Work Work Work & More Work...

These past few months has been manic, I really don't know where the time has gone!! Well that's kind of a fib, I know exactly where my time has gone... the dreaded four letter word... WORK! Well that moving and the rest of life's curves balls it like to through at you! Anyway I am finally all moved and unpacked in lovely Sunderland... I guess that makes me a Mackem now! The past two months I have been juggling moving, unpacking, starting my new lecturing job as well as finishing off some work for my old company so things have been pretty busy!

Sadly this madness has meant that my design side has been suffering, but now things are starting to even out a bit I am hoping I can give things a bit of a kick start in this area plus the fact I am settled in the North East hopefully I can focus my attention into what's going on locally... The first stop this week will be The Baltic art gallery in Gateshead, which is hosting the finalists for this year's Turner Prize. It's the first year the show has been presented outside of the Tate venue, so I shall be getting myself along to see what's at the cutting edge of British art scene...

So there we are, thing's have been slow on the design and blog front of late, but now I'm all settled you shall be hearing a lot more from me... Oh and here's a few snaps I have taken since moving, they're not fantastic as they were only shot on my phone but I like them many because this is where I live now! :)

Hevnly Creations

Now see I told you it wouldn’t be such a long time until my next blog post… 

But I realised there was another exciting project going on that I had completely forgot to mention in my last post… Then I realised it probably deserves a bit of a mention on its own!  As you can see from my Pantone Cookies post below, I am a bit of a fan of baking! I’ve been baking since I was tiny and often bake cakes or cupcakes for birthdays… Now people always tell me my cakes are fab, but seen as I’m giving them to friends and family I tend to think they are slightly biased!!

My BF has also been making invitations for family and friends events for a while too so we decided to combine our skills and he has created a little website to show some of our designs and baking… Now I know there’s a massive boom in this kind of stuff at the moment, so perhaps I won’t end up making my millions this way but as a little side line it great… plus if my baking is as fab as everyone says it is then its only right to share it with the world right?!

Please check us out on…

www.hevnlycreations.co.uk

@HevnlyCreations on Twitter or Like our facebook page 

  

Right is that enough plugging for now… yep probably!! 

Best of Intentions… Such is Life…

Right as you can see it’s been a while since my last blog post!

So not the best of starts as was intended, but as the title says such is life! So I started this blog to track my creative journey back to my passions of design, print and typography… with a little baking thrown in for good measure. And I have been good in some aspects, that being keeping up with following my passions, being creative and making steps in positive directions to helping me achieve my goals, the blip on the spectrum would be the lack of blog posts documenting this! Oops! But something I hope to rectify over the upcoming weeks/months!

So there are lots exciting things happening for me at the moment, firstly I finally finished at my 9-5 marketing job, swapped it for another one but I am about to swap this for a position in teaching game design. Although I’m no gamer (well not yet anyway!) I’m hoping it will be a fantastic experience and it is definitely a step in the right direction of what I want from my career. Also with my new teaching job also comes a permanent move to the North East which is where I’ve wanted to move for a while, I’m hoping this will free up a bit more time as I won’t be splitting my time between here and Yorkshire and I can get involved with some local design and craft stuff! So it’s all big changes at the moment but also very exciting!

Right enough of me babbling on… I guess the thing I most wanted to talk about in this blog was finding inspiration and sticking to your plans! The first I have managed to do relatively well and the latter I’ve been doing ok on, but not great as you can see from the lack of blog posts!

I think one thing I’ve learnt over this year is that if you are creative, its something that’s in you and you don’t lose it. If you’re like me and feel you’ve lost the confidence, you have to realise that you can get it back… Now I am not going to say that this is easy because it isn’t, every person is different! For me after, University I barely picked up a pen to draw with in 3 years, the only way I manage to gather up that confidence again was to actually start doing, start creating again!

I did this in a number of ways; firstly I got myself on a course run by The Graphic Design School, www.thegraphicdesignschool.com … I’m not saying this is for everyone but I wanted some kind of educational reinforcement that I was going in the right direction. There are lots of courses out there whether they are at College, University, workshops, tutorials or online courses like this one.

Another aspect I tackled was involving myself with online design websites and blogs… now there loads of websites and blogs on anything and everything you can imagine but I’ll share a couple of my favourite ones with you! Firstly Creative Boom www.creativeboom.co.uk this is a fantastic website with loads of useful tips, news and events going on throughout the country. Initially it was set up due to lack of online networking for us creative types and it definitely helps fill the void, I can’t recommend it enough!!

Now onto The Clear Minded Creative www.clearmindedcreative.com this blog when I discovered it back in January, it really spoke to me and was the original source of inspiration for my own blog. It discusses how a creative journey can sometime be a struggle in terms of sticking with deadlines and finding creative inspiration, whether you are a writer, artist, musician or designer I would highly recommend this blog… It makes you realise you are not alone in getting those creative blocks and offers practical advice, links and book reviews that can aid you in getting through the block and feeling more inspired!

So I’m making a new creative pledge and that is to stick to a regular blog posts, I’m hoping I can stick to one a week or every other week… But one thing is for sure there definitely won’t be another big gap like last time! Promise!

Creative Baking

A few months ago I did some work with the lovely guys at Manifest Communications, based in their Huddersfield office. To thank them for letting me come in, I sent them some Pantone biscuits!! (Combining my 2 loves... Design & Baking!!)

Unfortunately I can't take the credit for the fab idea... I'd seen them on a blog a while ago and thought they would be fun to make!! Originally made by graphic designer Kim Neill of Kim Star Creative, here's the post if you wish to take a look...

http://www.kimcreativestar.com/Portfolio/Cures_for_Boredom/Entries/2011/1/1_PANTONE_CHIP_COOKIES!.html


And ta da, here's my attempt!!

I think they went down quite well as I made it onto their blog!!

http://www.manifestlondon.co.uk/blog/2011/04/21/tip-to-all-future-work-experiencers/


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Creative Start...

So here it is my first blog post… It’s always hard to know what to write about in the beginning but I guess you have to start somewhere!! Thinking about it, that should probably be a little more about me! Not that I’m self-obsessed but it probably would be a good idea so you get a bit more of what I’m about and the reasons for my blog!

Right well as you may have seen in the about me bit, I have always had a love for anything that involved art and design. I followed this passion all the way through school, college and then university, but somewhere along the way I lost my creative mojo. I became scared that the creative and design stuff I was coming up with wasn’t good enough and I let that fear get the better of me.

So here I am four years after completing my degree and still no closer to bagging my dream design job! For the past few years I have tried my hand at doing marketing but needless to say after 2 ½ years in my current role I am not sure marketing is for me!!

I wanted to make a positive change this year and get myself back on track creatively… so here I am a delayed 6 months later!! But better late than never!! I have been doing a few design and creative bits over the past few months, but one thing I have been putting off is starting this blog, so I decided today was the day!! I’m hoping this blog will act as a log for all the inspiration I find and also document the new creative and design work I come up with.

I hope you enjoy my upcoming posts…