Happy Birthday!

Today is my mom's birthday, despite me not buying her anything (don't worry I'm not that mean, i will buy her something next week, just there is a recession you know!) she's still got a smile on her face! We started the day by watching the football, Birmingham City vs Villa, always good to watch when it's a derby. But unfortunately Birmingham lost 1-0 to a penalty that shouldn't have even been given! Then followed by a drink over at our local pub, and back to our house for a BBQ! I can now officially say i am STUFFED! I feel a bit sick to after eating so much! The weather's been pretty nice again today too! Anyway HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Weekend Record

I'm going to try and start giving little reviews of bands, music and albums that i like and that are new, once a month. So to start with I'm going to share one of my new favourite bands with you, They're called Two Door Cinema Club, originally from Bangor in Northen Ireland and are like a mix between vampire weekend, Phoenix and Bombay Bicycle Club, so if you like any of those bands I'm sure you'll love them! Two door Cinema Club have recently just released there new album called Tourist History, which have promising hits such as Undercover Martyn, Something Good Can Work (which is due to be released as their new single and one of my favourites) and I Can Talk, their sound is unbelievably catchy and have that upbeat tempo that just shouts summer. I'm really pleased that these guys aren't just one hit wonders, they're very talented boys and am mega excited that they will be playing at Leeds Festival this year!
Don't worry if your not going to Leeds this year, you can always see these amazing guys at your local 02 Academy, later on this year.


Anyway I'll leave you with this brilliant video, its TDCC new song Something Good Can Work, which is available to download now! Hope you like it!







Next Thursday, i will be heading down to the Hare And Hounds in Mosley to check out another new favourite of mine Darwin Deeze from New York, he has amazing hair! Oh and that moustache! Any of you who fancy it, check out the Hare And Hounds website for ticket info!

Just to end the day

Today was just perfect, no college, the sun was shining, catched up with all my programmes including cracking antiques, which is by far my favourite thing to watch at the moment, you guys should watch it sometime, its on BBC 2 on Wednesday's around 7:30-8, will have to double check! But to top my day off i met Sian to catch the last of the sun, we just took a walk round our local park, had the usual chat and came home for a much needed cup of tea! Suprise! Suprise! Sian got the camera out!

FML

Not only do i have 5 weeks to complete my final major project, and by that i mean: i need to have 3 completed sketchbooks and 3 final garments finished. My Sketchbooks are looking pretty poor at the moment and so is my bank, but we've also just been told it's 8 weeks until our end of year show and the last to garments we have made have to be completed and ready for the catwalk, plus we also have design t-shirts, decide where were going hold the fashion show and help the 2 years complete their collections! I'm so stressed at the moment, i don't even want to think about all the work i have to do, besides that I'm pretty much broke again till the end of next week. It's not looking good at all! I guess I'm just going to have to buckle down and get ready for the next few weeks of being stressed to the limit!

Feeling Geeky

Just a little update, This weekend we celebrated my best friends birthday Sian (from http://tea-an-toast.blogspot.com) it was her 19th and first the idea was just fancy dress, but i think everyone was a bit low on the cash, so in the end we all went dressed as geeks, it was an ace night! Definitely looked the part!

smiles for the camera

okay so i have like the biggest and cheesiest smile going. But i figured if everyone else is posting pictures of what they wear, then I'll give it ago! ha yeah so I'm wearing: Zara shoes from eBay, Primark tights, vintage Levis, vintage leather belt, vintage Topshop yellow shirt, Friends blazer and vintage shoulder bag.

Better late than never.

I've been slacking a bit on the old blog lately, although i have been pretty busing, working, sleeping, drinking and working. All kinds of fun stuff. This is my last week off college and thoughts of my project have been looming over me. Its called PROTECT, HIDE, MOVE, SEARCH. We have to pretend we are one of few survivors in an apocalyptic crisis of our choice, however all our belongings are destroyed no clothes, shelter, protection, nothing. We have to design a garment that will be able to protect and help us survive. We also have to experiment with textiles and work with a surface pattern to fit with the design. There's quite going into this project, we have to explain in our sketchbooks and about films, natural disasters, inspirational designers, design sheets, illustrations, annotation (lots of that) you name it! it has to be in there! and so being typical me, I've kind of left it to the last minute! i know it's my own fault but the inspiration hasn't been flowing, I'm just finding it hard to get back into the swing of things! But this weeks things are about to change and I'm going to commit and get some work done, so i might not be updating my blog until I've got a good few pages done and I'll be sure to take some pictures to show the progress. Until then folks, hope you have a good week!

The April Issue

So i bought the April issue of Elle magazine last month and has only just decided to read through it properly, and in this months issue they featured a small interview with a guy call John Paul Thurlow, he's an artist which in his spare time draws magazine covers for fun. His work is pretty amazing, you can check it out on his blog johnpaulthurlow.blogspot.com. On his blog he talks about how he plans to draw the cover of every magazine he owns (he's a slight magazine junkie) and also for those of you that are in London on the 11th of April, its the opening of his first exhibition, which will show 20 drawings from his Covers series. The event is in the afternoon from 3 - 6pm, at 10 Newburgh Street, off Carnaby Street, W1. There will be booze, cup cakes, a live band and various events and seminars happening through the day. I'm not sure whether its free or not but there's more information on his blog, so be sure to check it out!

Photo of the day.

The sun is out! (well least it was earlier) The flowers are out, I've started taking the dog for longer walks again and this photo has given me an idea for my fashion project!
THE INSPIRATION IS BACK!!!

How to make.

I guess i got a bit bored today, I'm still not feeling any better so i wanted to do something other than sit in front of the t.v. I love origami, its amazing what you can do with a piece of paper. Anyway i made some swans today just to hang around in my room, i also did some instructions for those of you guys that want to make some of your own too!

so firstly you need a square piece of paper and fold it in half like the picture below:

Then on each of the ends, fold them in towards the half way line, so you get a kite shape (see picture below)

once you've done that turn it over and fold inwards again

Once that's done, bring the pointy side up to the big end and fold like below

Then fold the little point down to make the head/beak

so your almost done, all you need to do now is fold in half (see picture below)

Hold it in your hands and lift the neck up and fold in place

and...


There you go!

You can make how ever many you want, sizes big and small. I think they look really cute hung around your house or bedroom!
here's what i did with mine

Just a little example, Hopefully I'll learn some other origami animals and will do another how to post!

Just one of those days

Well today, lets just say I'm not in the happiest of mood's, i haven't been for the past two day's, i have to admit. Partly because I'm ill and the other reason well i really don't have a clue, recently i just feel unhappy about most things, i honestly have no money till the end of the month after buying my Leeds ticket which i know is my own fault but still it doesn't help. I also have a feeling I'm going to be stuck in the house most of the Easter holidays and really i should because i have my end of year project that's needs doing and i need to have my final design ready for the first day back, i literally have 3 pages in my sketchbook, there's just no motivation or inspiration coming my way. Work wasn't highly pleasant either, it was so hot (i work at Topshop in the bullring Birmingham, for those of you that have been there will understand, our changing rooms... AWFUL!!), i was trying to avoid customers asking me where things were, i didn't want to speak my throat felt like it was sand paper! In the end i had to help a lady pick out some outfits for her holiday. i was with her for 2 hours, discussing how she wear things or what she could wear it with, don't get me wrong i love style advising and its kind of where i want to go with my career but today of all days when I'm ill i don't feel like talking!! Thank god she was so nice and understood. For the rest of my shift i felt horrible, i nearly passed out i was so hot! the whole shift just dragged, but I'm home now, in my pajamas, cup of tea in hand. i think that's enough ranting for one day, hopefully I'll be in a better mood for tomorrow and will have some exciting news about my project :)

Happy Easter.

Easter's not really a big deal for me anymore, god! when i was little i used to brag to all my friends about how many easter eggs i'd been given! The occassional over exaggeration of the amount i recieved! I spent my sunday with my friend and her dad and val (sian's dad's girlfriend, who is may i add, hillarious! watching her sing and dance to lady gaga -bad romance has probably been the highlight of my day!) we took a trip down to a carboot sale in Coleshill which is around 20 minutes away from were we live, i was so excited because i havent been to a carboot sale in ages and from what i've seen on bargin hunt, i thought i'd have to hire a van to bring all the amazing things i'd bought for like 20p. But i was surely mistaken, i think i hyped myself up for it slightly too much. So that was a big flop, i didn't mind though sure was nice to get out of the house for a change.
About half an hour after being there we decided to leave as the weather decided to rain! The mud was awful!!! On our travels back we decided to stop off at lovely little pub for a drink, then headed back to sian's for (as sian's dad was say) Girly Time!! haha! 4 cups of tea and Nick and Norah's Infinite playlist later, i got home had a lovely sunday roast and re-uploaded my music to my ipod (my computer crashed and wiped off all my music, such a pain)
anyway here's some photo's HAPPY EASTERR!!

Typical British Carboot sale

Yeah nearly got run over by this!!

Good Friday

That litterally sums up my day. Last Night was good fun catching up with friends, eating giant burgers and chips and re-discovering my talent at pool (apprarently its not a sport in the olympics, gutted!). Feed Night also turned out to be pretty interesting, Paul Scott from Make Architects www.makearchitects.com gave a talk and presentation about the work he and his company does. Some of it close to home, any of you guys heard of The Cube www.thecubeiscoming.com that is being built right by The Mailbox, 5 years into production its still not finished but paul showed us a few of his designs of the finished product (click image gallery on link) and it looks pretty amazing compared to the typical glass modernised buildings. Paul also talked about the work they did for the University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus:
www.makearchitects.com/#/projects/0058/ for those of you that go there or have been to visit may recognise it. What i liked most about Paul's talk, was the fact that the company had there own sort of style, like each project they had done was different but they all kind of looked the same, if you get what i mean! I also liked the fact that they looked at ways of creating buildings that would benefit the planet and wouldnt add to global warming, basically being more efficient. For those of you guys that didn't go you missed out it was a good insight and showed you many more career paths that you could take, meaning if you studied fashion or graphic design, it doesnt mean that becoming a archutechure is out of the picture. Anyway have a look at the links, their work is awesome! Also if you want to know about the next Feed nights Follow their blog: www.thisisfeed.blogspot.com
Back to Good Friday, after going the gosta green (which i have to admit is a great night for students) me and sian headed back to hers and it was cup of tea! and then straight to bed. We had the most deserved lie in, we've just broke up from college you see! we didn't wake up till half 12 today and refused to get out of bed unless it was for tea or food! so the time is now 6:30pm and we've only just decided to get showered and ready! Not sure what our plans are for later, but seeing as we're both broke, i'm sure we won't be dining at the ritz tonight!

enjoy the rest of you day!

Later today...

Well I'm sitting next to my best best best friend Sian Judd (heres the link to her blog its pretty damn cool www.tea-and-toast.tumblr.com) i haven't seen her much this week so sitting next to her in the studio browsing blogs and writing new posts have been pretty fun. Minus the fact that the chair broke on me and i ended up falling through (Sian thought it was hilarious and managed to take a photo, which i will upload later). so yeah anyway later today I'm going to another one of the colleges feed nights, there actually pretty interesting, I'm not sure who he is i just know he's an architecture, so we'll see how that turns out! and then I'm off too Gosta Green, I've never been but its suppose to be a lovely pub in Birmingham, I'm meeting up with a few friends to have few sneaky drinks! its all fun around here!

i will post more tomorrow...

Your my cup of tea

so i love tea a bit too much, but it just tastes so good. I normally have around 4 cups a day morning, midday, afternoon and evening. I found this picture on www.weheartit.com and just had to say how much i love tea. My friend from work also told me about a Tea Appreciation society, that love tea almost as much as i do, they sell the cutest things, bags mugs and yes of course they sell tea! http://www.teaappreciationsociety.org

Thursday

Production skills is my only lesson on a Thursday at the fashion lab, and what most of us didn't expect to be paraded around the studio, was a dead rabbit. I know what your thinking, why the hell was a poor dead rabbit in the studio, don't worry it was all done with good intentions. Fashion students were given the opportunity to enter "fashion against fur" competition. Each student had to come up with a unique and eye catching poster that would put across the statement that using real fur is wrong, but it still happens everywhere in the industry. There was however a slight disagreement between first year students and second year, as some students thought it was the wrong environment to be taking pictures of the dead rabbit, as some people are more sensitive about the subject than others. To be honest, i think if a little warning was given then i don't think some students would of reacted the way they did (i mean come on who really wanted to see a dead rabbit at half 10 in the morning) but i have to admit, it has had a big effect on the class (in a good way) so maybe the campaign (if they win) will work.

Any of you who are more interested in the subject or just want to see more of the students work then just follow the links. http://jessica-butcher.blogspot.com http://emiilyliike.blogspot.com/