Hello London

I manage to have found reasons to go to London 3 times in the past 12 months... It started with a trip to get my Visa last year where I went with friends and did a lot of drawing in the free galleries the rest of the time we were there. My last trip was to get a tattoo from my cousin, and this one was to go to a poster conference at the V&A.

I went with my friend Jess, getting a 6 hour night bus from Plymouth. It is a fairly uncomfortable experience, getting in at 7.15 am all bleary eyed and achy from sleeping sideways on bus seats... Being a student though, needs must and it means I can justify staying longer :).

We walked past Buckingham palace and through St.James park to go to the London college of Optometry which has an Optometry museum. I am currently working on a brief to design the walls of the Optometry centre at Plymouth uni and this was basically research for that (and the excuse to try on lots of funky glasses)

We then went to the National Portrait gallery and the Tate to do some drawing before visiting an old friend of mine at his bar next to the Thames and managing to get fairly tipsy in the middle of the afternoon! This resulted in some very confused walking to the hostel and me getting angry all the roads near Elephant and Castle tube station looking the same...

The next day we got up bright and early to go to a conference about posters at the V&A. The day consisted of a wide range of speakers from those analysing how posters are viewed, people who hold different collections, and artists using the idea of the poster in different ways.

I most enjoyed the talks from artists, David Mccandles from www.Informationisbeautiful.net who creates infographics to help us process large amounts of information more easily, watch his video "debtris" here.

Also work from "the space highjackers" which is pretty self explanatory and very interesting, click here to watch!

We finished up that day with Yo Sushi in Harvey nicks. I don't like fish but just end up getting all of the deep fried things which are amazing :)

The last day we left the hostel and headed straight for the science museum to play around with fun things like heat sensitivity cameras and liquid nitrogen.

Before heading across to the V&A to draw some more exciting things. I like to sit and draw patterns from all the amazing ceramics and textiles :)

We stumbled upon the performance section which I had never seen before, so many crazy costumes!

I then had a rather lovely 6 hour bus back last night-back to reality and uni work! Ah well...

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new years preview

Have spent alll day making my costume for new years. It is jungle theme so I will be working the bar dressed as a monkey! 

Here is one part of it, massively inspired by merrimaking. Was going to attach the hood to the top but it all got a bit too complicated and then i found the lovely ribbon and decided to just make the hood separate! 

My head is so warm right now!

lots of hairbands

I am already unbelievably bored of being at home. However this does mean i get on with important jobs such as updating my folksy shop with the hairbands i made aaaages ago! I secretly want to keep them all but my bank account is a little sad recently so i figured i should try and sell some things!

 spread the word!

summer ball preparations

So today, I started off trying to clear out my room in halls to get rid of all the crap before i pack up and leave uni. In the end i got distracted by all the random spare fabric i had left from customizing random clothes all year. Decided to make some hair bands for my online store. Made a load of plaited ones in different colours and they came out rather nicely! 

Got my dress for tomorrow from a tiny charity shop in plymouth called the pepperpot. It has a 50p rail outside which i always seem to get random exciting things from, in this case it was an 80s style prom dress with a broken net petticoat! I have now fixed the petticoat and shortened it all, surprised at how it actually worked in the end, can barely breath in it but thats another matter...

Also today i got my friend jess over to make some vodka jellies, we then got carried away and decided to also make skittles vodka, and put wine gums in the jellies to make them even better! All in all it has been a very successful day :) now all i need to do is get some good sleep ready for the 9 hour insanity tomorrow!!! oh, and breakfast at 24 hour diner goodbodys at 4am, standard!

folksy! and crazy dancing

Haven't posted on here in a while. Been pretty busy doing lots of drawing by the sea, doing essay research, and enjoying the sun! 

Been at home this weekend to see my sisters dance show. It was the same group i was in last year before i left for uni, watching them i was insanely jealous that i couldnt be up there with them! Don't get me wrong, i love cheerleading but the dancing just isnt the same. And you cannot beat some of the insane costumes you get to wear! 

So yesterday i had the crazy idea of starting a folksy shop. I have made hair accessories for myself before and decided it could be fun to try and sell some! Heres a couple of pictures of what i have made so far! CLICK HERE  

to look at the rest! Will be adding more over the next couple of weeks, i have more materials at uni i want to play around with! 

unfit

Just tried to do some cheer routine practice, am out of breath just doing the dance and jumps and thats not even doing stunting or running around... I wish i had a dance studio to practice in, then at least i can see if it looks wrong and i can make it look better! Its too cold in my house so i figured dancing would warm me up now i am just stupidly out of breath... Been at work all day which is fairly dull, only made more interesting by chatting to people about snow and where they are going and selling more 99p promotional dairy milks to people than the guy on the early shift! Have been back at moto for 2 days and i have already had 2 free burger kings-bad plan, this is not going to be a healthy christmas! 

Left my SLR camera at uni which i am now a little bit annoyed at myself about... Tomorrow i am going to be very self indulgent and go for a nice long wander in the snow and take some photos before spending the afternoon playing around on photoshop! Screw doing actual uni work! I need a new sketchbook so i have nothing to work in anyway... here are some i took last year :