happy easter everybody

Happy Easter to everyone that celebrated it yesterday! (Or, if you were like me, you've been celebrating all week - I'm so sick of chocolate by now!) I thought these were a bunch of great ideas, especially the first two images, so sweet!

All image sources can be found here...

makeshift monday

tada!

I finally got a brand new phone over the weekend! Its a Samsung Galaxy Ace and it's pretty awesome. I have been keeping it inside an old running sock for the past few days, but today I decided that it deserved a better covering, so I made this little pouch for it out of old scraps of leather.

It's a little bit loose, but for now it should do the trick!

kushn

"Handmade leather goods inspired by contemporary Africa."
I think kushn's work is truly brilliant, a very different take on functional leather products.

Take a look at their website or email them for more info:  hello@kushn.co.za

Found via Handsome Things.

make something, Sawyer!

Like most creative people, (I think?) I am a big list maker. Unfortunately, although this should mean that I am super organised and have tons of happily finished projects, it really means that my desk, wallet, handbag, notebook and noticeboard are filled with lists of things that seem like a great idea at the time but somehow never get done. This leads to terrible feelings of guilt and shame and that in turn leads to me running away and eating too much dark chocolate. Not good!

So here is another of my (in)famous lists, the first one of the year I think! I have been recovering from Christmas and New Year festivities for the past few days, but now I'm feeling pretty-much back-to-normal and quite bored! I am keen to do all these things and just need to make a trip to the shops to gather a few supplies. If all goes well and I've been accepted for the BTech course, I should only be going back to college at the end of January, which means that there is practically a whole month to do crafty things!

I will take pictures along the way and post them up here, hopefully ending with a picture of this same list with all the projects crossed off by the end of this holiday...

split pin ring

I've been a a mood to make things lately and when I found a box of split pins in my toolbox, I just had to try this. Pretty silly I know, but I like it!

i work because i love this shit

click here for image source

This is a little reminder for myself, and anyone else who is working or studying in the field that they are most passionate about. The next few weeks are going to be heavy, we have exactly one month until our graduate exhibition and there is so so much that needs to be done. But, as this little type sample says, I love this shit, so I'm going to keep focused and enjoy this process! The great thing is that our final projects (a design history one and a communication one) are both completely self-motivated, which means that I get to focus on the things I love doing and reading and writing about most. Some of these things include poster design, inky line drawings, cutting, pasting, painting and stamping...

This is going to be a good weekend.

home is where the coffee is

A little bit of what I've been up to lately... This is the cover of a proposal document and the accompanying mood board that my friend, Lisa Nelson and I submitted for the NoKak Eco Design Competition.

The brief required us to come up with anything that is sustainable and environmentally friendly - could be a product or a campaign or anything really!

So we came up with a campaign to discourage the use of polystyrene cups in our college's cafeterias, by encouraging the use of reusable, ceramic mugs and highlighting the dangers of polystyrene as a food container. Polystyrene really is a terrible material, it is incredibly harmful to the environment and after doing some research, we were shocked that it is still so widely used in the food industry.


UPDATE: We made it through to the finals! This is rather nice news, because it means that our work will be part of a traveling exhibition, that will be in South Africa and Sweden. We also have a chance to win a (three-week, i think) trip to Sweden next year! So a lot of hard work lies ahead of us, but lets hold thumbs that we make it!

late night book making

These are some drawing/note books that I made recently - well, technically I only made the first one and covered the second one, but anyway, I had fun and am planning on doing this more often and then selling some too... watch this space!

the one I made - a pocket sketch/notebook for myself, with swan illustration in red and black ink

inside pages - nicely stitched, hence my crooked fingers!

the one I covered - using fabric and a picture of an old monument man - this is actually the "finances log book" for our Sappi group, so I thought it would be funny to combine pretty old-fashioned granny floral fabric with a very financial looking statue man...

inside - not as nice as the first one!