Excitement!

I'm off to Paris on Monday for a few nights, and I can't wait! I've been once but barely remember it so I'm expecting myself to take hundreds of photos. I made (ok customised) this little book to take with me as a kind of travel journal. The cover is vintage French wrapping paper with little stickers that I found in Accessorize. There's some cute stationary in there at the moment!

Back in a few days with a million photos of the Eiffel Tower no doubt!!

B if for...Buildings!!!

For some reason I've always had a fascination with tall things and skyscrapers (a geeky fact about me). Last week on a visit to London I finally decided to take some photos of Canary Wharf, okay they're not that tall, but currently the tallest in this country!!

B is for...Bunting!!

These are some photos I took (on my phone) on a walk along the Thames in Kingston on a lovely summers evening. There was bunting hung along the whole stretch of all the restaurants and bars on the river, I thought it made it seem so summery and happy!

I kind of want to make some of my own bunting out of scraps of fabric, very random I know but it has a certain cute village fete feel to it!

Living in the forest

I had a lovely time camping in the New Forest last month. The most nature-y holiday I've ever been on! Here are a few snaps.

I found being being amongst the nature really inspiring, so I did a few arty bits. The campsite was filled with chaffinches so using my British Birds book I painted one. I never seem to add much colour to my illustrations so it made a nice change. I also found an up-rooted tree that had shed all of it's bark, so I stole some for collages!

New big book

This week I supposed to be on Jury service, but I was only needed for 3 days! So I've been trying to keep myself occupied...I made a new book! 
It's the biggest I've ever made, just smaller then A4 and is quite thick with 60ish pages of plain cartridge paper. 
I want to use it as a scrapbook for all the little random bits and bobs that I pick up or make, that get shoved away in my drawer or a box and forgotten about. I'll let you know how that goes!!

Holiday!

I'm off camping to the New Forest now!

Paris bead bracelets

I've known about My Vintage Charms for a while now but never bought anything, but when I found out I'm going to Paris in July (eeee!) I wanted to make a few Parisy bits of jewellery. I ordered 6 mini Eiffel tower charms, in silver and gold, and a large gold one. I also bought these mini spoon charms as they're so cute. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with them until I remembered the beads I bought from the bead fair I helped at last month. 

So I made these...

I think My Vintage Charms is amazing and such good value (£1.50 for 3 mini Eiffels) You can make your own jewellery so much cheaper, if you can be bothered I suppose. Also the packaging was rather lovely! I was wondering about adding these bracelets to my Becky's Buttons (and beads maybe?!) collection, but they take quite a while to make...hmm...

Work in progress

Last week I took part in the Work in progress show...The first and second year's part of UCA Epsom's Graphics degree show at the Bargehouse in London. I'm so glad I did! It was an amazing experience and I found myself so motivated working in such a creative and raw atmosphere.

Myself, Nat, Clare & Nayd spent 2 days straight working on this giant cross stitch which acted as a sign for the show. I see a 200 x 100cm + piece of peg board and of course I'm going to think cross stitch!! It was tedious but good fun, we hope to finish it one day!

Design Analysis

My last project at Uni was a Design Analysis where i had to investigate the area of the industry that I hope to go into. I chose illustration. It was really exciting and inspiring 4 weeks for me and I got to talk to some amazing people. I learnt a lot about the world of illustration as well as myself.


For my final presentation I decided to illustrate my findings using my own illustrative style, which somehow ended up being a washing line with all my research pegged up...





I really enjoyed drawing lots of pegs!