Sugar Chops

Elevated Envelope

2012-10-08T17:21:00.001+01:00

This month I'm taking part in the Elevated Envelope! It's a group of people who sign up to send each other 'artistic snailmail' and tonight I started work on mine (nothing like leaving it until the last-ish minute).

The theme for this round is 'Malicious Surprise'; interpret as you will. I've decided to loosely base my 5 envelopes on a Halloween theme. Cutting my latest issue of Vogue into pieces, I created a base collage for each envelope in Halloween-y colours - red, black, orange, purple and....green.

I've yet to decide on the details, but I'm going to have a go at creating spooky images in solid contrasting colours (probably white/black). Then the small matter of fitting the addresses and postage in somewhere!

Work in progress below:

My pen pals are in Visakhapatnam (India), Oklahoma, Bedford, Port Washington and Wyoming, so it's cool to think of my little artworks making their way across the globe. I'm also really looking forward to receiving mail back!

Scrapbooking

2012-07-08T17:03:00.001+01:00

I've recently followed in my mum and auntie's footsteps and have taken up scrapbooking as one of my many craft hobbies.

At the moment I'm just working on pages using monthly kits from Basic Grey, who's style and general aesthetic I really like. As with cross stitch, a lot of the items available venture into naff and 'grannie' territory, so it's nice to come across companies such as Basic Grey who seem to cater for the people that don't want clowns, puppies and Bible verses to feature in their work...

Below are some photos from my work so far!

I'll have to take some more photos of my others pages and get them posted here soon. I'm looking forward to having a lovely album full of my memories for 2012 :)

LetterMpress

2012-07-08T14:29:00.003+01:00

I'd seen this on the App Store a while ago but had been unsure it was worth the £6.99 price and also if I'd use it. After a recommendation from Stephi, I decided to give Lettermpress a go.

I've only just started playing with it, and I love it! When working digitally it's easy to just click, click, click, but with Lettermpress I find myself taking more time to think through what I'm doing.

There are loads of papers to choose from, and although there aren't a huge amount of fonts, there's definitely enough for a noob like me to keep me busy. Most of the fonts are in keeping with the letterpress era and I'm a huge fan of the retro feel.

It just makes me want to try it for real though! Does anyone know of any letterpress workshops in or around Glasgow?

Kitchen Makeover

2012-07-04T21:45:00.002+01:00

Al and I were fed up with our existing kitchen units, so we decided to attempt to re-spray everything to get a whole new look while keeping costs down.

The units had a wipe-clean, plastic-y surface, so a primer coat or two was needed to ensure that the top coat stuck. We're planning on painting the living room/kitchen white, so we chose grey as a nice contrast.

It was pretty easy to use the spray paints, getting an even coverage with two or three coats.

I don't know how well they will wear, but I think our kitchen looks a lot better! What about you?

Fathers Day

2012-06-20T22:12:00.000+01:00

Now that Fathers day has passed and my father has seen his card, I can show you! I followed a Basic Grey tutorial that was a bonus to the monthly scrapbook kit that I get from them each month. I think my dad liked it and I certainly enjoyed making it :)

My mum and my auntie do scrapbooking and I've recently jumped on the band wagon with them. I find it really relaxing to do, and it's nice to sit down at something that's not digital, something you can touch.

Looking through photos to put onto my pages makes me appreciate the great things I've got to do in my life so far and the people I love #itscheesybutitstrue.

More Macbeth

2012-06-20T20:36:00.000+01:00

Yes, I'm obsessed... This play has stayed in my head since I saw it. What a brilliant reworking...

Macbeth @ Tramway Theatre, Glasgow

2012-06-17T10:51:00.002+01:00

Last night Al and I went to see the one-man performance of Macbeth, starring Alan Cumming, at Tramway, Glasgow.

Portrait of Alan Cumming by Albert Watson.

We started our night off with the pre-theatre menu that was themed to suit the performance, so it was all things Scottish! I would highly recommend going to Tramway for food; it was really nicely presented and tasted great. I had my first experience of the Scottish dessert, Cranachan, yum!

Seats in the theatre were unassigned, so we were lucky to be given a helping hand to get some really good ones, right in the centre and just a few rows back. I wasn't sure what to expect as I sat down, wondering how one man was supposed to play all the Macbeth characters...

The program

This production was based around a man who had recently been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and started with him having forensic evidence collected from him, making you wonder what had happened to him, and how he got the deep scratches on his chest...

Characters were differentiated from each other by changes in voice and/or accent, direction of gaze and the holding of blankets and towels, subtle enough to given an indication of who was who, without being over the top or cheesy.

'Macbeth' was under constant CCTV surveillance, of which the audience was given access to via three screens high above the stage. Brilliant use was made of this, giving you an intimate view of the trauma this man was going through, and allowing you to occasionally actually see the figments of his imagination...

There was already a sense of tension due to the setting being a hospital, but it grew and grew as Cumming's character seemed to descend further into his own personal madness and that of the Macbeth characters as a result of their shared dark and traumatic deeds. I honestly couldn't take my eyes off Cumming; he was riveting.

Tickets for the show are thin on the ground, so if you're not able to get one, you'll have to follow the production to New York if you'd like to see it!

Thanks to Al for a lovely date night. Great company, great food, great show. :) <3

Instagram - June

2012-06-16T15:52:00.000+01:00

A frozen Mojito in Cozumel, Mexico.
My sister Jordan with one of the towel animals on the cruise ship!
My 'workspace' at home.
My snazzy new Nike capris for the gym.
Some of the lemon meringue cupcakes I made for everyone in work.
Sweet Williams, one of my favourite flowers.

Lighthouse Exhibition 2010

2012-06-04T22:22:00.003+01:00

This post is about my involvement in my degree show, held 16-20th June 2010 at the Lighthouse in Glasgow. It was the first time during my time at the University of Strathclyde that my department had held an external exhibition, open to the public.

There were only really three of us students who were involved throughout the whole process from initial design through to installation of the exhibition, although we did have a lot of help from staff and more students during the final few days when we needed the extra pairs of hands!

My main role was to design the wall graphics and to calculate how many posters we could show on the available wall space in the gallery. This process was greatly aided by the fact that I was able to get a copy of the architectural wall elevations. Importing these into Photoshop, I was then able to design the wall graphics to scale. During earlier team discussions, it was decided that a mosaic pattern would be used on the invitations and promotional material, so I incorporated these into the design of the wall graphics.

Once this plan was drawn up, the next stage was to make the graphics to the scale 1:1 to be printed onto sticky-back vinyl. As you can see, there were individual squares that were to be applied to the wall. These were simply printed as a big block of colours and then a guillotine was used to chop it up into squares of the correct size. Unfortunately I didn't take into account the limitation of the width of the printer, so everything had to be scaled down slightly, but luckily this didn't affect the overall design all that much and I was able to quickly change things.

When it came to actually applying the larger sections of vinyl to the walls, a bit of trial and error was involved. Ola and I discovered that oven gloves came in handy (excuse the pun...) when it came to smoothing the vinyl onto the wall. Once we had made sure that the top of the panel was level and adhered to the wall, we carefully pulled away the backing of the vinyl, smoothing it down as we went along and taking care not to stretch and warp it.

The individual squares were a lot easier to apply, although slightly more measuring was required. I'm proud to say that apart from about seven squares, I applied all the rest myself! Although it was repetitive, I found it really rewarding to see what I'd designed move from my laptop screen, to coming out of a printer, to finally being installed in an exhibition space.

Everything to do with the wall graphics went to plan apart from when we discovered a phantom air conditioning control panel that wasn't shown on the architectural plans I received... Luckily a little bit of shuffling about with the poster spacing on one wall was enough to sort things out.

Other jobs included printing and sticking all the name tags to foam board and building and painting plinths, helped along by other students and staff.

I was really pleased with how my wall graphics turned out and I think that the team did brilliantly, building plinths, loading and unloading models, helping put up the posters and manning the exhibition while it was on. All in all, I think the exhibition was a great success and it was brilliant to hear that university staff and visitors thought the same!