One of Those days

So i am having one of those days, you know the one where everything just went wrong from the moment you woke up. my day started off decietfully, this morning looked to be quite productive but then one thing led to another and it all went down hill from about 3pm.

so this is what happened, i decided to finaly finnish my final piece (which is due on monday) by 'simply' neatening the edges; folding them over, ironing them and then bonder-webbing them into place which went ok, had a minor hiccup but i fixed it no problem. next i decided to make the loops at the top and bottom of the piece so that it can be hung using 2 rods fed through the loops easy thing to do right? turns out its not, not for me at least.
I don't want this whole post to be one giant moan so i will limit this rant to 51 words;
the iron burnt not only my carpet but parts of my work, the steam on the iron caused the fabric to get wet, which made the purple pen wihch i used to colour it in bleed and transfer onto the other half of the piece because it was folded in half.

This isn't the final piece but it is the final layout, compositions always change when i work with textile pieces, until the very last stitch. This piece isn't much different from the final piece, which i will upload when it is 100% finnished, loops and all

i've really struggled with my design boards, this one is just an a1 sheet which i have covered with the poem i have illustrated in different fonts. this is my favourite one so far.

this board is a work inprogress but its already my secound favourite, just need to add some annotations

I really am sorry for all my moaning, i promise i wont moan in the next one . . . .much anyway

5 Days till I grow up

5 more days and all of my work for my degree that i have been doing for the past 3 years will be handed in!! 
I am sooo close to finishing my final piece and i am so excited, petrified but excited, i can't wait to finnish college and start my new adventure in the career of design.
My CV is completed and ready to go, i've even bought stamps and everything.


My final piece is 3x2 metres big and stitching it has been a very fun task! Due to its size i had to stitch some of it standing up so to give it bait of height to prevent me causing a back injury (safety first!) i put my brand new sewing machine on its box which was on a coffee table.
This actually worked but once i stitched on the background and the larger letters I decided to take it off the box back onto the coffee table.

This was one of the original composition designs and it has changed so much since! i will upload a photo of the final design when it is 100% finished

time to panic

3 weeks and i will be finished! no more college, no more work and i have so much left to do! but i will how ever have to grow up and get a 'proper' job and actually decide what i want to do with my life . . . . . i'll think about that in 3 weeks. . . . .

i won't lie to you i am starting to panic now but i will get everything done!
i have done the majority of my practical work, in fact i have a few extra pieces which i might frame or mount, if i have time that is, might just put them on a board for my assessment <---- thats the lazy option but also the quickest.

 my stitched skeleton with a sword going through his rib cage, think I'm going to call him erik

so today i started to lay out all my pieces and work on the composition of my final piece, to be honest i thought this wouldn't take long, i really did think i'd be done in an hour but oh boy was i wrong! i just couldn't get it to look right, i moved everything over and over again so in the end i decided to leave it and go back to it on friday leaving me the next 3 days to do plenty of sketch booking and design boards. design boards are not my strong point but i am going to work my hardest on them. i'll let you know how i go.

these are some of my pieces but I'm no where near happy with this lay out! but its getting better

Another hour on the clock? that would be fab!

where is time going?? seriously it feels like this year is nearly over, i can't believe its April already! well i can't worry about that for now i have so much to do for my assessment deadline (14th of May), I'm on easter holidays at the minute and have already had 1 week off and 1 week to go and i have been a busy bee, but not with college work!


 firstly, i cleaned my room! and i can not only move in it but i can work in it with plenty of floor space. 

look! you can see the floor! my dog oscar can never pass up a photo opportunity.


i also worked really hard and finally got my friends wedding invites printed! it took just under 7 hours to print just under 250 invites but we did it!!! . . .  only to be told afterwards by her fiancé that we spelt repondez si'vous plait wrong, i am aware that this isn't the correct spelling either but i can't remember how it is. i was pretty annoyed as you can imagine but their still using them, its only a small error which you won't notice unless you speak french i don't think, plus they need them now really!

 this is a couple quick shots of our printing station!


I've only just started with my college work which so far is going well, got a few new illustrations and stitched pieces which i will upload later on. on my last day of college i took a few quick snaps of the print room i use at college

I'm working with blues as a background as a non morbid way to represent death. the poem I'm illustrating is about 2 dead boys, I'm not a morbid 'artist/designer' so i thought id rather use bright cold blues with a few darker blues than just black or other dark colours. i'll let you know how it goes! 

Where'd it Go?

now i know everyone's proberly been going on and on about the sun disapearing (depending where you are that is) but i must say that this morning waiting for the bus was pretty depressing as there was not one bit of sunshine, the sky was just pure white and now i hear a rumor that its going to snow next week?! what's going on with the world?

but on the other hand there is no sunshine to distract me from my screen printing which i have been doing now for the past hour and abit and its going quite well. just doing big blocks of colour and later i will hopefuly have my second screen ready to use by at least 3 so i can do some quick prints in plain black and maybe navy inks, not sure yet, i'll have to see how much time i have.
on a nother note i learnt something new today, that easter holiday's last for 2 weeks! im not best impressed by this piece of infomation as my time is very limited but theres not much i can do about it other than work my socks off over the 2 weeks and come back with loads of work, which i will do.

its a messy job but i love it!!!

in the end i did get a lot of work done but on the way home i lost 3 metres of calico fabric i was going to use this weekend! so annoyed! now i have to wait till monday to do some work! not impressed but thats what i get for losing it.

A little bit messy

now i know it sounds silly but i do  my best work in the evenings, im not sure why, just do. so i tend to stay up untill about one am on a work night, leave everything on the floor and scontinue with what evere im doing in the morning before i start work or go to college but this morning i had quite a shock! it seems everytime i go to college i come back with twice as much work! but i LOVE it so life is pretty good.

Sunshine!

well! i have been a busy bee today!
the weather has been absolutely stunning so i have been outside all day in the sunshine playng with my new letter rubber stamps and making my own stamps based on the illustrations and prints i have created, inspired by an old folk contridicting poem created in the 1920's.
I am currently in my last final weeks of my design craft degree (its basically art and design!) and for my final major project i have chosen this poem to illustrate and then combine the illustration to create one large piece which i am hoping to be 2x3 metres long.
this is the poem:

pull up a chair and sit on the floor

here is the story i've never heard before

one bright day in the dark of night

two dead boys got up to fight

back to back they face eachother

drew thier swords and shot eachother

a deaf policeman heard the noise

and saved the lives of the two dead boys 

if you dont believe my lies are true

then ask the blind man he saw it too

i absolutely love this poem, the second i saw it i knew i wanted to use it for something so i saved it for this project.

so far i have worked with stitch, screen prints, free machine embroidery and rubber stamping.

i've always been into textiles, ever since i picked up a sewing needle at the age of 6 i havent put it down! over the past year and a bit my interest in graphic and illustration has grown and so i have been combining the two.

 Above is my 'anatomically correct' skeleton i drew using an ordinary hb pencil, i prefer to draw in pen and add a smidgen of water to get a tone effect but this worked out nicely. well anyway, this skeleton is now know as william and is my main piece of illustration from this poem. the image on the right next to him is a rubber stamp skull which i made myself, stamps are tricky to make but worth it! the letter stamps i pre bought from my work yesterday! i dont have that much patience to do letter stamps just yet!

this image is just a shot of my work outside, bang is referring to the 2 boys shooting each other with a sword which i plan to add later on.

this is my first blog so im sorry that its not that interesting but i hope to make them more readable as i go! i am also a photo nutter so i will be adding plenty more photos to show you how colourful my life is!