Work - Christmas Cards

I made Christmas Tree Cards for my family this year, I accidentally came up with the folding for this card whilst trying to make a junk mail christmas tree.

As well I got a bit carried away with the gold paint and potato stamps, so ended up with some nice paper for the presents. So lots of gold paint and chinese newspaper for my family this year.

Work - Summative Project

At university we were asked to make a summative piece for the year so far. I want to represent my process of creation, so I decided to make my final piece the out of the development collages I do. I really dont like the colours in the paper I used, wish I had explored that more. It has defiantly been a learning curve and I feel more focused on what I want to active from now on.

Work - Website

I have finally designed and made a website in dreamweaver! Dont worry I will not be leaving melonwall.com! My blog is here to stay! Please have a look, and give me feedback! Any suggestion is a great help!

Work - Printing

I got this great book off (Print Workshop) Danielle for christmas. So I have been reading and playing with techniques. This week I have tried turnip stamps. I really enjoy playing and making these, but I really need a vision of what I want to create before, so I can play in the process of making the design. So thats what I am hoping to do once this current university project is over (summative project, coming soon).

Travel - Edinburgh

Last weekend Danielle (my girlfriend) and I went to Edinburgh for the weekend for the Christmas Market, I took her little Olympus Trip with me but the light meter doesnt seem to have worked, so these are all the images that came out from it.

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Here are my favorite bits from the National Museum of Scotland, I really like these costumes, the colours and patterns in them are beautiful. Plus I think they are really fun items and would like to know more about the cultures they come from and many try them on = )

Work - Magazine (Focus Current Affairs)

Over the last four weeks I have been making a cover, contact page, splash page and turn page for a made up current affairs magazine. I really enjoyed doing all the development from collages of elements to simple thumb nailing but when I got it onto the mac I was a little demotivated however when I started playing with typefaces and focusing myself it all started coming together. My piece is about the worlds population hitting 7billion people, I feel the paper works really well with the piece, taking away that clean cut approach. Next time I really want to explore typography alot more and be more challenging with its use.

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Layout Sheets

(a couple of pages from many)

Travel - Northumberland

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Sea Life Centre

Well we went to Tynemouth Sea life centre which was cool, some really nice light and some ugly fish! I love this one below, really would not want to mess with him. Also got a video of the Seal tank with the light and accidentally got a seal swimming through.

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Great Finds

Got these two cameras for five pound, the Olympus Trip needs a little bit of work to get the light meter working. Cannot wait to get some film in these and see the photos that come out. Hope they are as good as my other cameras.

Here are some nice bits of metal I found on an old RAF site, I really like the drain cover.

I really like the backs of these photos, got some really lovely typography and dynamics on them (and some great errors). Plus some of them were taken 8miles down the road from home, which was really funny to find so far north.

Plus I got a few lanterns from China Town, been hunting for the one on the left for the last couple of weeks. So I am pretty pleased I have it now, shame I did not actually get it from China.

Work - Learning to Emboss

I went to Carlisle's most "famous" of stores Fun to Do! and got myself some stylus for embossing! Here are some of my first goes, I am aiming to emboss my front cover of a magazine with this technique. I had never done it without a press before but it is surprisingly easy and fun. I highly suggest having a go with it!

Radiator Works

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Radiator works a bit too well at the moment but thank you student housing. This pretty much the only use I could think of doing with the hot air rising today. 

Magazine - Woman's Weekly, 100 years

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Its Woman's Weekly 100th Birthday, for this they have produced the first issue from 1911 in its original form. The original is on a small sized unbleached paper with black and red print. I really like some of the compositions in this book, like the one with the women pointing down with the title coming out of hand. Also the body copy is terribly small which I think is quite fun, as I see older ladies reading these magazines but not being able to see anything because of their glasses are not being good enough. Anyway well worth popping down to Smiths to get one of these for £1.25

Work - Ipad App - The Sage (unoffical)

This weeks university project (not live) was set to create an application for The Sage - Gateshead, I wanted to play on the architecture of the building, so created my module grid from that. I got the idea for this when I visited the building and saw the light hitting the windowed roof. The grid starts out curved but I had to straighten it up to allow more data on the page and easier navigation. I was focusing my app for middle aged people to book the concerts they wanted to see at The Sage. I really like the layouts and the idea of being able to rearrange parts of the app for which artist however I wish I had focused on typography abit more.

Layout Pad

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I really enjoy working everything out on the layout pad before I get on to the computer, here is some of my favorite pages.