And the Winner is.....

...the wonderful Darryl Joel Berger from red-handed! Congratulations! Do send me your address and I'll send it. Thanks so much for everyone who commented, I'll have to do more of these...

200th Etsy sale Giveaway!

Yippee! Today I hit my 200th Etsy sale, and to celebrate I'll be giving away one of my unique paper collages. They're made from mostly vintage paper cut into diamond shapes and mounted onto fresh white card measuring 8x10". To enter leave a comment below and I'll draw the winner on Monday at noon UK time. Good luck! And thanks to all of you who've bought from my little shop over the past couple of years, it's truly appreciated.

Last-minute panic

The degree show is just around the corner and the fear is starting to set in. Faced with a rather large hole in my exhibition, I've been working on a new (or rather old) article from a winter edition of Elle Deco from Lucie's impressive archives. This was a bit of a new challenge as the article required three illustrations, and was quite light-hearted and called for something decorative. I certainly enjoyed it though, getting back into cutting paper. What do you think?

Flowerpress Brooch Swap

I'm taking part in Flowerpress' brooch swap so I've been seeking inspiration and putting together some clues for the person making a brooch for me. I've got til 21st June to come up with something, how exciting! Are any of you lovely lot involved?

Anonymous no more

This week I worked on an article about the internet and the increasing likelihood that we will be identifiable by the sites we visit.

I've started to notice it myself lately. I once went on the Habitat website to look at sofas and rugs and for a few months now an advert for a particular rug I looked at has appeared repeatedly in sponsored advert panes in third party websites. Does that seem strange? 

In other exciting news, I'm having a website of my own made this week! But, I won't try and steal your identity or anything if you visit it. I promise.

It's the future!

This afternoon I finished this editorial about 3-D printing, which is the craziest thing I've ever heard of. 

In a few years time, according to some, we will all be able to download and manufacture anything from clothes to body parts on 3-D "additive manufacturing" machines - just like using a home printer. The machines work by building layer upon layer of atoms of a certain material according to a minutely-detailed design. It sounds a little far-fetched but imagine the possibilities! I wonder what it will mean for sites like Etsy, and for the future of "handmade"! Exciting stuff.

PS - Do you like my box kite?

PPS - I just realised how girly the colours are in my illustration, which is for a GQ article. Whoops. Do I change it?

Bacteria... yum.

This week I've been working on a really tricky article about "Bioleaching", an increasingly used method of extracting rare earth metals from low-grade ore with the use of rock-eating bacteria. Delicious.

I really struggled with this one and for some reason I can't get the colours to pop on blogger like they do in the original, but trust me it's a much livelier orange and turquoise combo. Now, on to an article about 3-D printing. Erk.

I'm making a satchel

cardboard templates 

drawing out the pieces

 

two layers for base of bag, saddle-stitched together

Apparently I've finished university FOREVER. I'm so sad it's over. We've still got to hand in all our work in a couple of weeks, put up a degree show and do New Designers in London so it's not quite goodbye yet but I miss it already. Despite this, I've been working on a project that has filled me with unexpected amounts of joy. 

Working with leather is a bit tricky, but when you slice through its buttery softness with a sharp knife or set your first rivet it's just the most exciting material.  I chose a beautiful dark tan leather and brass fittings - and so far, so good. I wanted to make a portrait-format rectangular satchel with backpack straps, to carry my laptop around. I love the old school satchels around at the moment but couldn't find any backpacks in a similar style. I am beyond excited to see how it turns out!

Good Sport

 You won't need to know me well to know that I'm no great sports fan. This editorial from GQ magazine (which until this week I suspected was a slightly porno lads' mag) was therefore well out of my comfort zone. It was about a film about the West Indies cricket team and loosely references the team's logo, but is mostly about a tripod made out of wickets. I hope it works.

Cover Design

This is the finished cover design for my Penguin Design Competition entry. I really struggled with how to represent the complex themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the end a simple and graphic family tree seemed best, enabling me to choose some slinky typography to make it look grown-up. I'm rather pleased with it.

Dear Mariella

This week I worked on an editorial piece about bereavement. It was a moving article about getting past the pain of losing a parent and carrying on with life, and it really wasn't easy to think of a suitably sensitive way of dealing with the subject. I hope I've done it justice but I think the colours are still a bit blah. Hmm.

Watching films

This weekend I had fun watching Frida, with Salma Hayek. The colours were gorgeous so I did a little colour study. This could possibly be my new favourite thing to do. I wonder what films I should do next. Any tips for wonderfully colourful films?

Matters of the heart

This is the editorial I set myself this week. Romance. Tricky stuff. The story was about the breakdown of  a relationship because of his addiction to pornography - I thought it would be a challenge! I hope you get that the self-pitying anglepoise is her, and the blue light from next door is him at his computer, the dirty rascal! It's darker colours than I'd usually go for but I think it needed it.

Hope you have something fun planned for the weekend - and Happy Mothers' Day for Sunday, yummy mums! xx

Wooden Ampersands

My brooches are now available in walnut and obeche, you know, in case you need a more neutral typographic accessory for Spring. Available in my Etsy shop.

A bit more editorial

This week I worked on a self-set editorial brief. It was about the idea that feeling anxious during certain times of year can be linked to subconscious feelings from our childhoods. In my illustration I highlighted the example of feeling anxious towards the end of the summer holidays as dormant back-to-school-blues creep into our adult minds. Interesting stuff. And nice to draw chairs.

Hope you're having a super weekend - I've just been to a made it market in Cambridge, and am now off  to a jumble sale in a really posh village. Yippee!

I finally finished!

I can finally show you my entry to the YCN's Student awards as I submitted it yesterday. I worked on the brief for Fedrigoni, an Italian paper manufacturer, and I focused on their Woodstock range as it's recycled and in beautiful soft colours that appealed to me.

It was quite daunting setting up the installation and photographing it, having a private view, then taking it all down. At that point I rather ran out of steam so had a week on another project which was a welcome change. I then thought of setting the installation photos and resulting promo flyer and swatch booklet into a presentation. And who doesn't like a little story? Everything is cut from paper and photographed by me - although, if I were to do it over I'd certainly enlist the help of a proper photographer. Paper is so hard to shoot! 

What do you think? Keep your fingers crossed for me - there's some stiff competition! 

New brooches for Spring

I've been rather neglecting my Etsy shop lately so here are some new offerings for Spring. They're meant to be coral but they're also a bit like antlers. They add a bit of a natural-shaped zing to an outfit (and, as it happens, the red one turned upside down doubles as an excellent fake nosebleed - in case you needed such a thing. I hope you find it entertaining that I discovered this...).

Today I also submitted my entry to the YCN's Student awards, so fingers crossed it does well. I'll finally be able to show you what I've been working on for the past 6 weeks!