Artist Attraction #9 | Jessica Hische

Oh surprise surprise we have another artist involving type. Have you ever heard of a drop cap? Jessica is the drop cap queen! The latest release of her book collection with Penguin has not only made me want to buy so many more books, but it's also inspired me to want to make my own drop cap alphabet [as mentioned in last week's post]. I really want my initials SM in those books however I'm not sure what Cannery Row is really about but as it's a classic and there's so many good reviews I'm sure it'll be fine but hey who cares it looks pretty!

Not only is she super talented but she's super inspiring too; I've watched so many of her talks and one actually inspired one of my projects this year that I ended up getting an A on so I love her really. She also redesigned the mailchimp logo for all you bloggers! Jessica markets herself as a "letterer, illustrator, and crazy cat lady known for her silly side projects and occasional foul mouth." Not only has she inspired me in that previous project but she just constantly inspires me to go for gold and work extra hard to achieve what I want. She's achieved so much and has worked with clients like Tiffany & co, Wes Anderson, Penguin, Nike, Samsung, and so many more, she's just amazingly talented! Please check out more of her amazing work on her website and just chill in awe at everything. 

* Check out the rest of the Artist Attraction series here.

How Do You Express Your Creativity?

In the Twitter #NZBloggers chat at the weekend we were discussing motivation and inspiration and one of the questions about inspiration actually conveniently inspired this post! The lovely Hannah from A Lovely Look asked 'Do you have hobbies outside of blogging? What are they? Do you think they help keep you inspired & motivated for blogging?' Although I don't actually have many hobbies, I mean blogging is my hobby really, it made me realise how much of my life was really creative and inspirational anyway. The design world is really inspiring so just being a design student and going to University daily inspires me so much. But it's not just getting inspired that's important, it's what you do with that inspiration. How do you funnel this inspiration into creativity, how do you express creativity? 

Of course there's blogging! Blogging is such an amazing way to be creative and write, draw, photograph anything that you feel worthy and share your feelings about them. Not only can pretty much anyone do it, but almost everyone's blogs are individual as our signatures as it's all personal. (Of course there's non personal ones but let's ignore those at the moment.) That was another main point in the blogger chat 'We're all inspired by those around us - how do you make sure your ideas are original?' and the fact is that, although we may have the same ideas as some other bloggers, they're both going to be written from different points of view. There's so many posts on the internet already it's amazing if you find an idea that not one person has ever written about before so just go with it! Unless they're directly copied from the publicity post then two posts on the same book aren't going to be exactly the same. One may love one part and the other may hate it, it's all personal opinions. Even this post is simply that, my personal opinion. How many others have written about creativity and inspiration I wonder?

These new adult colouring books have created a great way for those who 'can't be creative because I can't draw' or other similar excuses to get creative! I've seen so many fellow bloggers, twitter users, and instagrammers who have been loving these books but I couldn't bring myself to buy one and procrastinate my University work more. Luckily my boyfriend's mum bought me one so I can now procrastinate happily knowing it wasn't me who reinforced it ha! But these are a great way to just sit down with a big flood of creative energy and relax colouring in. I don't know about you, but as a kid if we ever had to colour in together I would get rather annoyed at the others who didn't know how to stay between the lines!

Personally having a really creative life means that it's easy to distract myself with other work. My University work is really stressful at the moment, there's less than three weeks left and I feel like I have about 10 weeks worth of work to do. Sometimes it just gets too much and I cry, and scream, and rage like a little baby. It's then that I can just simply swap to doing something else, I keep being creative so that I can easily go back and continue working but it's just giving my brain a quick break from the hard work with some easy relaxing stuff. Last week for example I was raging at one of my projects and I just sat back and wrote a spur of the moment blogpost that turned out being one of my most interacted with and viewed post so far on my blog. Bashing away at the keyboard, or swirling a brush of ink around on a page to make words, totally calms the mind after having to concentrate on the spacing between the letters of one word for about 20 minutes (welcome to kerning and the world of design).

I know what a few of you do for inspiration from the chat however what do you do with that inspiration? How do you express your creativity?

The Truth Behind Instagram

I came across this photographer last week, Chompoo Baritone from Thailand, who's taken these seriously relatable set of photos called The Truth Behind Instagram. Seriously how relatable are some of these photos? That Instagram worthy photo you posted yesterday, did it look something like this outside of the frame? If you've done this at least once raise your hand! I know my set ups sometimes look a tiny bit like this.

Okay so I know a few Instagrammers that might have that perfect life that they have on screen but I know most of us don't. It goes back to that saying 'you can't judge yourself against others when you only see their highlights reel and you're living the entire documentary'. A few days ago I was talking to Angela from astylecollector over Instagram in awe of the amazing food she's been posting lately comparing it to my regular boring food I'm eating when she replies saying 'only the pretty ones end up on Instagram'. It made me realise I did it again, I'm always comparing myself to everyone and everything and I shouldn't. That's what I like about this, Baritone expresses that every day people snap pictures in a way to reinvent themselves, to make themselves seem better, when in reality it's fake. Careful cropping and filtering can make mundane situations seem extraordinary. Since when did we need to see photos of other people's food before Instagram? Remember that time when people would post anything and everything on Instagram without considering how it was framed or if the lighting was good? Now our Instagrams are like a wall in an art gallery, perfect framing, cropping and editing. Some of us even theme our Instagrams and won't post a photo if it doesn't suit their theme!

I'm not dissing Instagram by any means, I love it, I spend hours scrolling my feed staring at the glorious photos, it inspires me! Also I know that most of you guys reading this aren't fake, creating new versions of yourselves to parade online. Sometimes I personally need to take a step back and realise that Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc are all people's highlights reel, and I'm not seeing the whole movie so there's no way I can review and compare it to my own life. In real life too, I'm currently in the process of trying to get an internship for summer and boy is it harder than what they make it seem on The Internship. I'm constantly comparing myself to other people I've seen at the same meetings as me and I just can't help myself but think they're so much better and talented, why am I even bothering? But it's the same as Chompoo Baritone is trying to say, their just selling themselves with their best qualities and I should be too!

This was meant to be another artist loving post but hey it got a little deep, but it's what I needed to hear at this moment in time so maybe it's what someone else needs to hear too!

*All photos are from Chompoo Baritone's Facebook page, check out her other works on there too!

Artist Attraction #8 | Emilie De Griottes

Pantone 1797 C

It's been a while since I posted about an artist or a cool piece of art that I liked so I after rediscovering Emilie De Griottes' Pantone tarts I just had to share them! I think pantone colours are pretty well known about the internet now but if I'm wrong for you non designery people they're simply paint charts. Have a look here. There's so many of these floating around the internet but I'm pretty sure Emilie was the first. Created for the magazine food Fricote as a special feature, Emilie made little tarts that resembled specific pantone colour swatches. Bananas made pantone 7507 C, cucumber made 7492 C, and cherry tomatoes made the perfect 485 C colour. Check out all these other pretty colours made by food!

Images courtesy of Griottes.fr - Emilie's blog.

I'm not sure about eating the carrot tart but that berry one just makes my mouth water every time I look at it oh and think about it too. Not only is she a pretty amazing food designer but Emilie also blogs about it all, you can see some of her creations like her moon cake up on Griottes.fr, you will have to translate it from French but I'm sure with all the techiness of Google translate you can do that at the click of a button. She also has a very lovely designed foodie book full of great recipes, although if you want the pantone tart recipe you'll have to dig around for issue number six of Fricote which I'm pretty sure is in french.

What do you think of these creations, which would you like to try? I think if I created one I'd like to create Pantone 116 C with passionfruit pulp, yum!

I want to dissect your brains...

Since the semester is over I thought I'd share some work I've done over the last 12 weeks. To new readers; hi I study Graphic Design! This was by far my favourite project I've worked on this semester, closely followed by App class where, as you've probably guessed, we had to design an app. For print however we had to design our own conference which from that we were to create a poster, a 12 page brochure, two banners, and a fourth item - I chose a hoodie and t-shirt combination. My conference, Dissect, is a typography based conference concentrating on the structure of type. I wanted to imply the idea of peeling back layers to really understand type. 

I thought this might give outsiders a look into what a normal six week project looks like for a third year designer! Makes me wonder what other professions would do? Other than essays of course. 

April Catch Up

So my birthday month is finally over and it truly was a birthday month I celebrated from Easter weekend all the way til last weekend it was great! Lets have a catch up and see what else happened.

The beginning of the month was Easter weekend and the start of my two week mid semester break. Due to not being able to go home for the holidays as I live so far away from my uni that it's slightly pointless paying over $300 to go home for around 10 days, my parents came down to Wellington instead and brought my brother along. We didn't do too many exciting things just spent some good quality time with them seen as I hadn't seen them since January it was nice to chill with them and celebrate my birthday seen as Brad was in Australia at a Brass Band competition which he won by the way. The following week his brothers came down and we saw Ed Sheeran!!!!! I can't contain my excitement it was amazing and I already have my tickets to see him again in December my gosh! I spent the rest of the holidays with Brads family in Wanganui enjoying the free time I had before uni started again and Brad started his busy Anzac week with Air Force, also celebrated my birthday again. Hallelujah the actual birthday happened! It was a fab day spent with friends and making memories; now I remember why I don't drink on weekdays anymore...  

Hands down I've been loving cake oh my god I feel like I've had enough cake last month to make me never want cake again but hey if you're offering? I've also been loving the apple products I kindly got gifted for my birthday - being a special 21st I got an Apple TV and an Apple Trackpad, golly gosh they're amazing I can't wait til our internet is reconnected this week so I can permanently watch Netflix while doing uni work.

Unfortunately due to giving myself a few days off here and there over April because of holidays etc there have been less posts than usual however there's still enough to compete for top three and here they are: 

iHerb Haul

I made a sneaky order over on iherb.com and this is what I hauled, also including a few more items from local shops. Check it out here.

Artist Attraction: Jasmine Dowling

Have a look at one of my favourite artists/designers at the moment, she creates gorgeous type designs and I just want to buy all of them. See here.

MSN, McFly & Myspace

Following Sarah-Elizabeth's post I flipped out my wallet and with a coin I looked back into my past. Look at what I'm talking about here.

Artist Attraction #7 | Jasmine Dowling

I've mentioned her before in previous posts like this one here but I thought this talent deserved her own post. Australian graphic designer Jasmine Dowling is one of my favourite artists, I'm in love with her lettering. Just look at it all it's so preeeetty!

Her and a couple of other similar artist influence my own watercolour typography that's featured here occasionally. I've been wanting to get more into it and hopefully start up a collection of greeting cards that I've been brainstorming recently. She sells some of her work as prints, pillowcases and tote bags. She's worked with some major companies such as Maybelline and creates marvellous work for each and every one of them. I do have a soft spot for some of her foil designs but the simple black ink designs are truely the best. Can't wait til I'm no longer a student and earning enough to spend money on things that aren't food and buy some of her prints but until then I shall create my own and cry that they aren't as good!

You can find her work on her website here or check out her blog and instagram! 

March Catch Up

I had a little break over Easter on the blog and it felt good! Not that I don't love blogging but ya know when you do something constantly and you get a few days off and don't think about it and you can think about other things? Yeah that! Anyways I'm back and I thought I'd bring it back with a little catch up with what happened in March, seen as it's well into April now! 

Uni, Uni, Uni! I returned to University towards the end of February and I hand in my final project tomorrow. To catch you up I study Graphic Design and being in my third year now things are pretty intense. I had three projects this half semester; one being an app design with a partner based on an emergency, the other a book design on an architecture company, and the last being an analysis on Post Humanism. I was really excited for the app class but things didn't really go to plan and I didn't really get on all that well with my partner but hey it's over now. I've finished!! It's holiday time now!! 
Apart from focusing on uni I've been out with Brad and friends a few times just to let go a little bit. This included going to see Insurgent (pretty good) and a glorious plum shortcake. But oh my god we got Netflix I repeat New Zealand got netflix! Of course I'm loving that, more on it in another post though. 

My Nail Polish Collection
What it says on the tin, I share with you my collection of nail polish. You can check it out here.
The Disney Tag
Cue some cheesy old photos of 13 year old me and a lot of questions about my Disney love. View it here. 
How To Write Essays Like A Boss
Avoiding my own essay I let you in on some tips on how to write essays for university. Have a look here. 

Let's do the time warp again!

What are these ugly banners I hear you say! Well if we track back a few years to April 2013 we get to the birth of Sofilly - created on a bit of a whim to flush more creativity into my veins after starting design school just over a month ago. Hopefully we can see through this post that my schooling has been great and my design skills have improved. After coming across this first banner in my files I thought I would have a look at what Sofilly has looked like over the years, and you can join too! I only have the banners although I'm pretty sure theres a website that lets you see your website years ago but I don't want to see the monstrosity it once was!

Anyways these first two came pretty early into the blog; I had a thing for bunting as you can see. I'm glad that ugly ass font in the first banner left the blog as quickly as it entered it, I can't even believe I even liked that! I do remember the second font, Lane Narrow, being my love for almost all of 2013 which you can see in the banner below also. I still like it personally but with that drop shadow no way! 

Awh my first attempt at drawing my banner, I was so proud of this design seriously I instagrammed it and shoved it all over the internet. I don't actually mind it right now although the shading (what shading?!?!) is atrocious like what is that mouth? Here you can see the Lane Narrow continues to stick around in hand drawn form. Also had a fabulous cream tint going to the blog, glad that's gone! 

Aaaaaaand another drawn one, personally worse than the previous. What is that green thing, seriously? Plus my shading got worse, why did I even think this was good enough to place on the internet let alone make it my blog banner. No wonder I didn't have any readers that I knew of back then... That font though.

Oh I had a revelation! We returned to type banners, 2014 Sofi you had some brains in you after all. Not enough to realise that you probably shouldn't have brought back the drop shadow as well as the text but we can deal with that here more than the second one. Not sure what the x is doing all the way over there, thought I'd gotten rid of it in all but my url by now but hey.  

Oh hello you pretty banner you, I remember you from a whole month ago. This was the only banner I had going for about a year, the rest were a few months before I grew tired. I'm hating on Moonflower font now after so many people used it in their final projects last year so it's now gone but I did like this banner. 

Last but not least, my current banner! Pretty much an updated one of the previous one but I love it so much. I drew the type myself with watercolour and then scanned it in to create this. It got so much love at a past #nzbloggers chat that I think I'm going to keep it forever - try and actually keep a brand going. 

This probably isn't the best post to write this on seen as you can see some of the disgusting banners I've had in the past but I promise my skills have gotten much much better. I am a third year graphic design student so if you're wanting banners or sidebar images made for your blog I'm totally up for the job! 

Weird things at design school

If any of you don't know I study graphic design at university and having gone through a few years of design school  I've learnt that a lot of weird things happen. Now along with the beautiful art that flows out of the students a lot of other stuff does too! 

• First years spend over 8 hours in their first few weeks drawing potatoes. 
• Potatoes in pencil, potatoes in pen, potatoes in chalk and potatoes dressed as Lady Gaga. 
• By the time you graduate you will have spent at least 50 hours of your life feeling up/deciding on/cursing at stock. Yes I do mean paper. 50 hours cursing at the weight of your paper. 
• It's normal to go to class with a laptop bag, a normal bag, and folders of various sizes. Plus boxes and bags of other rubbish.
• None of the tutors know how to use a computer. Okay maybe 3 do and that's it. They're designers and they don't know how to use powerpoint.
• You will own at least 10 of the same expensive pen in different weights. 
• You will use said pens to do everything but draw and then ruin them and then curse at them and yourself and your life and your bank account.
• Speaking of bank accounts, it's normal to spend hundreds a year on stationary. Seriously if you love stationary become a design student you'll never regret buying more because your tutor will tell you to buy more. 
• The first week before a new year you see the first years around town. You can tell because they're all battling with their new A1 folders. It's hilarious. 
• Sleep happens anywhere. 
• You will critique any design anywhere. Always. It's going to happen. 
• You will spend hours criticising the space between letters, if you didn't realise this was a thing, this is a thing. Kerning and leading are your best friends. 
• You always want to nap. Always. 
• But you never have time to nap after the first year so take those naps when you can first years! Design school takes over every moment of your awake life. 

This is only a few things but allow me to ramble on about how I feel like all I've been doing is uni work all day every day. Currently I have a mobile app and a book being created so it's very time consuming (oh and an essay but who cares about that). I'm also now sick due to this so have scrambled into bed whenever available to eat oranges and do more work. Such fun... 

Artist Attraction #6 | Andrea Lauren

Images from Andrea's website, linked below. 

Bringing back my old series Artist Attraction; where I introduce you to new artists that I've recently come across, starting with Andrea Lauren. 

I came across Andrea via Pinterest and instantly fell in love with her work. After studying letterpress at university last year I have a new found love for all things print. This British lady specialises in linocuts, silkscreens, and block prints like those above, the latter being my favourite. I slightly wish that I came across her before I finished my assignment as I'd have loved to include some of her influences in my work. The thing I love about this kind of art is how simple it is but how much thought and consideration goes into it. The problem with simple is it has to be perfect and Andrea just pulls it off! 

You can find all her work on her website or instagram! I totally recommend looking through her site though some of her designs have even made it to clothing and she has instructions on how to do prints like hers. It makes me want to do more printing but I have no idea where the new print room is now the unis been rearranged. Unfortunately... 

A Year Of Firsts

I came across this idea on a few blogs I've been reading recently and I thought it was a great idea, last year I achieved quite a few things for the first thing so I thought I would make a list of a few things I wanted to do this year!

Attend a blogging event

For the last few weeks I've been involved in the NZ Bloggers chats and the NZ Brunch Club Facebook page. Being able to chat to loads of bloggers from my country has allowed me to start advertising my blog more and reading lots of other blogs. The brunch club holds an event once a month and I was too scared to attend the February event but hopefully this year I will get over my fear of new people and join one of these events!

Do a zoo encounter

I want to go into the meerkat enclosure at my local zoo so much! I'm hoping for tickets for my birthday so fingers crossed. 

Learn how to use my camera properly 

I constantly tell myself to do this but there's just so much involved that I just put it on hold. I know how to basically use the manual setting but I want to be able to take much better quality photos and learn how to use camera raw. 

Leave more time for art

Over the summer I thought it would get so much time for practicing and improving my 'arty' skills but as it turned out I practiced my 'watching a series a day' skills instead. With uni starting in two weeks I want to hopefully have some time throughout the year to do non uni design and art that I enjoy. Maybe design my own font or design some prints to sell. 

Turn 21

Simple enough, it'll happen I just have to do it in the right way! 

Gain 100 Bloglovin followers

Since joining the blogging groups and chats this has been improving so hello you new followers it's nice to have you around! I'm  not in this for the followers but everyone secretly wants as many as possible and if I can manage 100 by the end of the year that'll be amazing! 

Get an A+ overall grade 

I've gotten quite a few great grades but I have yet to achieve an A+ in an overall grade. An overall grade being an average grade of the paper I've gotten into the habit of getting a really good grade in one assessment and an average one in the other leaving me with a above average overall grade. I just wanna get higher than my highest overall grade of A - its a competitive part of me.

Cook more 

Brad and I have a unsaid deal where I do most of the cleaning and washing in the house and he does most of the cooking with me being sous chef however I'd like to take some of the days off of him.

Get happier with my blog

I've been running Sofilly x since April 2013 however I've not really been happy with it really until now. I've been on and off blogging through the course and lately I've gotten the consistency going enough to be happy posting my links to Twitter hopefully by the end of the year I'll be happy posting my links to everywhere and anyone.

Save some money

Due to some unforseen problems last year I had to use a lot of my savings on extra rent and bills etc so I'd love to save some of that back up again. 

Spend it on the good things

I also want to spend some of that saved cash on myself and others and splurge a bit. Not exessively but chocolate, a night out, a nice present or two wont harm anyone. 

I totally recommend sitting down and thinking about this for yourselves, they're almost like mini new year resolutions or goals. 

Bare your claws but don't let them be bare.

Images from my Pinterest

I was always really fond in painting my nails to the extent of my last year of high school I actually painted my nails every week with different designs from patterns and ombre, to well known characters like the Despicable Me Minions. Since then however my motivation to decorate my nails has gotten lower and lower to the point of I cant remember the last time my nails were painted... I think it was December though I'm pretty sure. So I thought while I had some free time before uni starts back up again this year I would get inspired through pinterest and start painting my nails again. For gods sake I have enough polish for my entire year at uni probably so I should really be using it before it goes all gross! I might start doing some more nail tutorials like I used to do on this blog, how would you guys feel about that? What would you like to see? 

Eleanor & Park ~ Book Review

Image from DeviantArt user candy8496 ~ check out her other work it's great!

I've read Rainbow Rowell before and not being a big fan of Fangirl as much as anyone else I wasn't too sure about how I'd like this one. But after seeing it again and again mentioned throughout the internet I decided to give it a go. I wasn't that disappointed to be quite honest, I hadn't read any blurb about it so after diving in and finding it was another abnormal couple love story I had my doubts but I did enjoy it. I wasn't really keen on the ending and thought it could've been dealt with differently but I won't go giving away any spoilers. Sold as another 'star crossed lovers' book it's expressed in the early pages that Eleanor, your average unpopular redheaded girl, that she's not fond of Romeo and Juliet's story at all calling them 'shallow, confused and then dead'. So it's ironic that she finds herself in her own shallow confused love story with Park, the dated the popular girl in primary and then became invisible boy, all because they shared a seat on the bus to school. This book seems to be similar to those teen love story library books you rent, read once, and return never to read again. I personally would say go for it if you want to read it but although I enjoyed it I probably won't be reaching for it to read again.    

That yearly 365 paged book.

So hello 2015; come in, make yourself at home, have a cuppa! A new year has begun and hopefully a new section of life. It's not really hard to see that 2014 hasn't been the best year for me at all but there were a few things that made it worthwhile. Bradley and I celebrated 1 year together just 5 days ago and without him 2014 would probably not have been manageable so woo thank you amazing best friend and boyfriend. I also went on an amazing holiday to Australia that I've just returned from that was probably one of the best holidays I've ever had (more posts on this later with photos woo)! But all in all I'm glad this year is over. With it being new year and all I decided to make some resolutions, however I have just the one this year: 

This can't really be hard so I'm really doubtful that I'll break it but that's not the point. I didn't want to make a list of things like I normally do and then break them before January has finished. I wanted to make one open resolution that means if I want to do yoga for a week and then give up I can, or if I want to do the thing where I say yes more sometimes I can, or say I want to give up sugar for a fortnight I can. There's no restrictions or set deadlines as any of these three things will add to a better year than 2014. So to be cliche - today is the start of a 365 paged book, try and make the story worthwhile. Happy New Year!