Shadowed Reflections

I love this Nikon camera, nearly as much as the boy who has let me borrow it :)

xo

Snakes and Ladders

After doing 10 and 12 hour shifts at work, you can understand my excitement when todays shift finished very early! This extra time I had been given needed to be spent wisely and that I did. I completed my snakes and ladders felt board.I had almost forgotten the numb feeling you get in your hands after you are machine stitching intensely for 2 hours. But I am glad I did it! :)

xo

Secret Garden

As promised to myself I had another photography filled day today, it was very productive and lots of fun :)
I went to a wooded area just behind my house called Leg o' Muton today. And even along the 30 second walk to the wood I came across some great photo opportunities.

This one reminds me of a secret garden which I think is really cool

I really like this one because it looks dark and mysterious

Here are some more photos I am going to work on for the competition, I have lots to work on now and I think I just need to tweek them on photoshop ready to be posted by the end of the week...Ooh It's exciting stuff :DD
xo

Photography Saturday

A lovely boy let me borrow his awesome Nikon camera tonight and I have had the most fun ever with it :) The more I think about my photography the more excited I get about it. Tonight I took my tree-pieces to a beautiful wooded area to take some photos. It was very sunny and I had a cool camera so it was a perfect time to take some photos. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to achieve for the Aesthetica competition. I am going to a different set of woods on Tuesday to try and get some more decent photos. Hopefully it will be just as successful and just as sunny as it was tonight!


I really like photograms, back in college and sixth form it used to be my favourite darkroom process to use, and I found this one that me and my friend Claire made at uni once just for fun :)
But I think it is really cool and I actually like the old-faded look my scanner un-intentionally gave it.


I also came across this image of a dancer tonight. It is by Barbara Berkowitz, a photographer based in Scotland. I met her when I was working for Scotland-based quilter, Pauline Burbidge. Barbara very nicely, gave me this image of her work, which I think is really cool and reminds me of forensic heated sensors.
I think I might try abit of photoshop tweeking on my photographs, although I do quite like them how they are, but I think I may just experiment anyway.... :)

xo

It has been a very busy week, I have started to stitch up my game board ideas and although I have felt very relieved and excited to finally begin making again, I cant help but wonder why I am thinking more about photography rather than my textiles.

I really am enjoying my game board idea but I am getting so much more inspiration from photography lately that I am now re-considering my competition entry.

In the past I have made these wooden pieces...

....they are made out of plain cotton fabric using wax batik and batik inks which I have then created scenes from Norway. Then I embedded into a a real cut tree trunk. I loved making these and looking at them now, makes me think of many ideas involving photography.

I want to take these pieces back to their original nature environment, my local woods and take some photographs of them amougst the branches of the trees?!

I am still doing my board game felt ideas, because I am still enjoying that idea, however I think I may use them for an online store I want to set up soon. My friend Max has one, its amazingly cool, she sells pretty knitted and felt things check her out...

http://www.folksy.com/shops/LittlePeche

xo

Everything Is Illuminated

This weekend I met up with my friend Jo and we went to visit our other friend Curly Rach in Huddersfield. It was an awesome weekend, we had lots of fun and the on the Saturday the weather was so hot, that we celebrated it by going to Charlotte's Ice-cream Parlour :D

We also had a walk around Mirfield town, where I bought this book from Oxfam. I already own another book by Jonathan Safran-Foer that I already love, so I am very much looking forward to reading this one!

Creativity is flowing tonight, I have made some felt in aid for the competition and drew up a few more ideas.

I have even been thinking tonight about my form of entry for this competition, initally I was going to focus on the actual felt pieces as my entry however now I am considering using photography instead. Still make the felt pieces but then photograph them being used as real boardgames?!

Also tonight I have made my own sketchbook using an old book I bought from a car boot sale for 50p and white emulsion paint. Back in school, I used to love making sketchbooks this way, but since starting Univeristy, I seem to be buying my sketchbooks and loosing that hand made touch so it was very nice to go back to my old sketchbook making ways tonight. I am going to use it for my project when I go back to uni in September. I have also ordered some photos to be developed today, for my next project, cant wait to see them printed out :)

xo

It is a known fact that I love stationary!

pens, notebooks, sketchbooks, rubbers, rulers, pencils...anything stationary-related then I love it and if you know me well you will already be a aware of this obsession! This Aesthethica Competition I'm entering has given me the chance for me to use my brand new marker pens from Paperchase and my cool black fineliner from Muji :oD

So I have just done some very very rough drawings from Grandma's Game mat, just to get me thinking about ideas for the competition.

I just wanted to get some thoughts out on to paper for now. I'm looking forward to making some felt this weekend at some point!xo

Aesthetica Creative Works Competitions

I love competitions, so when this one was forwarded through my student emails I immediately wanted to give it a go. The deadline is 31st August so I dont have long to get creating and designing however I am still very excited about it! This competition inparticular is a good one because it states entries must be in the form of either artwork or poetry and in my opinion artwork could be ANYTHING! :D So I'm going to felt something I think, maybe even use Grandma's game mat as inspiration! But with less than a month I had better get designing... :o)

If you would like to know more about the competition, check out their website http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm

Have a nice evening! xo

Grandma's Game Mat

I visited my friend Shaun recently, which was great! We had a nice catch up and I even returned home with something amazing!!!! Take a look-see....

This was Shaun's playmat when he was a child. It's made out of plastic, and has snakes and ladders, ludo, backgammon and chess boards on it, its beautiful!!! The patterns are awesome!

His mum was going to throw it away, but jokingly asked me if I wanted to make a dress out of it.

But I dont think I can cut it up, its too lovely.

I especially like the snakes and ladders corner...

I think I am just going to keep it as a playmat, I think I'd even have it just on my wall it's that pretty :)

Oh I think I am going to carry on with reading that graffiti book tonight, its really interesting!xo

A little late night reading

I started reading this book called 'graffiti' by Sandrine Pereira last night and I actually read something really interesting I wanted to share with you. The definition of a graffitist in oxford dictionaries is the same now as it was in the dicitonaries published in the 80s.

"....an artist seeking self expression through graffiti, tagging or spraying."

If, in a dictionary, the words artist and spraying are referred to in the same sentence then why has there always been this debate on whether graffiti is art or vandalism?

xo

And so the game begins...

Oh I'm excited, my very own blog is now on the way but please do bear with me as I am slowly figuring out the ins and outs :)

So it's about half way through the summer and getting ever so closer to the start of my final year at University. Scary. But I plan to make it the best year yet!!

At the moment I am thinking about my dissertation that is now lurking around the corner, and so research is well on the way. I wanted to choose a topic I already find interesting, and so would help with the fun part of my degree too....the making! :D

I have recently took a trip to London, where I bought these very cool graffiti blocks

I bought them from camden market, where the guy told me they were done by the only female graffiti writer in the area, but I find this very hard to believe seeing as he couldn't even give me a name, however I do like the idea of it!

And so as you probably guessed, this is my chosen topic, graffiti! Now where to go from here?!xo