Hey, look at all these beads

My Aunt gave this to me recently and I thought I'd share it with y'all.

It's like a catalogue of beads.

It doesn't have a year on it, but judging by that cartoon bead with a face and pointy elbows I wouldn't say it's modern.

 It's full of bead samples!

Strings of tiny seed beads...

...pearly beads...

...colourful plastic beads...

...wooden beads.

And not just beads. There's sequins...

...and sequin trim...

...and little gems! So shiny.

It's going to be a fun afternoon taking these off the pages and adding them to my bead collection.

My 'makes'

Last Tuesday I had a job interview. I didn't get the job, but I'll tell you about it anyway.

It was to be an art assistant on the children's television show Mister Maker. Guys, it would have been perfect, but nevermind.

In preparation for the interview I had to come up with two 'makes' suitable for the show.

This is what I came up with.

I had fun making these. Especially doing the colouring for the theatre backdrop.

Sometimes it's nice to just colour.

Maybe I should print these out and get my colour-on

This Week I...

I had a few of train journeys this week so I got through a lot of John Green's Looking for Alaska, a book I got for Christmas.

If you've read the book you'll know what I mean when I say I just got to the 'After' bit, and then I didn't want to read any more.

I had a hilarious catch-up with my friends at Just Desserts (that's right; they just do desserts).

For Christmas my friend Natalie gave me a cereal variety pack because apparently a cereal evolution that goes Frosties -> Cheerios -> Fruit & Fibre (and then back to Cheerios because my braces can't handle F&F) isn't good enough. She thought the gift wouldn't widen my cereal experiences, but I couldn't bring myself to eat chocolate cereal for breakfast, so I made these with the Coco Pops instead.

It was a delicious decision.

I added raisins to the mix to make the cereal go further and add at least a bit of nutritional value.

On Saturday I had the third session of my Set Design course and my scale model is taking shape.

The first activity of the day was to watch an episode of Miranda [and draw the sets with where we thought the cameras were]. Totally not complaining.

Photo Books

I'm the picture taker of my group.

When I went away to uni my friends back home said it was as if they didn't get up to anything because noone was there to document it.

So I have a lot of photos and I like physically flicking through pages of these photos, as opposed to just pressing the arrows on my computer a bunch of times.

For many years I've been selecting photos, resizing them, printing them out, cutting them up and putting them into self-adhesive photo albums. The big kind that take up a lot of shelf space.

And I'd think, 'surely there is an easier way.'

There is. It's photo books.

I got these all printed from Snapfish (not sponsored. But boy, do I wish it was!)

The big one is a selection of my photos from June - October 2012. Including my graduation.

Yep, that happened.

I like having the photos different sizes, something that would have caused too much brain ache to do when I was printing and cutting and sticking photos into an album.

I also got some Christmas presents made up.

One for my oldest sister and one for my Grandad.

My sister's book had photos from our holiday to Nashville and New York.

It came in very handy over Christmas when we were telling all our family that were visiting about our trip.

Including this photo which she would definitely not mind me sharing with the internet.

Yes, she met Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yes, she'll tell anyone who will listen. 

My Grandad's book, titled 'Grandaughters' contained just that; photos of my sisters and I, and my cousins.

I put a mixture of new photos and old ones when I was a lot tinier.

The books turned out great and I would recommend waiting until the sites have offers - which right before Christmas they did - so you can get more pages for your money.

Geometeric Art

Remember the geometric art posted on A Beautiful Mess almost a year ago?

Well I finally got around to making my own version.

The hardest part was figuring out how big I wanted my equilateral triangle to be and drawing it out to make sure all the sides and angles were equal. Oh maths.

Like the original, I used book pages, coloured paper and photos.

I used all pink paper so it matches my room, and I used all photos of my family and friends because I like their faces! Especially my cousin with the crazy eyes. Yeah, that's her top right.

Once everything was spray mounted and trimmed I popped my new art in a frame.

I got this frame when I was doing work experience in Year 10 at a local art shop that also did framing, and they gave it to me for free.

I think it looks lovely next to my IKEA flower lamp, plastic tiara, Lost cast photo, signed Ian Somerhalder photo and signed Joshua Radin concert ticket.

This Week I...

...mostly just tried to stay warm.

There just aren't enough jumpers!

We've had snow on the ground every day since Monday, which is quite a long time for these parts in these recent years.

Also I did this.

On Saturday I attended the second of five weekly sessions of a Set Design for Film and Television course at Central Saint Martins.

It looks a lot like this; scripts and studio plans and tracing paper and foam board.

So far we've learnt about the different roles within an art department and the names of a bunch of different camera angles.

Our first project it to re-design the set for the Graham Norton show, which involved watching a few episodes on iplayer during class. Not bad at all.

Stay warm frozen friends. Have a good week.

Miniature Candlesticks

I had a recent commission for a miniature fireplace so I thought I would share how I made the miniature candlesticks.

All you need is two wooden kebab skewers, or cocktail sticks for smaller candles, four round beads and two flatter beads. It doesn't matter what colour as they'll get painted.

Cut the kebab skewers to the desired length, mine were 5cm, and glue the flatter beads at the bottom, then a round bead, and then a bit further up the second round bead.

Then you just need to paint them.

I went for cream for the candles and gold for the sticks.

A few coats of acrylic paint covered up the brightly coloured plastic beads.

Here they are displayed on a miniature fireplace, simply glued in place.

River Song's Diary

My sister loves Doctor Who so I made her a 'River Song's Diary' for Christmas.

I saw lots of peoples attempts on the internet, but this is how I decided to make mine.

I started by removing the covers of an A5 sketchbook, bought from The Works.

I cut out the Tardis squares from card and glued them to the covers.

I covered the card with sticky-back blue material and used a hair grip to push it in the grooves and bring out the detail.

I used a craft knife to uncover the holes in the covers and then I put them back on the wire spiral to reassemble the book.

Some people then distress their book to match the original one from the show, but I figure that'll happen over time.

My sister loved it, and she assumed I'd bought it, she thought it was that good.

This Week I...

Do you remember when I modelled for a 1970s styled photo shoot for the Arts Centre?

Well the exhibition of the photos is finally up!

I feature in this one of my two friends and I.

It was a lot of fun and I love the way it turned out.

The images were also printed as postcards and my friend Robyn and I made sure to get all the ones with us on.

This week I also made some props for a production of Annie I'm helping with.

This is the new locket in a Tiffanys box that Daddy Warbucks gives to Annie.

And at work I made another string balloon/soon-to-be-planet.

2 down, 4 to go!

I also added to my Etsy shop and my art website so be sure to check those out.

What did get up to this week?

Christmas present commission

In December my cousin asked me if I would paint a picture of her and her boyfriend for his Christmas present.

This is that painting.

When she first sent me the photo she wanted painting I was like, 'you realise that doesn't count as a photo of the two of you. But if that's how the young kids roll these days, living your life on computers, then so be it.'

Her boyfriend loved it.

Another satisfied customer.

Secret Santa bracelet

This bracelet was one of the presents I gave my friend Lizzi as part of our Secret Santa this Christmas.

I picked out all the charms from a bead shop in New York called the Bead Center and it's also where I bought my E6000 glue.

The shop had tables full of different charms (and beads and findings and stones and strings) and I was given a tray and some small plastic bags to put my chosen charms in.

Lizzi had spent Christmas 2011 in New York so I made sure to pick out some related charms, like this I heart NY one, and the Statue of Liberty. Then I picked some charms relating to her other interests, like the shoe and cupcake. And I also picked out some I thought were cute, like the star and the umbrella.

I think she liked it.

And it turned out that Lizzi had me for Secret Santa!

I got socks.

Ha.

And an ArtPass which looks pretty cool.

This Week I...

It was New Years Eve this week so I...

...cut my hair and went to bed before midnight.

I'm so wild!

I decided I wanted bangs so I consulted youtube and cut my hair myself.

I'm still amazed I didn't screw it up.

Also this week I had a dentist appointment in London to tighten up my braces, so I decided to take my friend Lizzi with me and made a day of it.

This included shopping in the sales, looking at all the toys in Hamleys, and a last minute visit to the Hummingbird Bakery.

(Shhh, don't tell my dentist about all that frosting!)

(source)

We also visited Flowers Gallery on Cork Street to see their annual Small is Beautiful exhibition. Cos I loves me some small art.

On the bottom floor of the gallery was an exhibition by Jane Edden called Ornithomorph.

I remembered seeing a piece of her work in last years Small is Beautiful exhibition, a tiny jumper made of feathers like the one above.

(source)

Her solo exhibition featured many of these 'flying jackets' and they are incredible.

So couture. I want to see little mice strutting down a runway wearing them.

How was your first week of 2013?

Dinosaurs and Daleks

My sister's boyfriend likes dinosaurs and lego.

So for Christmas I made him a photo holder that is a dinosaur holding a block of lego!

It seemed like the natural conclusion given his two interests.

My other sister thought the dinosaur should be slightly formal so she made him a little collar and tie.

Business dinosaur likes lego...he also likes to party.

To complete the present we made some gingerbread dinosaurs.

We freehanded them as our imaginations would only be restricted by cookie cutters.

Also, there were gingerbread daleks.

He loved them!