Forest, Sad Fog and Swans.

Most recent uploads to my flickr:

Down the Forest Path

So Sad

Four Swans

Sold!

I just posted the first [real] sale from mine and my sister's craft shop on Folksy, Wishcatcher Crafts :) I even ran almost a mile down the road to try and post it before the last post (missed it by 10 minutes though, damn)

We sold a hand braided bracelet (one with the bow) and a mini rosebud brooch:

UPDATE

Sold another rosebud brooch the day after! I'm going to need to make some more now :)

Twig Reindeer.

Another crafty day, again using 'Christmas Crafting in No Time'  by Clare Youngs for inspiration. This time I tried making the twig reindeer, which are just so adorable! They're very easy to make, just using twigs from the garden, a bit of ribbon and a glue gun to hold it together. I also used spray snow on the antlers, just for a little extra christmassy touch :)

Crafts and Christmas Shopping.

Busy weekend so far! I met with Tom from Action for Family Carers this morning, went through my poster ideas. He really liked the designs, just a few little tweaks now before handing them over :)

My grandparents are here to stay for the weekend, the boys went the football (loyal Norwich supporters!) while me, mum, my sister Sophie and my gran, who we call Gar, went to Altons Garden Centre. After a yummy, yummy lunch we went for a look round the christmas shop, and ended up spending over an hour there! Oops. We go every year though and it just gets better and better (and bigger and bigger!) I took a load of photos there on my SuperHeadz Blue Ribbon Camera, so I don't have much to show now.

This little display was so, so beautiful though that I had to share it (excuse the rubbish quality of my phone camera :S it really doesn't do it justice) I'm going to recreate the tree idea below for our front porch; a branch spray painted white, but with lights wrapped round it and a little owl decoration I have hanging off it. We have a strict gold colour scheme for the main tree and decorations, so it's hard to be creative with, but we're going to hand make some decorations out of fir cones and cinnamon sticks and the like, so it'll have more of an earthy feel. We're also getting a real tree for the first time in well over 10 years, so I'm really excited for that!

Of course I had to buy something!

I have a bit of a key obsession, so this little decoration was perfect!

I also got this ice cream shaped decoration. I think it's so amazing, but it's made completely of glass so I'm really scared to do anything with it! Haha plus I don't exactly have anywhere to put it anyway :S The crafty things I keep making are taking up all remaining space in my room!

So, moving onto what I've made today:

 This was meant to look like a russian doll, but it didn't really work too well :S still kinda cute though, but I need to work on getting the shape right and mix up the pattern a bit.

I also made this super cute gingerbread man decoration, out of card and cross stitching. Definitely going to have to find somewhere to put it this christmas!

Another project that's in development, from an idea in the Christmas Craft book my mum got. Just need to dig out some string to finish it off.

Finally, I have so many films building up now :s really need to get into town to get them developed. My SuperHeadz camera (after today) only has about 2 photos left on the film so that'll be done soon (the ones with 'B' on the lid are also from this camera, it's been used a lot recently!) my Juicebox Camera also only has a couple of photos left, and that'll be the first print since I got the camera, so I'm really excited to see how that turns out!

I'm going to a car boot sale tomorrow for like the first time ever, so no doubt I'll use up the films there!

Tombola, Face Painting, Balloon Modelling!

I'm meeting with the head fundraising volunteer from Action for Family Carers (who I volunteer for) today. He lives in the same village as me, so that works out rather well! I'm going to present to him my ideas for the three posters for the 'Make Maldon Magical' christmas fair.

Here are my three posters:

I'm not doing my usual take-more-than-one-design thing, I don't think it's really necessary for this situation. Plus there's still another week before the fair so there's time to make amendments if necessary :)

Graduation Planning.

So my graduation is on December 5th, at the Barbican Centre. My mum took me shopping the other day to find something to wear under my graduation robes. Ede & Ravenscroft say you should wear a white blouse with corresponding business attire. Erm, boring! I'm not doing that! I'm not a fashion blogger by any means, nor do I really know anything about fashion, but I had no idea what to wear to graduation, so maybe I'll inspire someone else with this post! Ha or if you have any feedback on my chosen outfit, that'd be great :)

I got this Structured Sleeveless Skater Dress from Topshop (my mum bought it for me, then I had to go to the jobcentre with the bag, felt a bit guilty :S) I got it in an almost navy colour, but for some reason it's not available on the website in that shade. I thought about getting a shirt to wear under it (apparently the collar is good for holding the gown in place, and I need some sleeves) but I couldn't find anything appropriate, so I'm going with a cream cardigan I borrowed from my mum.

Me and mum also had a bit of a disagreement over shoes. I'm like 5'7/8" so I don't wear heels, like, ever. I was trying to convince mum that I can get some smart flats but she wouldn't accept that, she says I needed at least a little heel. Her definition of a little heel is very different from my definition. So as to avoid her killing me in frustration, I went to Lakeside with my friend Jo, and we looked for shoes. There wasn't much in a nude colour with a small heel, but we eventually found these Low Block Heel / Patent Dolly Shoes from Next. The thing is, me and mum had looked in 3 different Nexts and didn't find anything, so I was surprised that that's where we found them! The heel is a manageable height, and because they're blocky I won't have issues falling over! Haha.

As an alternative to wearing a shirt, I'm going to pin the robe to my dress (it's thick enough to not damage it) with this brooch, which I bought the other day from a christmas craft fair. It's made from a real piece of egg shell!

 

I will be using this clutch bag, which is also from Topshop, but from a couple of years ago.

I also got some make up to match; I got this Nerd Nail Polish and Lipgloss, both from H&M.

So that's my outfit! I'm actually quite excited for graduation now! Well, except the fact that I'm not working as a graphic designer yet, but at least I'm doing some freelance and voluntary graphic design work, and I've got a temp xmas job at Royal Mail starting the day after graduation (nights 10pm-6am! Aah!) and I got another job offer today, doing financial administration, starting in january :)

I'm also being taken to The Bull Gastro Pub & Willow Room in Great Totham for dinner :) nom nom nom.

Designing for Charity.

I spent today at Action for Family Carers, a local charity providing support and information to unpaid carers. I've signed up as an admin volunteer, but I will mainly be designing posters and such for events and advertising.

On December 3rd is the 'Make Maldon Magical' christmas fair, and AfFC have a stall there. They asked me to design three posters, one for each of the fundraising activities; a tombola, face painting and balloon modelling. I took my macbook along to their offices; they only have PCs with no design software and I couldn't cope with that! Haha anything I did had to be able to be transferred to Microsoft Word though, so I used Adobe Illustrator to design the graphics, then laid it out in Word (I'd have preferred to use InDesign, but say if they want to use the same design next year but just update a few things, they wouldn't be able to do that if I'd only done it in InDesign, and I like to cater to their needs :) )

So I had this idea to use stars, in the shape of a christmas tree (well half a christmas tree anyway!) so as well as being unique to each activity, there would be a recurring theme throughout and it would be slightly christmassy. These are the first couple of ideas:

The three posters will be displayed all in a row so I was thinking they could be designed so that when they're next to each other they'll make a whole christmas tree between two of the posters, but I have no way to guarantee which order they'll be put on the display boards, and the stars probably wouldn't line up too well either. 

Another idea in development for the ballon modelling poster, a christmas tree made from balloons:

(I'm very proud of this! Designed in Illustrator)

Everything in this post is in development, so please excuse the unfinished designs!

Fog, Interviews, Craft and Charity :)

A couple of things from today:

Firstly, I had yet another job interview. I thought it went really well though, I had a good chat with the guy interviewing, we seemed to communicate pretty well and I actually had some relevant experience and I think I sold myself well. So fingers crossed I get called back for a second interview! (Although we were talking for a whole hour today and I thought we'd covered everything so I don't know what else there is to fill a second interview, but we'll see)

Secondly, the fog today was amazing! I love fog, it makes everything look so mysterious and spooky. Plus the dew on the spiderwebs in my garden first thing looked like little diamonds :)

Fog through the window

Of course sticking with my love of all things forest, I drove to some local woodland (look how small my car looks compared to the trees below, amazing) and took some photos. The fog was a little clearer here though than it looked across countryside landscape so you can't really see how thick it was in these shots.

I also found some time to start exploring some of the crafty things I want to do. I did another embroidered quote to hopefully be sold in my Folksy shop.

Credit to The Unbroken Thread, I based this heart on one seen on their blog.

I've framed the embroidery, but I want to paint the frame cream and distress it a bit before listing it for sale.

I also tried out the little felt owl idea from the book my mum bought, Christmas Crafting in No Time' by Clare Youngs. It was pretty time consuming but I love this little fella! I won't be selling him because it wasn't my original idea, but I may use him to inspire some other ideas which I will be able to sell :)

Tomorrow I'm doing some voluntary design work for a charity based in Maldon, designing some posters for the annual Christmas Fair, "Make Maldon Magical", which I'm pretty excited about :) so I really need to get to bed now so I can get up early to come up with some ideas before heading over to the charity's offices to meet with some guy called Tom who is going to brief me on exactly what they want.

Alix Swan.

I just want to talk about how much I absolutely love Alix Swan's work! Alix is a paper/textile artist who is very inspired by classic fairytales, using the story as the basis for her work.

You can read more about her in the Folksy newsletter, Frankly.

I love this little Thumbelina foldout story so much I bought it! From here :)

I really love the way she displays her work!

Check out Alix's Folksy store, and also her Facebook page.