Welcome to the Mauina Art and Design Blog!

Happy 2024 and welcome to a new beginning for us all! I'm Ana Zelaya, an interior design college student, artist, and content creator, blogging about my journey to become an interior designer!

Last year, I made the decision to return to school when I discovered how much I enjoyed designing on ProKitchen software. I was designing kitchens, bathrooms, and fell in love with the process. After becoming certified to be a ProKitchen designer, I decided to take a big step forward and go for a bachelor's degree in interior design.

I've been back in school for the last six months, and today I start my third semester back. I'm finishing up my last few general education classes needed before I start taking on the actual design classes.

Speaking of which, my first college design class is this summer (May 2024) and that is when I will really start writing about what I'm learning at school. In the meantime, I will be diving into my artwork, Mauina Shop, and interior decorating/design concepts. I've been planning all of this for months and I'm excited to start!

If you're also into interior design or interior decorating, don't forget to check out my social media links at the very bottom of this site where I post even more about those topics (Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, and Pinterest are the main ones so choose whichever app you use the most!)

I can't wait to start learning way more about interior design and to take you guys on my journey with me! Let me start you off with a fact that I recently learned. The main difference between interior decorating and interior design is that decorating is limited to actual house décor, picking different paints for the walls, and basically dressing the inside of a home or space, while interior design is actually designing the blueprint or layout for a room, entire home or interior of a building to be constructed IN ADDITION to decorating! Decorators and residential designers don't need to be certified, but in the state of Florida, all commercial Interior Designers need to have legitimate credentials (bachelor's degree minimum). And to be even more advanced, designers can get their license by taking the NCIDQ exam. With a degree and a license, interior designers are unstoppable!

My next blog post will go further into these differences and even the drama that resides in the interior designer online space that I discovered last year! Fun!!! Hahaha subscribe to my blog to get notified of my next post and stay tuned for more!!! Woohoo!