The Daily Ampersand Project: Days 16 - 19

Well, I certainly fell off the wagon with this one. Haven't done a new ampersand in weeks! Working 32 hours a week plus trying to keep illustrating as much as possible, when it's cold and all I really want to do is sleep all the time means that I haven't done everything I wanted to, and my To-Do list is several feet long. Anyway, enough excuses.

Day 16 is Cursive Std, a nice handwriting-esque font that isn't scribbly and horrible. Drawn with thousands of circles! One of the most therapeutic things you can do is fill a page with tiny circles. It'll drive youcrazy and take ages but it's so relaxing and nice to stare at when done. If you have a spare few hours. Which I don't.
Day 17 is Odstemplik, taken from dafont.com again. Quite an unusual font, I liked it instantly. This ampersand is obviously based on the 'et' form. Rendered in purple coloured pencil, nice and simple and naive-looking. Pleasing. Mmm.

Day 18 is Apple Chancery, which clearly came with my Mac, hence the name. It's an ok font, but the swishy bit at the end of the ampersand made me choose it. This is a cutout of some left over wrapping paper. Getting semi festive now.
Day 19 is this crazy thing, Stretched Signature Flex, from dafont. It's mental! Look it up, all the letters are like this, sort of disjointed and tres random. The ampersand is particularly ambiguous and spacious, so I did it in plain red ink, no messing today. Looks like a lovechild of an anchor and the on/off button.

The Ampersand Project also has it's own page on my website now, so you can see them all in full. Have a look!

Book City Jackets - Make Every Book Beautiful

I stumbled across these lovely little things, from Book City Jackets. A great idea:

"Even as you polish off Eat, Pray, Love and dive into the Twilight series*, “Reading List” ensures that you always look classy. Perfect for the aspirational reader. $12 for set of 3."



Basically, if you're reading a book that's kinda not cool, or has a rubbish cover, or is one of those stupid 'How to be amazing at everything' self help books that you SHOULD be embarrassed to read, you stick these wonderful modern/bauhaus esque looking book covers on. Minimal and typographic porn. And you look clever because you're 'reading' some great literary classics. Noice.

Alternatively, they always do Artist editions, which are my favourite:



Now how lovely are those? They are also accepting submissions for new artists covers, I'm going to see if I can get in on the action.

So you could be reading the worst book ever and you just look cool. A great idea and not too expensive either. A great christmas present for that friend you have who always read's Katie Price's 'novels' and similar drivel. Instant classiness.

Also; "Our covers are off-set printed on recycled kraft paper in downtown New York and “fold-to-fit” almost any book. A Book City Jacket isn’t just beautiful — it also protects from spilled drinks and prying eyes and provides a convenient space to doodle and jot down notes. Book covers were a good idea in junior high school and they’re a good idea now."

Recycled + Brown paper + New York + doodle approved = Rachel likes.

*And yes, I have asked for the Twilight series for Christmas. Can't actually wait. Although I'm not actually ashamed - I do find the twilight covers quite pleasing. Everyone has said the books are better than the films. And the films have been AMAZING. Sooo... yep.

Naja Conrad-Hansen: Designer and Artist from Copenhagen

I've just come across Naja Conrad-Hansen's work in the latest issue of Varoom! Magazine and have to share it. She's so talented and her work is beautiful, edgy, with a hint of darkness and horror, firmly rooted in fashion.

"Graduating from Danmarks Design School in 2003 with a Ma in Visual communication and a background in fine art; she started her profession as a freelance designer and artist in 2003. Her practice embraces illustration, painting, graphic design, art direction, and making silk-screen prints + definitely more. Inspirations comes equally from the worlds of fashion, hardcore music, and traditional art and design and in general observing the world around her. The illustration style is basically about "finding some untouched areas of the mind and stimulating the eye and imagination. Naja Conrad-Hansen has worked on projects ranging from Max Mara to the solid perfume Filth, as well as an award-winning children book. Her works have been included in a wide variety of fashion/graphic magazines and books. She also designs print and pattern design for different clothing labels including limited edition print for her own brand Meannorth."

I love ink work and the selective use of colour works very well. Her figures have that similar distorted feel like Julie Verhoeven's fashion figures do, and there's so much energy. Also I love how she uses text as well, that always goes down well with me. I would love to be able to create work on a level like this. This is another example of an artist who inspires and makes you depressed at the same time. Take a look at her portfolio site, Mean North, there's tonnes to wade through.

All this work posted is copyright to Naja Conrad-Hansen.

Coveting: Floozie by Frost French

Let me just say, it is entirely silly of me to covet these. I work in a large chain of underwear shops. I get a good discount. I do not have any need for more underwear. If I did, I would buy some with said discount.

However.

Frost French is an underwear line created by Sadie Frost and Jemima French. I spotted the Floozie line in Debenhams the other day and went 'omg!' while my friend went 'Those are horrible, Rachel you are weird.' I get that a lot. But in my opinion, they are so cute and pretty and ridiculously vintage/granny looking. Which is uber cool, unless you are a granny. Then it's not. Get it?

I've seen a few styles of bra like this recently, with the extra bit at the bottom. Topshop did a few, I'm sure. Anyway, because it's different, I love it. And I bet it's really flattering. Also, you could totally wear this as outerwear, over a cream lace top. I so would.



Look! A little mini teacup! So if you are going to tea, perhaps with some form of royalty, you could totally wear this underwear. Other clothes are advisable as well, however.

A pair of knickers. In a cupcake. Genius. I bought something very similar for my friend for her birthday, only it was a pair of socks,wrapped up in a cupcake. Cute AND practical. Everyone needs socks.



This might be my favourite design. Blue and red = awesomely modern vintage. And check out the close up of the pattern:

Tiny mini teacups! So pretty.


And here as well, mini teacups in a different pattern. Ah.
Like I said, you can buy the range at Debenhams, have a look. Also, Debs are doing a 20% sale at the moment, it ends tomorrow. I may have to go in on my lunch hour. Maybe. Oh, I so don't need any more bras =/ Help.

Look what dropped through my door....

Do you remember, a while ago I posted about the loveliness of Crispin Finn's screenprinted 2010 wall planner? And I was coveting it madly, but even refraining from buying it in London because of my (relative) poverty?


Well I got an unexpected and awesome email from Crispin Finn, saying they saw said post and wanted to thank me for talking so enthusiastically about the wall planner, and thought they could help my overdraft by sending me one!

Enter grinning Rachel!


It's uber lovely. It hurt me slightly to rip the sealed paper to open it, but here it is! It's not on my wall yet as it isn't 2010 and I'm sure that's bad luck or something.

So thanks Crispin Finn! My overdraft thanks you ^.^

I actually got this in the post last week sometime, but have been so busy that there hasn't been any blogginess at all. As you can see. Working in retail at Christmas = tiredness. On a better note, said overdraft is reducing ever so slightly every week, even after succumbing to sparkly dresses in River Island. Well, it is Christmas. You gots to have sparklies. Might be out of parent's house, I dunno, in the next year? Lol....*

*Not actually Laughing Out Loud.

Coveting: Everything in Paperchase

Yes, it certainly is dangerous for me to approach Paperchase. I have a major stationery fetish, especially when coupled with bright colours/and/or cute characters. Massive weakness. It's the fresh virginal pages you see, I must possess them all.

Paperchase is of course everyone's favourite stationery shop, and I don't see how it can't be - every season they come out with the most gorgeous designs and it takes a whole lot of will power for me not to buy every single one of the beautiful notebooks that I have no use for, except to sit on my desk or in my handbag, emitting tiny rays of stationery sunshine.

Except I wandered in (was dragged by tractor beam) into the MK store yesterday, thinking I could beef up my christmas list with lovelies. Well I certainly did that. Let's start with the diaries:

Slim Week To View 2010 Diary. Linen Midnight Clematis Design £6

Agenzio A6 2010 Diary. Damask Floral Design £9.50

A5 Day To View 2010 Diary. Pink Botanical Design £6
Love this one, such a pretty design, and that pink is ace. This almost went on my list but it's too fat in my opinion - as it's a day to a page, the actual diary is about 1.5" thick - not that handbag friendly really.

A5 Week To View 2010 Diary. Mirabella Design £7.50

Just a few of the various designs and shapes they currently have. And then I came across....

Week To View. Flexi Sleeve 2010 Diary. Food Friends Design £7

Uh huh. I emitted a tiny squeal and knew it was love. It's totally kitsch and childlike and unbelievably cute - but I just could not resist at all. Even the pages are so much fun, no boring 'straight lines' here, no sir. And to be honest, life can get pretty hectic at the best of times, especially in my case when trying to juggle a 'normal job' (which has it's perks) with freelance stuff, finding new creative work to get involved in and opportunities to give myself, as well as actual life like seeing my friends back in Wolverhampton, getting drunk, and obviously chilling out by watching a good film. Or X Factor. Or I'm a Celebrity. Or Neighbours.* You know. So as life gets crazy, it would be nice to open my diary and have a tiny smile at the absurdity of it.

*I don't actually pencil in diary time for Neighbours and the like. Honestly.

And you know me - food, with actual faces? You had me at smiley coffee cup.

So that's on my list, and I suspect dad has got it for me today in London judging by the 'trying to be sly while getting reminded of the design' phonecall earlier.

Before all this, I was considering getting a filofax/organiser style:

BIRD FOLK FLORAL ORGANISER 10 £20

DAMASK STRIPE ORGANISER 2010 £20

Which, ok, is probably more practical. That was my reasoning. And paperchase have some great designs. And I could be all organisational, like I love being, with a diary bit and a list bit and a phone numbers bit and whatever else. And I'd feel semi important with an organiser. Don't you think? Instant important-ness. 'Sorry, I've got a call on the other line. Oh yes, let me just get out my organiser....'

You know. In my mind.

But the 'food friends' design won me over so normal Rachel is having a normal diary....

Sticky notes! I do not need these. Nope. But I want them.

A7 notebook. The most useless size a notebook could ever be, but I have about 5 this size. So. Cute.

Ok, this is actually useful - it's a 'media case', it's £5, and I want a new digi camera for christmas. See where I'm going here?

Bag bag bag. Useful. Always useful. Always need more bags.

So yes, as we all know, Paperchase is crammed full of not just lovely notebooks but all manner of stationery and accessories you can think of. I can't keep listing stuff I love. There is however, one thing I don't love about Paperchase - their website and online shop, or rather, lack of it. The website has a few items on there, but if you want to buy, it takes you through to their Amazon Shop. Which is fine, it works, you know, job done, but as a consumer who loves to amble my precious time away gawking at everything in the shops, I would quite like to amble precious time away gawking at a beautiful website and online shop, all seamlessly moulded together. Maybe they'll sort it out. It's a minor thing but takes away from the experience, I suppose.

And so I bid you goodnight and good luck not spending anything in Paperchase this christmas.

Next I'll probably end up posting my entire christmas list. There's some good stuff on there!

Guest Post on Domestic Sluttery!

Totally exciting news; today I've been featured on the awesome blog, domesticsluttery.com! :D

For those of you who don't know about the domestic sluts, where have you been? I've been following them for a good few months now, and they've been taking the home & lifestyle world by storm in their own stylish way. Their About page describes them best:

"Domestic Sluttery: The home and lifestyle blog for women who have better things to do.

Women don't have time to decorate, or to spend hours in the kitchen. We work, we go out and we have fun. We basically live our lives and would rather shag than do the dishes.

But that doesn't mean that we don't want our homes to be beautiful. If anything, they mean more to us because the time we spend at home is more precious."

Pretty rockin', I reckon, and simply the best name for a website, ever. And definitely the way forward. I'm all for endless pretty things, as well as having time to you know, have a life!

They are of course advocates of the life-saving properties of the humble cupcake, so to aid my obsession with drawing and eating said cakey-bakeyness, I dropped them a line to see if they'd like an illustrated recipe :)

Click on image to enlarge so you can read the instructions.

Christmas is a mere 5 weeks away, so it's time to crack out the food colouring and get festive with this christmas cupcake recipe! I like to illustrate my recipes with as little text as possible, letting the images speak for themselves and to create a really rich and inviting recipe that I think feels more cosey and easy to make than food photography does.

I've had some really amazing feedback on the guest post already through twitter - here are a few of the comments. Seriously, made me feel very warm and fuzzy, thanks to everyone. If anyone has a go at the recipe, please let me know @rachillustrates! Would be great to see.

I've done a few more illustrated recipes which you can see on my website, click here. Also, there's a few more hanging around on this blog too, in a more sketchy sort of form.

I love doing these and will do lots more in the future, maybe some kind of savoury based substance next as I might end up in a constant state of sugar high.

Food illustration is just one area that I love working in; I am of course available, as always, for illustration commissions on any project you can throw at me, especially ones involving cakes and pretty things. Just drop me a line!

I'm now off to gush about Paperchase's newest offerings... it's always a financial mistake to let me loose in that shop.

Penguin Design Award 2010

The Penguin Design Award is such a great competition, I can't really ignore it this year, even though I'm not eligible to enter any more. Such is the way of non-studentness :( However, what's interesting is that for the first time, they are letting MA students take part. This is good news for me as I still aim to do my MA in the next year or two.

I entered in 2008 and 2009, and was lucky enough to be shortlisted for 2009's Penguin Design Award, and it's definitely one of the highlights of my career so far. I blogged about the Awards Presentation Evening back in June, had such a brilliant time, met the other finalists and chin-wagged with the likes of Jonathon Barnbrook and Amelia Noble. Pretty sweet.

This year, they've also added the option to not only design the cover of a Penguin book, but also a Puffin children's book. Which is good as children's illustration is so much harder than you'd imagine. I actually hated it in Uni but that's by the by. Can't be amazing at everything ;) Ha.

So for the Puffin prize, the cover to illustrate is Alice in Wonderland. Which at first is amazing, that story is a classic and there's so much interesting visual imagery that comes to mind instantly. But then you think - actually, it's been done so much. I think it'll be extremely tricky to produce something original:

"Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865 and has remained in print ever since. Next to the Bible and the works of Shakespeare it is one of the world’s most widely translated works of literature and is the most famous children’s fantasy ever written. Full of riddles, puns and wordplay, it will appeal to readers of all ages, whether they are discovering it for the first time or revisiting it once more.

Students are invited to design a whole new cover look for this classic, reinventing it for a new generation of child readers and ensuring that it remains an integral part of childhood."

That's a challenge and a half.

The Penguin award is equally as good though. The cover to design is for Perfume by Patrick Süskind, which I've never read. There was a film wasn't there? I think I've seen that, it rings a bell. "Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer — this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill …"

Yes, I definitely need to read this book.

So I thought, even though I can't enter (boohoo), I'm going to read the book and design a cover anyway. I love illustrating book covers and haven't done a good one in a while; I need to beef up my portfolio with new book covers so this is a great brief for me. The actual submission deadline is sometime in April next year so that's not putting the pressure on me; I imagine I'll get it done before then though as I won't be caught up with mountains of uni work, bar crawls, dramas, impossible ambitions, dancing, pointless lectures, that thing called 'learning new stuff' and endless hangovers any more.
Yay for being a graduate =/ *cries*

Another interesting note to mention is they've slightly changed the judging procedure this year. "To make the process even closer to the way a jacket designer works, once the judges have selected the shortlist, the Penguin / Puffin Art Directors will give the shortlisted entrants feedback and further art direction on their cover submissions. Shortlisted entrants will then be invited to resubmit their work, taking all the comments on board, before the final round of judging." Which I think is really good; real-life design has near constant changes and amends thrown at you so it's good to have a bit of experience at this.

Lastly, the guest judges for the Penguin Award are Marian Deuchars and Will Self. I know right, oh em bloody gee. Both are legends. Lucky people! Good luck anyone who enters, if you get to the ceremony like I did then don't stand around scared chucking wine down your throat like I did until I spoke to people; get in there and talk to these people. They have good advice. It's not that scary. Maybe a bit. The free wine helps. And they literally were forcing it on you, awesome waiters, didn't even have to ask, haha. Good times.

To see my entry last year, have a look here.

Coveting: Lace Cycling Shorts

Not entirely sure how behind I am on this microtrend. I've wanted cycling shorts in sheer or lace for about 6 months now and didn't actually know they existed - I always get things in my head that I've clearly seen in highfashion ads/catwalk, forgotten about, and it's resurfaced somewhere thinking I've invented it. It happened with cream lace tights. I wanted some for literally a year and couldn't understand why the high street was only making lace tights in dark colours. What were they doing? Then Miss Selfridges did some... but I saw them sold out online and never found them in real life, ever. Until this august I randomly spotted some footless ones in Primark and was all 'Finally!!' and bought them swiftly while swatting 'child labour' out of my mind.

Anyway.


These ones are Motel, found on asos.com. They're £18 so not too bad really, might just have to get some. The thing is, I have godzilla size thighs. No joke. It's my curse :( So these could be a massive fail on me. I have a penchant for really short dresses on nights out, so these could be great for winter nights out, under a sparkly dress of some description, or as more casual under shorts and lots of layers, liiike:

I love this grungy look, and I've got almost that exact white lace bodice on the right hand pic. Slightly not winter-proof though - I think bare legs can only be pulled off on nights out this late in the year. So I'd probably wear this look over transparent tights and chunky boots, just so my legs don't get frost bite.

A la this kind of thing. Adds a bit of excitement and interest to an LBD, and slightly lengthens it too in case you ever fall out of taxis/down concrete steps. Not that I've ever done that...