Farewell Cardiff

In just a few days I'm leaving lovely Cardiff and moving back home to Somerset. For someone like me who never thought I would enjoy city living, Cardiff has surprised me. Perhaps because it is rather small for a city and has huge areas of parkland right in the city centre. Whatever it is, I'm certainly sad to be saying goodbye. 

 I know I'll miss the amazing view out of my bedroom window over the River Taff and the Millennium stadium.

 I'll miss my friends here and all the wonderful people I've met.

I'll miss the noise and the fact that it never quite gets dark here with all the city lights.

I'll probably even  miss a little the drunks shouting outside my window at ridiculous times in the morning! :)

I will definitely miss living right on the doorstep of the city centre. Just 5 minutes walk to pretty much anything.

I'll miss candlelit breakfasts at Barkers and wandering around antique shops on a Saturday afternoon.

I'll miss strolling through Beautiful Bute Park or lazing there in the sunshine.

And I'll miss my flat here, it's not perfect but it's home.

However it's not all sad, Somerset is only a couple of hours away so I will be coming back on a regular basis for sure.And also, Somerset itself is lovely. Beautiful countryside, beaches nearby, my friends and family. Mostly I'm looking forward to starting a new adventure! :)

(More) Sketchbook snapshots

I realised whilst making the last post that although I had shared a lot of my practical sample work from my final degree project I'd never really shown much of my drawing/designing/studio book work. So here are a few pages from my supporting work for the project.

Sketchbook snapshots

I've been concentrating on designing for the commission I mentioned a while back. The design needs to be finished and handed in for approval by the end of the month so I'm busy as can be! I'm really looking forward the making part of this project, it's great to get back to doing what I really love.

Here are some sneak peeks at design pages from my sketchbook for this project. I'll keep you posted as it comes along! :)

CAD visuals

Yesterday the degree show was taken down. It seems odd, all that working away for so many months and now it's all over, marking has taken place (results are on Monday! :o) and all my work is now sat in boxes in my living room. Very strange feeling indeed.

Soon time to start thinking about the next challenge! But for now, I realised I never properly shared my CAD visuals. As creating my own pieces of lingerie was out of the question, I created a digital image to show how my designs might look if they were manufactured into garments. And here they are. I'm not a photoshop pro or anything so I was incredibly pleased with how these turned out.

To create them, I purchased ready made garments and photographed them. I then loaded them into photoshop and layered a photograph of my design over the top. Then using a combination of reduced opacity and blurring I merged the two images so it appeared that the design was actually stitched onto the garment. I wanted to create a soft, dreamy feel to the images. These were then displayed in my show, alongside my work to help people visualise how the designs might be used.



Degree Show snapshots

Some snapshots of my degree show, I finally remembered to take in a camera. The whole show is wonderful and still on until the end of the week if you're in the Cardiff area!

Mood board

Here's a mood board for a commission I've just started work on, I really excited about this project, my first as a graduate, I'll keep you posted with how it's coming along and tell you more about it in time :)

I'm afraid I don't have credits for all these images which I know is naughty. The colour palette is from Design seeds and a couple of the images are scanned from books in the library. If anyone owns/knows of any of the image sources let me know and I shall credit :)



Christening dress

I've been busy busy sewing yet another dress, this time one to wear to my gorgeous niece's christening and possibly graduation too. I bought this fabric a while ago and have been itching to make it but I restrained myself until after my hand in. I absolutely love it and can't wait to wear it :)

I'm thinking red nails, red shoes and a fascinator, perfect outfit!

Beach dress!

So, I gave myself a couple of days break from textiles after my deadline, (I have to admit I got a little bored) and then I couldn't resist the call of my sewing machine any longer. So, voila! I made a beach dress. I'm a little bit smug about this one I have to say, I just imagined it and whipped it up, and it looks great on me :) I love it when that happens. So now I'm all ready to enjoy the sunshine at the beach next weekend (fingers crossed for that sunshine!) :)

And so there it is, done.

Well, it's over. The last couple of weeks turned into a mad stress-filled panic but now it's done, the work is all up, everyone's exhibition looks really amazing, now time to relax and celebrate. There is a few more things to do, a presentation next week of our work, but basically that's it. Degree. Done.

My show space! I am so happy with how it turned out, exactly as I imagined, I wanted to create a simple boudoir theme as a showcase for my lingerie designs. (Please excuse fairly terrible quality iphone photos, I meant to take in my camera but I forgot. I'll take some better photos next time :) )



Almost there!

Frantic painting, sewing, buying, organising, researching, photographing, mounting and displaying of work. Just 10 days to go!