Running away from uni work...

... to the beach!

It was my sister's birthday last week and my family were down in our caravan in Cornwall for a few days. Since I just finished a deadline (by no means the last one unfortunately) I figured I could take a break to go and see everyone and enjoy the sunshine.

It was a beautiful couple of days, we managed to visit 3 different beaches and eat lunch in the sunshine two days running. 

I didn't take my SLR but used my small camera which actually surprised me with how decent the pictures came out! If you are looking for a compact camera get a Lumix the lenses are epic :)

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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Lets go to the beach

Had some friends visiting us this weekend which meant all of yesterday was spent hungover (I also went out again last night-double hangover!) and today we decided to take a trip to the beach as the weather was really nice.

We drove to Seaton beach in Cornwall, haven't been there before but there are some really nice rock formations and the rocks are all different colours and patterns (I used to do goegraphy so I like these sorts of things!)

Anyho, took the camera out so heres a few photos, if you ever get a chance to go there there is a really nice cafe' by the beach, its sortof sheltered and open at the same time, really good food and nice views :)

Christmas in the lakes

So this is way overdue since I didn't have my laptop over christmas and I haven't had a chance to edit my photos. 

I went to the Lake District with my family for a week over christmas.

I loved having this whole week to play around with my new camera, here is what we got up to!

Lots of walking in the hills.

We found some logs which people had shoved coins into, anyone know why this is? some kind of lucky charm?

We searched out waterfalls

And Robins

We had a blue and white christmas tree

I made christmas biscuits with sparkles

Mum knitted me and my sister awesome hats!

We resurrected the family tradition of indoor fireworks, making some holes in the tablecloth! 

And we also went out on my sisters inflatable kayak and made up songs about floating on a lake!

What did everyone else do for christmas? Get any exciting presents?

look who is back

I wish I had the time and energy to blog about the rest of camp, maybe one day I will do, there is literally just so, so much that happened that I could possibly talk about that I could go on forever!

The last few weeks went by really past, I got a lot closer to some people, and further away from others. The thing with camp is that at the start everyone is all shiny and happy and excited, by the end you have spent 9 weeks with people, enduring bonding, bitching, hook ups, break ups, people being either very helpful or very unhelpful with the amount of work they do. It all becomes pretty insane!

The last few days were pretty awesome, we made pancakes on the night we put up the art show. We had an icing tube to put the batter out and make pancakes in the shape of human organs, faces, spongebob squarepants-they were pretty hilarious!

The last day we all put camp away as a team, yay for team bonding! This involved lots of production line style putting away of chairs and dining hall benches. Art staff then had to clear the FAB for the staff party that evening. I went to buttermilk falls with a few people beforehand for some beers so by the time we turned up I was tipsy and finding it all very surreal. Seeing your place of work, where you have been teaching kids for 9 weeks, full of all the staff, boxes of pizza, wine boxes and kegs, with everyone drinking and dancing around-pretty damn strange!

Travelling after camp was awesome, I met up with a lot of people in New York after 2 weeks of travel. Was good to see everyone after a break to see what everyone had been getting up to and how they were finding real life. 

I flew home feeling a little bit sad, I had been homesick and kindof exhausted for a lot of the travelling but when I actually had to go I no longer wanted to. I had the most wonderful 12 weeks, there were times when being in the bubble drove me slightly crazy, but I loved it all the same, so, so many good memories and good people whom I already miss and want all my friends to meet!

I am now sat in my new room back at uni, wearing my bear hat (which got many comments at camp, and kept my head very warm when sat outside the bunk on duty). The last few days have been strange, I came back a little nervous about what this year would have in store. I found it hard to sort my head out and move on from things since camp was so, so far away from real life and the people I am with back here.

I think I have changed a little, I feel louder here, I feel like I want to make friends with and be nice to everyone, whereas before I was a little more shy of people. It is probably a good thing because I am social secretary for trampolining this year, and whilst I won't be standing on a chair to introduce myself as Josie Illustration anymore, I will have to get to know and be friendly to everyone :) 

This was going to be a post about how I just installed Spotify and how awesome it is, I got sidetracked. But anyway, Yellow Ostrich are becoming my absolute favourite band right now, perfect catchy, fun, room cleaning and course work music haha.

Now gonna get some sleep before sports and societies fair tomorrow, gonna be walking around for 6 hours in a leotard hassling the freshers. Apparently last year they all just got drunk, figure I may join in with that. Tipsy rambling about how much fun it is to bounce around will definitely get people involved, plus we have goody bags!

Peace out my lovelies x

FAB day off

So, the camp decided to try something different for our days off this week. They shut the fine arts building entirely so we could all have our day off together so that every station could be open for the rest of the week. This meant the entire FAB crew were off together so we all made plans to hang out for the whole day.

We started going for breakfast at the diner... well, we went to the diner, decided it would be too long to wait and then drove to 3 other places (none of which did breakfast) before going back to the diner-bit of a fail but the food was amazing and totally worth it! Eggs on toast here make me a ridiculous level of happy :)

We then went and bought food and booze from stewarts, $2.99 for 6 cans and $2 frozen cocktails in bags, oh and goldfish crackers and cookies, i cant have a day off without buying goldfish crackers!

A few of our crew knew a path through the woods to a lower part of buttermilk falls where the water is stopped by 3 massive boulders so you can swim and chill out, it is really quiet and gorgeous. I do like the other area too but it was really nice to have a place all to ourselves.

We chilled out there for a few hours drinking cocktails out of bags like the classy people we are and having some beers in the lake. I took my big camera so got some gorgeous photos, we ended up taking some model like shots for shits and giggles since the scenery was so gorgeous and Kevn and Meg both have awesome 80s hair! 

We then all went to Megs holiday home which is about 40 mins away from camp. We cooked up some gorgeous food and had key lime pie for dessert before curling up on the sofas to watch Harry Potter. I fell asleep for a bit and then we had to drive back to camp, seriously did not want to leave! But still, amaaazing day, I do love the FAB crew!