It's time to get personal

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6  ~ All images from Pinterest.

So for lucky people like me who don't have exams at university, we have six weeks off in the middle of the year. While we could spend it sitting on our arses watching episode after episode of Game of Thrones for the fifth time, which I probably will end up doing despite this post, we could also use it as a time for personal projects. Doing a design degree you're often restricted throughout term time to specific briefs and while you can stretch them to suit your style most often they're not really what you had in mind when you wanted to become a designer. So I've done the Game of Thrones arse sitting for the first week but I've also been scrolling Pinterest which has given me so much motivation and creativity to start some projects over the rest of the holidays. 

Create some greeting cards. 
and also hopefully start selling them. I need to work on my watercolour typography to digital skills a wee bit more first but keep your eyes peeled. 

Put up a print wall. 
I have prints, I have frames for them, I have a blank wall... now all I need are nails to put them up. Of course they'll have to be arranged nicely and all but it's simple right? 

Do some freelance. 
Make some fancy new logos for someone, or blog banners, or blog sidebar icons, or anything. Wink wink readers. 

Paint more watercolour. 
Just do more, practice makes perfect and I'm far from perfect. Maybe we'll start with flowers, I found a great tutorial for flowers so let's start there and practice my flower arranging. 

Spend more time on the blog. 
Tweaking background things, changing images, upgrading things. Sorting out things I'm not happy with and frankly just giving Sofilly some attention it hasn't really gotten these past few months while I've been working on uni projects. 

Technically if you want to get picky I could do most of these while doing the Game of Thrones arse sitting but you get the idea. Let's just spend some time with my craft and creativity and hopefully make myself even better for next semester! 

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. 

Gold is a girls best friend?

Hiya so thanks for putting up with the fact I've hardly been posting the last two weeks it's been uni hell! But today I finished uni for the year and no longer have uni until late February next year, crazy..two years down, two to go! For my Letterpress class I had to create a poster that would work as a booklet cover and the inside pages for a given element. I got given gold and however much I really hate gold I really enjoyed making this set even though I had either gold powder or gold glitter stuck to me for the past 12 weeks. It involved making a lot of small vinyl layered mines to emboss over and over again as after about 3 times through the printing press they would lose their depth and almost become flat. So I'm just pretty happy it got finished and I'm pretty pleased with the A I got for the poster for the first part of the semester and I'm hoping for something similar this part for the inside pages. Fingers crossed! 

Er so hi?!

Oh so hello there! Remember me? I highly doubt that you do as it's been around four months since I last posted. So yeah I got busy and things which isn't really a great excuse but yay I slightly got a life and started socialising and things so let's be happy for me! So here's what you missed on glee: 

• I gained some really great grades and some really ew lame grades that I don't think I deserved in my first semester that finished in May.
• I had a nice relaxing holiday back at home with my family and we went on some trips out in the new campervan together. 
• My boyfriend came up to stay with us for a week and properly meet the family (scary face) but it was all good he behaved excellently and they loved him. 
• I got a wreck this journal for my birthday! Which I haven't done as much as I thought I would've since then. (More on this in another post)
• I returned back to uni and have now gone through another half semester and have just handed in all my work. 
• I got involved a lot in the party scene at the start of this semester and had a lot of fun that sometimes ended with me on the bathroom floor even though nothing happened I didn't want to trust my gut ahaa ;)
• I've been trying to get back into the nail art scene and will hopefully get my skills back up to scratch. 
• The same with coding, I've gotten back into the HTML/CSS game and I'm learning how to code tumblr themes woo! 
• I lost my poor laptop, it decided it was time to go and gave me a poof of smoke and sparks and it was gone. The laptop repair people said it was probably best to just buy a new one so say hello to Dora my new (grossly) purple laptop which at the moment doesnt have photoshop so the above image was edited on paint woo! 
• I went to Armageddon, which is basically a smaller, less cool, nz version of comic con where I fangirled majorly. 
• I started collecting the Frankie magazine after a long long time of me not reading magazines. (More on this also in another post)

So that's the basics really and hopefully I'm going to be back on here more often! I have a few blogposts in mind to post over the holidays and hopefully over the next part semester I'll continue too! 

VCD's ruined you!

Fueled by crispy m&m's and coke I've finally reached the end of the first half semester woohoo! Unfortunately I lost my mind and broke down a few minor times during this time but hey I survived and I've handed in pretty much all my work now. I haven't really had any free time to blog or even scroll tumblr so sorry anyone following my tumblr as it hasn't been as busy as usual. But the good thing is I've actually been learning things, shock horror I've been actually learning things from the university I'm paying to teach me things! From this I hope to turn this blog into a more kind of design blog than a lifestyle blog even though it was already leaning towards design so this means a new layout and new style (just as soon as I go home and have time to sort it). I'll hopefully be able to post more artists and inspiration and also my class work. For those of you who don't know I'm studying Bachelor of Design majoring in visual communication design which pretty much is a mixture of graphic design, illustration, digital media, and advertising.

Artist Attraction #4 | Brittany Statt

I came across this artist on Tumblr and ended up browsing her entire portfolio here. She's a Graphic Designer from Rochester, NY and has a real knack for type. The piece above is a part of her hand lettering projects and this is the sort of thing I really hope I'll be able to achieve in the near future. A mix of art and type it's really gorgeous and the quotes are unique rather than the usual famous quotes seen all over the place. Check her out! 

Greetings loved ones

Just a few little greeting card pieces I've produced the last week, really simple and quirky x

Artist Attraction #1 | Emma Zanelli

I came across this gorgeous illustrator this morning on Pintrest, having stalked pretty much her entire Facebook of photos I came to the conclusion I really love Emma Zanelli of Kiss The Devil design and illustration. She's a freelance illustrator and graphic designer from the United Kingdom. There's just something about the mix of hand drawn pencil and Photoshop that gives me the happy 'yay fab illustration' feeling. She does commissions if you're interested over on her Facebook page so if you're interested in getting Zanelli-fied go check that out, also you should like her page too! I'm loving the contrast of the girly make up and hair with the tattoos, quite a common idea around some artists at the moment. 

HELVETICA - The Movie

  

Last night my flatmate kindly allowed me to hack into his Netflix account and watch the documentary Helvetica (mainly because I wanted to watch it before class today and I couldn't be arsed walking to the library at 7pm at night). But my tutor recommended it to me in passing after discussing my project on typography and my love for it and well I thought I should take a gander. It was actually really good, I'm not really one for documentaries unless they're on cute little animals and things but it was really interesting. Apart from now I have added another font to my long list of type that I can recognise on the street on posters and things sigh I'm turning into such a design geek my god. I thought the quote that's on the right poster above is really nice summation of what they were talking about. Really recommend the movie if you're into this type of thing x

Am I an artist yet?

I started following this girl Jaesama on Tumblr for her fabulous doodles of people such as One Direction, okay I'm not a huge fan of the band but her drawings are great. Her influence got me downloading Paint Tool SAI and having a go at my own doodles, they obviously weren't that great and I realised it was because I was trying to copy her style and I needed my own. 

Not sure if the drawings I produce are my own style seen as down the line they get less and less stylised and more realistic but I like them and I guess if I like them then others might. Can you tell who they are? If not left to right; Amanda Seyfriend, Zoe Sugg and Mila Kunis. 

  

I'm having a go at creating a collection of celebrities in this style and at the moment I have Louise Watson (SprinkleOfGlitter) on the go so we shall see how she turns out! x