News!

Well I have been busy working on painting stencils and sweeties all weekend, and it looks as though I may be doing the same for the rest of the week! Progress is very slow due to a combination of a) quantity of things that need doing b) waiting for layers of paint to dry. I had hoped to go to the Print Workshop on campus and get some screen printing done, but at this moment my hopes are fading fast.

I went in to uni last Wednesday to collect my ‘Squares’ stencils but… I hadn’t allowed enough support within the design and it looks more like a retro form of decorative hanging rather than a functional stencil!

Anyway, Julian has gone on holiday this week, but I did manage to re-draw my stencil and get it to Julian in time for him to cut it before going on holiday – phew! The new stencil has 4 joints instead of only one; this will keep each of the squares in place. So I will pick that up on Wednesday when I go in for the next Exhibition meeting.

I have now made a final decision on the base for the sweetie lamp, after a great deal of thinking about it – I hadn’t been happy with how I had been planning to lay the sweeties out, everything had seemed too heavy. The new layout has only three colours and is much simpler in shape…

The sweeties will form a spiral when they have been properly joined, which will be at the same time that it is wired up. Once it has been wired up I will take it into the Athena Building at uni to have it PAT tested. It makes sense to have done this before adding a lampshade.

The sweetie table, which I am making for the AD11 exhibition, is coming along slowly. I now have a table top, which has been reduced in size to 600mm across. The original had been 750mm across and it was far too wide and liable to get knocked over. I have been trying to work out how to create a base to the pedestal of the table, which is wide enough to avoid imbalance…

So, this is how I will put the pedestal together… obviously I need to get on with filling, sanding and painting in the meantime or it will never be finished! So I think that is enough writing and time to get busy with the paint brush…

p.s. only managed to change one item to red on the panic list so far!!!!

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.