Happy Birthday Blog! 3 years old...

I nearly forgot this. My blog turned 3 years old (that's quite old in blog years, I feel proud) last monday, on the 16th. Hurrah for me!

It all started rather inconspicuously towards the end of my first year at uni, here, as a way for me to publish my university illustration work. I then started rabbiting on about stuff I liked and my life, and it all spiralled from there. 200 posts later (I was never that prolific, I write much more frequently now) and here I am.

Actually not much has changed, except I now write more coherently (at least I know what I'm talking about) on subjects like fashion, illustration, design, advertising, things I covet, food illustrations and recipes, things that are cool and inspiring, sustainability and of course my work.

Any suggestions about things you want to read on my blog? There are quite a few of you merry little minions subscribers now, so don't be afraid to chip in, I love comments like I love cake.

Exciting Happenings: Me and my work featured on Crushable.com!

I did this interview a couple of months back, and then my life went into overdrive with my new job that I completely forgot to actually talk about it! Which is crazy seeing as I was damn excited about it.





The really awesome Tom Rosinski, who is a writer and graphic designer at Crushable.com, contacted me saying he really liked my work and wanted to feature me! Click here for the full interview.


Crushable is a really great fashion/design/entertainment/culture online magazine, based in America, I suggest you save it as one of your bookmarks.

Woo!

Featured: My work on Photo-Nomads.co.uk

A nice surprise the other day was being featured on Photo-Nomads.co.uk. It's a lovely little blog by Richard & Sue Broom - take a look.

Thanks for featuring me guys :)

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.

Blog Revamp!

This has been in need of a redesign for aaages. My last header has been in residence since 2nd year (aka 2 years ago) and was looking a bit...well, 2nd year-ish.

Plus, the name of my blog, 'the illustrated world of Rachel Lewis' was too long, annoying, and really silly. I don't just blog about illustration anymore, and certainly, not just about my world. Even though my world is quite interesting, ya.

So, rachelsays... fits much better because a) my website is rachelsayshello.com but b) I'm saying a lot more than hello on this blog. I blog about design, fashion, cakey-bakey goodness, and basically things that grab me, be they an object of desire, a place I've been to, something new I've heard of, and such like. Culture, innit, but like, my pocket size version of it. I'm just like Polly in that sense.

I'm also aiming to have a bit more structure as well, so only blog about certain types of things on certain days. That's not a new system, I know, but it works well for a lot of bloggers. Still to be thought more on though, so don't expect a lot. I often set out to do things then get distracted by... life. And shiny things.

I've gone for a simpler, cleaner, but not radically different look - still got a dash of pink in there, but mostly this lovely blue scheme, and Georgia is still of course my typeface of choice. Not that blogger gives you a lot of options =/ I wanted to put a really subtle background in but blogger doesn't let you do that, either. I know I can do it with HTML but not sure if I want to go poking around in there. Suggestions?

So what does everyone think? Too white? Too blue? Too Rachel? Not Rachel enough? Oh Em Gee.

Winners of 2009 Penguin Design Award announced!

I've been looking forward to this!

If you click here you can see all the winners and highly commended/shortlisted people. They were right, the standard of the work is so high, a lot of these covers are amazing.

Well done to Peter Adlington who won 1st Prize and the coveted 6 week placement at Penguin... I really like his design and it's definitely deserving. I'm tres jealous, lol.

Great colours, and very graphic, that's what I'd call it. So modern it looks retro, if that makes sense, and very ambiguous. Great title font too. Niiiice.

Here are my pick of my faves from the selection:

Edward Essex (what a great name) joint 3rd place:

I love the black and white of this, really striking and it feels very busy and manic, but in a good way - reflects the book really well. Great style.

Ben Cain - Highly Commended:

I'm a sucker for inventive use of type and this one pleases me greatly. Really simple execution but a strong idea, I bet this guy played around for hours getting this perfect. Love it.

Sara Mulvanny - Highly Commended:

Really nice illustrative style, good to see something not so 'designy'. Deers seem to have cropped up a lot in these covers (including my own - well we did read the book, you know) but this one seems to have used it the best. Nicely eery and really great type treatment, love those muted colours.

Sonia Poli - Shortlisted:

Again, hand rendered type always goes down well with me, especially massive type that take up nearly the whole cover. This just struck me as understated and simple, but really strong. Ah, there's the good ol' deers.

Sarah Prismall - Shortlisted:

This one is great, I love the geometric shapes and the pure white background, feels really clean and modern. I'd definitely pick this one up on a shelf. I'd perhaps have made the title larger though, or not centre aligned. That's just me though.

(All these images are taken off the Penguin Award website, copyright to their original designers.)

And of course you can see my entry here. It's so exciting finally having it up there, yay! :D

I'm going to the Awards evening next week, I can't wait! I will of course update here with how it goes.

I've been super busy recently so haven't been able to update as much, let alone draw anything. Silly me. I want to do a couple of new Editorials next week, I've found a few good articles so I'll make sure I do that. Also, I got offered a new job today which I'm so happy about, no more being on the dole for me! It's a good number of hours and it means I can finally like... buy stuff. Haha. Omg maybe I can finally replace my holey jeans :O

Dawdlr

I completely forgot that I did this. Dawdlr is a great little site, a small pocket of rebellion against an online world that is 'updated' every single second with what people are doing, where, through status updates, twitter, you know all that jazz. Dawdlr asks the question "What are you doing, you know, more generally?" and you have to answer on a postcard. The site is updated not twice a minute, but twice a year. Simple, really, and charming and so interesting what people say, some are ambiguous, some are frank.

So I sent one in in february (according to the postmark, 2nd Feb), and it's just been posted up:

http://dawdlr.tumblr.com/post/110881262

http://dawdlr.tumblr.com/post/110880954

Completely forgot I wrote that. And the slightly saddening thing is it's all still true; and I didn't get into RCA. Or St. Martin's.

When my spangly promotional postcards turn up I'll send a new one in. I like seeing something from the past turn up; maybe what I write next won't be true when it finally turns up on the site.

On another note, I've entered May's Creative Flair Illustration Competition - you can see my entry here; it's one of my mobile phone posters. Fingers crossed for that!