Don't panic!

I couldn’t sleep last night because I was worrying about everything that I need to get done before final submission. So, today, I decided to write a list of jobs that I need to get done and then prioritise the jobs so that I have a schedule to work to:

Panic List 6/8/11

List of to-dos

Buy a memory stick to submit all digital files

Decide on size of memory stick – 8gb or 16gb?

Buy fabric for printing

Print fabric for cushion covers and seat cushion

Finish stencilling the walls

Photograph walls for portfolio

Put together sweetie lamp

Put together sweetie table

Make lampshade for sweetie lamp

Photograph sweetie lamp for portfolio

Finish banner ready for printing

Finish writing report

Take report for printing and binding

Write business plan

Take business plan for printing and binding

Make cushion covers

Cover seat cushion for Lloyd Loom chair

Hand print 2 wallpapers

Put together final submission

Decide upon photo book or individual pages for portfolio

Submission 14/9/11

24/8/11 - Order memory stick – Realisation file is already 5gb so it may need to be the 16gb

12/8/11 – Buy fabric for printing

16-17/8/11 – Print fabric

14/8/11 – Finish stencilling wall

15/8/11 - Photograph wall

13/8/11 - Put sweetie lamp together

15/8/11 – Make lampshade for sweetie lamp

15/8/11 – Photograph sweetie lamp

23-24/8/11 – Go into uni and design banner

31/8/11 – submit banner for printing

9/9/11 – Put sweetie table together

9/9/11 – take Report for printing and binding

9/9/11 – take Business plan for printing and binding

9/9/11 – have finished printing hand printed wallpapers

11/9/11 – have put submission together

1/9/11 - Make cushion covers and cover for seat cushion

Deadline	Task
12/8/11	Buy fabric for printing
13/8/11	Put sweetie lamp together
14/8/11	Finish stencilling wall
15/8/11	Photograph stencilled wall for portfolio
15/8/11	Make lampshade for sweetie lamp
15/8/11	Photograph sweetie lamp for portfolio
16-17/8/11	Go to print workshop and print fabric for cushion covers and seat cushion
23-24/8/11	Go into uni and design banner – submit for printing if approved by Michael
24/8/11	Order memory stick – probably 16gb
31/8/11	Submit banner for printing
1/9/11	Make cushion covers and cover seat cushion on Lloyd Loom chair
9/9/11	Finish putting sweetie table together
9/9/11	Have finished hand printed wallpapers
9/9/11	Take report for printing and binding
9/9/11	Take business plan for printing and binding
11/9/11	Put final submission together
14/9/11	Final submission

I have called this my ‘Panic List’ and now that I have made it I can check it every time I start panicking. I have kept the ‘Word’ version of the list and whenever I complete a task I will change the text to red - this will work as a reassurance when I start to see more red than black text. I hope this will help to keep me calm.

I have also spend several hours looking at the beginnings of my report and working out what I wish to communicate within its contents and how I will put it all together.

It has, all in all, been a productive day but I haven’t managed to change any of items on my list red yet...hopefully that will start tomorrow! I think that this is a do-able schedule, but it certainly will not be easy to achieve.

Stencilling update

I added a second colour to the stencilled wall on Friday afternoon and I thought that it would be a good idea to share my thoughts with you...

I used the repositionable spray mount this time, which gave a much better attachment between the stencil and the wall, unfortunately I cannot find my stencil brushes anywhere - so now I’m going to have to buy some more - because the paint brush I’m using is applying too much paint and it is still seeping under the stencil. It is so frustrating!

Anyway, I must keep going, time is running out.

Stencilling

So here I am again with another quick catch up of progress. I went in to Uni yesterday for a meeting about the AD11 exhibition… of the 23 people taking part only 5 turned up! The lack of participants made it a short but sweet meeting where we decided that we need Mike Brown to finish the logo, so that we can have printed materials made up, and also so it can be passed on to Neti Shev, so that Neti, in turn, can put this onto the exhibition website. In the meantime we need Neti to name and shame anybody that hasn’t yet given him their info for uploading on to the website. We could not make any further decisions without everybody else (or at least a wider representation of the group) taking part.

This short meeting was almost a waste of my valuable time, and would have been if it hadn’t been for the fact that I also picked up my digitally printed ‘wallpapers’ and also gave Julian, in the workshop, the mylar that I have recently bought along with pdf versions of my stencils. Both of these jobs were becoming pressing and I am relieved that they have now been done.

Whilst I was in Middlesbrough Julian managed to laser cut the 2 layers of my Clematis stencil and this afternoon I have started stencilling a corner of my bedroom! It will be both useful and extremely satisfying to see my design on a wall and I am looking forward to getting it finished but – I’m not sure how my husband will feel about the bedroom when he gets back from his business trip to Hong Kong!!!

I have done two panels of the first layer so far and have had two issues… a) some of the paint hasn’t stayed within the shape because I had too much paint on the brush and b) I should have used spray mount instead of masking tape to fasten the stencil to the wall. Obviously that needs to be repositionable spray mount! This will make moving the stencil and getting a smooth join against the wall far easier – I have now found a can of spray mount and will go and continue painting shortly.

Business cards

An update to my business cards seemed fairly important too. I have redesigned them with the logo on the patterned side of the card which has allowed me to increase the size of the text on the reverse side and they should be delivered on Monday.

As an addition to the cards I also ordered some little postage stamp sized stickers that I can apply to my products and I am considering either printing myself, or having printed, some Whimsy & Quirk t-shirts!

Right I’m off to do some more stencilling, bye :D

ps need more followers!

Arrival of the business cards

Well, Moo.com are a very efficient organisation, and a real pleasure to deal with. My business cards and postcards arrived today. They are beautiful. Lovely printing job, quality card, fantastic POS/marketing materials enclosed – I am very impressed.

There is just one large fly in my ointment! – the text that I wrote for the back of my cards is too small – obviously working in pixels infringes on my perception of size – all my own fault. So I will have to amend this and get some more cards printed. It would appear that life isn’t always a bowl of cherries L but I’m very glad I discovered this problem now rather than a week before the exhibition…

The postcards are perfect because it only needs very small text on them.

So, that update came a lot sooner that the last one, didn't it!?

Even more massive update!!

So, where on earth did the last 2 months disappear to? I have lots to tell you about but the difficulty is putting it all into some sort of order… I seem to be busily chasing my tail in circles whilst putting out various fires (please forgive my mix of metaphors). An example of what I mean is… on Sunday 17th I planned to spend the afternoon stencilling patterns onto the sweeties for my ‘Sweetie’ lamp. These are the small but time consuming jobs that I never seem to have the time to get on with. Before I started painting I checked on line, to see if there were any emails or messages, and noticed that Moo.com (the company I planned to use for printing my business cards and postcards) were offering a 30% discount on printing until Wednesday – and that is why I spent the afternoon designing and ordering my business cards and postcards instead of stencilling! Another fire put out, because I did need to get on with ordering the business cards, but I still haven’t started the other job.

My Wallpaper* magazine arrived on Friday 15^th. It is the handmade issue which has my cover design on the front. I am so proud of it, and it looks so good, that I haven’t removed the plastic wrapper. It may get spoilt if I do! Since I worked on that design they have offered the opportunity to do something similar. This time it is their 15^th anniversary which coincides with the 150^th issue. The design options were to select any of the 150 past front covers for your copy of the September 2011 issue or a front cover cut up into sections and each section can then be filled with the same section from any of the 150 covers. I chose the second option and am now eagerly anticipating my next magazine cover arriving soon.

And now for updates on where I am with all my projects…

The Chair

The chair has now been painted. This has taken longer than anticipated which is due to two different reasons 1) I ran out of paint and then had to wait for some more to come into stock 2) Because I was using spray paint I preferred to paint outside and, the good old British summer being what it is, I had to wait for a dry day with little wind… this was quite a long wait. I now really need to get into the print workshop and print my fabric.

Sweetie Lamp

The size of the sweeties I receive is limited by what is available at the time of collection – a down side to collecting waste materials from manufacturers is the dependency upon their work schedules and therefore availability or non-availability of materials required. I would like to obtain mainly the smaller sized sweeties but they seem to be the size that is least often made.

For this reason I have been looking at other ways in which I could lay out the sweeties to make a lamp…

I am planning to start with a table lamp rather than a standard lamp. And have been painting the sweeties. I am using a combination of Farrow & Ball paints, half used tins of paint and discontinued lines of paint that would otherwise be skipped.

I have decided upon this layout for the first lamp – it is quite a traditional shape for a lamp base but I think that it will be a quirky and interesting lamp once I have finished. After I have completed this module I will develop this range and add other pieces of furniture to it. I will also look at the possibilities of incorporating my acoustics research into this project and making the sweeties more of a feature with a hidden purpose!

I do plan to make an occasional table to sit the lamp on – this will added to the combined look at the design exhibition AD11 in September.

Whimsy & Quirk’s Website

The website is still under construction, but is up and running, do have a look and tell me what you think. The address is still www.whimsyandquirk.co.uk and my email address is nicky@whimsyandquirk.co.uk.

Having used a package website I had thought that the uploading of images would be simple and had planned to include some animation on the website. But I could not get my images to behave as I had wanted and they kept moving over the page, so for the time being I have opted for a more simple approach. This will, in turn, allow me the time to develop additional pages on the website rather than focusing on one page. At this time there are 4 pages – home, gallery, blog and contact. I plan to add this update to the new blog on my website.

Graphics Tablet

The theory behind this as a good one but, in practice, wasn’t great. It will take time to develop the co-ordination between hand and screen, time that isn’t currently available – so my new toy will have to wait until I have finished university and therefore have fewer pressing deadlines.

The Design Show

We have started having meetings about the show. It is a group consisting of Fine Artists, Digital Art and Designers and Future Designers. The meetings are not comfortable and I wish that I didn’t need to attend – I hate confrontation. I do understand that everybody else has worked equally hard and want to show their work in the best possible way – but not everybody seems to appreciate this.

As things stand at the moment 2 Fine Artists will have a floor of the building each, 7 Digital Art and Designers will have a large room between them and the 13 Future Designers will have a landing and a smaller room between them! So much for my planning how I wanted to lay my work out for the show. Ah well, c’est la vie! Hopefully we will find a way of juggling the space so everybody gets the space they want or need.

Business Cards

As I mentioned earlier I have now ordered my business cards and postcards, I didn’t place a large order but I wanted to have a few handy and ready for the exhibition. I have ordered 100 cards with 10 designs, so I will have 10 of each design. I have only ordered 20 postcards and in the end only managed 9 designs, so there will be an odd number of 2 of the designs! I am looking forward to seeing them in real life.

Wallpapers

In an effort to complete as much work as possible, before I get to the point of panicking, I have completed 3 designs that I will have printed on the large format printer at uni, they will each be printed in a 4 metre run to show how my wallpapers would look when digitally printed. I am really looking forward to seeing them all at the Show. Interestingly, I went in to uni on Monday 18th to do an update to my interim presentation, the thinking behind this was to show the other Future Designers what I am doing and also permit me to see what they are doing. Not many people turned up because the uni email system was off at the weekend! Whilst there Michael mentioned the possibility of encrypting my images and selling the password, so that anybody, anywhere in the world, could buy my wallpaper designs and get them printed locally. This would save incurring prohibitive delivery charges. I think that this is a brilliant concept and I will research this, and the need for a ‘Users Licence Agreement’ – this would need to be a legally binding document so there may be a lot of expense involved, but it would only need to be written once. This is very definitely serious food for thought.

Stencils

I am still working on converting my designs into stencils. 2 of the designs are complete and ready to take to the workshop to be cut out by the laser. The third design has a lot of small detail and may not be finished in time for the show in September. Obviously once it has been drawn it can be cut out as many times as is required.

My thinking is that stencils, though initially seeming expensive, are generally cheaper than 2-3 rolls of wallpaper, they can be painted in colours of the customer’s choice rather than mine, they can be re-used in another room or colour and they also offer a creative person an opportunity to individualise the design to suit themselves.

I think that that is enough catching up for today and I will definitely make the effort to write again, and sooner! Although in reality submission is on 14^th September which is only 8 weeks away, so I shan’t make any promises. ;)

Talk to you soon.

Massive update

…and the world didn’t end yesterday as some people were predicting – I’m quite relieved! But, I cannot believe that it is over a month since I wrote anything here – time for some serious catching up!

Yesterday I did something different and fun, I designed my own cover for the August edition of Wallpaper* magazine. There is a limited palette of shapes/photos/patterns/text that you put together, in layers, to create your own personalized cover and then in August you receive your copy of Wallpaper* with your own front cover and slightly personalized back cover too. I had hoped to have the option of uploading one of my own designs which would have been really exciting, but that wasn’t possible, so this is what I came up with…

…can’t wait for it to pop through the letter box!

Anyway, since the last time I wrote anything here I have been busy thinking about the chair and what exactly I plan to do with it, I have been doing some screen printing in the Print Workshop at uni, I have been thinking about reviving and improving a project that I worked on as an undergraduate, contemplating the development of Whimsy & Quirk’s website, I have bought a graphics tablet and have generally been planning how and what I want to show at the end of year Design Show.

The Chair

I am definitely planning to hand print some fabric for the seat cushion, so I now know that I need to redraw my circles pattern so that it can be cut into a stencil (I want to convert it into stencils anyway because part of my business plan is to design and sell stencils). But before I do any of that I need to decide upon a definitive colour scheme so that I can create a whole range of items with a cohesive colour theme.

I started by drawing the chair and then colouring the image using, as inspiration, the Trend Bible colour predictions, and then trying to ‘match’ those colours to the range of spray paints Painter’s Touch by Rust-Oleum (www.imaginespraycreate.com).  I plan to use spray paint in the hope that it won’t clog up the weave of the chair.

My main issue with all this is that I’m still not happy about any of the predicted trends, so it then became necessary to think about my own trend, not a prediction but my range of spring/summer 2012 colours, these are colours that I am happy with, they work well together and will also work happily with a range of products. These colours are chosen as my spring/summer 2012 colour palette because the colours are based upon a Mediterranean summer, redolent of the scent of lavender and filled with the buzzing of bees…

The sources of the images are -

1. http://images.mooseyscountrygarden.com/moosey-garden-forums/l/lavender_bumblebee2_164.jpg

2. http://www.johnnyjet.com/image/PicForNewsletterClubMedOpioJune2007LavenderPostcard.JPG

3. http://www.discoverlavender.com/Lavender-Farm-5.jpg

4. http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/provence-countryside-lavender.jpg

5. and 6. My own photos

7. http://www.smppa.org.uk/Natural_History/Birds/Images/Large/kingfisher-a-07.10.04_bf.jpg

8. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/07/01/article-0-01CE754100000578-956_468x628.jpg

9. http://www.francemonthly.com/n/0902/images/olive-tree.jpg

10. http://www.chiropractic-help.com/images/olive_tree.jpg

These websites were consulted on 9/5/11

Based upon the colours that I have selected (above) from my ‘Mood Board’ I have put together this little image to show how the colours will work together throughout the rest of this module.

So, at this point I have decided that I will spray paint the body of the chair in almond, which will work well with my colour palette…

…which now means that I need to get on and paint the chair. But there are plenty of other jobs that I need to get on with too.

Print Workshop

I had a great afternoon in the Print Workshop, I took along two differently scaled versions of the circle pattern to print, but I didn’t get to print both – I started with the larger scaled image and found that some of the circles with the lighter weighted lines weren’t printing properly, so obviously the smaller scaled image would have been even less likely to print as desired. So, next time I go in I will have the images drawn in heavier lines.

Sweetie Lamp

This is a module that I worked on during my first year as an undergraduate. The module was about re-using and recycling instead of throwing away, so we had to make something using recycled materials or rubbish.

My lamp was made of mdf circles which my husband collected as waste from his place of work and were painted using left over household emulsion, an old lampshade (the frame of which was expanded in the university workshop), old string and buttons, a damaged roll of greaseproof paper, Quality Street wrappers. I named it the Sweetie Lamp because the base reminded me of sweetie necklaces that I had as a child, probably due to the colours.

In theory the base can be created in the same way as last time, but using my current colours. But, this time I will use a real lampshade frame and cover it in fabric, hand-printed with the circle pattern.

I feel that the revamped Sweetie Lamp will look fantastic at the show, where it will be sat with the chair and wallpapers all working together with their colour theme – I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

Whimsy & Quirk’s website

I have already started on the website, but I am looking at/researching each stage as I go along. I have bought my website from Mr Site (http://www.mrsite.co.uk), I am using the Takeaway edition which has e-commerce facilities, and have already set up the basics. The website address is www.whimsyandquirk.co.uk and my email address is nicky@whimsyandquirk.co.uk, although the website is currently under construction.

Obviously there are some basic design decisions to be made right from the start, so I have been looking at other websites and have come to the conclusion that design websites seem to appear at their best with a white background and simple black or grey text – I think that this is because it allows the imagery to work for itself rather than competing with a busy or colourful background or even a flowing or over decorative font.

This is as far as I have got with the website, it will take some time because I have no previous experience of setting up a website and it is all a massive learning curve. My next decisions will be how many pages the website should have and do I need any widgets!?

Graphics Tablet

I need to re-draw my circle pattern so that it can be cut into stencils, so I thought that a Graphics Tablet may speed the re-drawing up by making it more straightforward – it must be easier to draw with a pen than a mouse – the graphics tablet plugs into a USB socket in the pc and works as an input device, but you use a special pen and draw onto the tablet… simple! I will have to be trying this out during the next week.

The Design Show

For the design show I am picturing (in my mind’s eye at the moment) two upright panels, possible 2.5 metres high, stood at a right angle and joined at the angle, with wallpapers coming over the top of the panels and pooling into rolls on the floor. There will be both hand-printed and digitally printed wallpapers, in the clematis and circles design, all using the same colour palette but with variations. The sweetie lamp will be in the corner where the two panels meet and the chair will be stood next to the lamp. I am hoping to find another chair so I can have one seat cushion with the circles pattern and one with the clematis pattern, but I am having difficulty getting one at the moment. I will try to find the time to draw this during the week, because we will soon come to the point where Michael will be trying to work out how much space everybody will need for the show.

This means that there is lots of work for me to be getting on with, and really I didn’t have any spare time for designing my front cover for Wallpaper* magazine, but I did enjoy it!