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.