a few people here on blogger and others. I also quit that for personal reasons. I still like designing though, but it just takes a lot of time and effort to finish something and I think my passion for designing is slowly starting to fade since I am not fully into it anymore.
It sounds like I don't have an exciting life now, but I am actually quite happy with what I have and where I am right now. Everyone is happy in a different way and in the end it is the little things that make life fun, because they will become all big and special after all. Besides that, I am very open for trying out and exploring new things.

Further more, in february 2015 I am starting as a first year college student for the study 'Communication and Multimedia Design'. To give an idea of what this study is about I will give you a little explanation about the content: The study is a mix between the human computer interaction (literally the human factors that plays between the human and the machine (so for example how a human being reacts to a new interface on a train station machine and the factors that belongs to this situation)), (visual) design processes (learning from sketch to user interface), media (provides the insight into the impact on new media and the impact of the media on our society), a bit about communication and also marketing. This all sounds appealing to me and I hope to get at least somewhere after I graduate. I still do not really know which way I want to go or what I want to become, but I hope I will find out soon during my college period.

This should be enough information about me for now. If you have any questions for me or other random questions, feel free to email me at diywithelli(at)gmail(dot)com. I would love to answer them.



THE BLOG 'DIY WITH ELLI'

This blog started on March 29th 2012, where I first published my tutorial about how to stud a collar. I have been blogging since 2010 and before I started this blog I owned another blog with a good friend of mine, Khoi (she also wrote a tutorial on my current blog, click here). We had this blog where we were posting random stories and photo's about our lifes, but after 1 year we both stopped blogging for some reason. We didn't have many viewers or followers, but we were having a good time and enjoyed what we did. So the year after we stopped blogging I became very bored and I wanted to start something new. I came up with the idea to create a blog and put all kinds of tutorials and other projects into one blog to save my creations. It was sort of like an online scrapbook to me where I could dump all my photo's of how to make things on your own. Later on, I continued posting and very soon people began to like it and started to follow me. A few weeks from there people began to share my photo's and tutorials on pinterest (for example) and other social media platforms. I was amazed by this, because I had never experienced something like this. And soon enough my posts were getting tons of views after a couple of months. And since this 'success' I started to add two more topics to my blog, Roomspiration and Personal stuff. It may all sounds very big and great, at least to me it is, but overall it is just a beginning of a possible career. Also, I have been asked by several small companies to collaborate with them, which I also had no experience with before.
Long story short, it has been a very good start for me and I have been seeing many possibilities for me through this short journey. I had a great time back then and till this day I still enjoy blogging.
However, I haven't been very active on blogger for a couple of months now on and I also have been noticing this in the views and statistics that I get (I actually don't really mind this part at all). There are a couple reasons for this, including school, work and friends. But in overall, I am not complaining and I still love and enjoy to blog. I just have to find the balance between all of this, but I am definitely sure that I will continue this blog no matter what.


So this blog is mainly about do-it-yourself projects and tutorials based on fashion, since I am obsessed with fashion. I post all my DIY projects here, as I mentioned before, and I write them as a tutorial so everyone can get some inspiration out of it and try to experiment and try it out for themselves. The idea of this blog is mainly an online scrapbook to get inspiration out of. Moreover, this blog is meant for everyone who is into fashion, diy's and likes being creative.

I hope this was enough information for now, and like I said I am open for any further question and you can e-mail them to diywithelli(at)gmail(dot)com. I hope you all enjoy this blog and thanks for the support!

Have a wonderful day.

Love,
Elli