So this month a lot has been going on, I have finished my flyers for M Mahood Music, I've done a few more buggy designs, I've finished my silversmiths course, I've just come back from Glastonbury, and I've even accepted a new job offer.......yep!
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So this year at Glastonbury was my 3rd year in a row. 

Between sleeping under tables on the ferry, the traffic getting into Glastonbury and the mud. I have admit, I am thinking of going elsewhere next year. I have always loved going to Glastonbury, but this year I just wasn't feeling it. Talk about a work out just going to the toilet or even getting food. It was a bit of a nightmare..... DAMN YOU MUD! Music was however fantastic as always! here's a few other pics from the festival.

So here's the two main designs I created for M Mahood Music:

I'm proud of these and I do feel they reflect and flow in with the logo that I had previously created. Plus I have a very happy client. Please visit and like their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MMahoodMusic/?fref=ts

I have also continued on with making some bug patterns, last month they were winged, this month I have been doing more beetles.

I am continuing on with these designs and I am hoping to have these all finished and added to my red bubble shop by the end of July. shop: http://www.redbubble.com/people/kerriestuff

I also mentioned that my silversmithing course has ended. I have decided that this is definitely an art form I am wanting to continue with and experiment with. In my last few weeks I began to experiment with enameling copper.   

So using greens, browns and even blacks we experimented with the leaf shaped copper. Although the kiln wasn't hot enough, giving the enamel this bumpy bubbly effect. I feel it really works with the piece and definitely adds texture to the piece. 2nd image here was actually the first pieces I enameled, I put Rose Pink on both pieces and due to the position in the kiln, I managed to get the top one the lightest and the bottom a lot darker. I really love how this worked out, I am planning to turn this into a necklace.
The 3rd and 4th images are of an only bit of scrap metal I had been experimenting with. I had talked about it in a previous blog, I just threaded wire through, and then put silver enamel on the copper. It gave the copper this really amazing look, again planning on turning this into a necklace. Here is the original piece before threading copper and brass wire through: 

On my last night of my course, I started to make little rabbits. I have to admit it was mainly due to finding other little copper rabbits in my scrap box and getting this song stuck in my head:

My little scrap bunny. So I started making my own little bunnies in hope of enameling them white:

these also really make me laugh, I made a skinny rabbit and a curvy one, keeping up with beauty standards. So yea, didn't get these quite finished but I am thinking about doing a bit more with the white rabbit theme. That's it really when it comes to the metal work stuff I have been doing lately. I am still experimenting away with other things. Although at the moment the workshop space that I use is being moved. So it's putting a little bit of a pause on things.

I also mentioned I have accepted a new job offer, I will be working with a graphic design company, starting in July. I've incredibly nervous about the whole thing but, it's a new venture, so we'll see how it goes. Catch you guys next time.

A LOT HAS HAPPENED THIS MONTH!
So, where to start. Logo design for M Mahood Music is done, currently still designing flyers but I am incredibly happy with the outcome, even my client is over the moon with it! Which is the most important thing!

Hopefully my watermark isn't too over powering. But yea, this is what we came up with in the end.  Very impressed it I don't say so myself ;) created using Illustrator and Photoshop. 

Here's a few of the logos that I played around with, before coming to the final:

As you can see some a lot better than others. But there are many different stages that you go through when designing a logo. I had a lot of fun doing this! 

My Silversmithing course, has been very off and on, as I am getting to the stage where, to be honest I don't feel like I'm learning. I have noticed there is a huge difference from being at university and doing a part time course. If you basically showed interest in learning a technique and asked tutors in university, or if it was a tutors specialism. They got super excited and were pretty much awesome with showing you how it worked.

So yea, I am getting to the point that YouTube is probably a better educator that any college or university, as well as cheaper! Which is a bit of a shame, but at the same time, it has made me hungry for knowledge! I've recently been experimenting with copper. Actually been very impressed with all the amazing colours and although I'm kind of doing it to waste time, I’m actually learning a lot from it:

The above is just little pieces I have been experimenting with. Still lots of other stuff I want to experiment with but I have to admit, even experimenting with the different colours that come from the copper. Is amazing, and all I am doing is applying heat in different areas and even experimenting by heating the metal through other pieces of metals.
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It’s all still very small stuff, but I am starting to think about making sculptures, so who knows my next course could be a wielding course, or my YouTube will be full of wielding videos.


I've also been doing more patterns, I have already started my 2nd in the series. I haven't yet put these up on my red bubble, as I am wanting to have at least 3-4 different series of patterns before I do, so here's the first it all it's different variations of glory!

So that's basically what I've been up to this month, I have to admit June may be a bit slow as I am mainly just finishing off work and continuing to experiment with metal work. But I am also off to Glastonbury! So I shall also be putting up lots of pictures of that when I get back, But I think I will do my June blog before I leave for Glastonbury, we will see.

Thanks guys for stopping by, keep your eyes peeled for more pattern designs coming soon and more experiments. Please follow me on Instagram, as I am aiming to try and start posting more things on there!

I got my video finished today!!! YAY although I am rather pissed off the music for my video has cut out at the very end. I am currently uploading it to uni. I don't even know if it's going to work, but it is currently 61% uploaded and I still have another 122 minutes remaining...... whhhhhhhaaaatttttt!!!!! 

So we had a class meeting today, the fear is definitely been struck into everyone of us poor students. I have been told I basically I have 3 weeks if not less to get all my pieces I want to put up for the show done. As the people we go into within uni are basically gone for summer from 29th of this month.... AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! so that's pretty mental, have to pull the finger out and get some work done big time! 

There was also talk of having a shop at the show, so I'm contemplating getting my cupcake cards printed to sell at the show, I have even also created a patter to possibly go on the box of the cards. My flat mates also gave me a really good idea that because I am obviously a student, we are idiots and play drinking games such as "Ring Of Fire" or "Kings" (there are the same card game people!) So I think I will create a very quick one, this may just be words on the cards themselves. I am unsure if ill do illustrations for it.
Anyways! here's my patterns:

I am also to design the backs and the jokers, which I will do tomorrow, along with the redesign of my end of show space. I will hopefully also have my video to show for tomorrow, however the music is a little screwed on it so hopfully I might be able to fix this tomorrow also. 

Also I have tweaked my photography piece for the ViewBug challenge. I am still not too sure about it as my hair in the image is still really annoying me. 

I feel pretty done though to be honest, i may go back in and give the hair a proper look tomorrow when i get a chance. 
That's all from me today. 

Today I pretty much wasted it by going from website to website, trying to find a company that would print my cupcake deck of cards, for cheap. It was unbelievably tedious  as I had to make very quick designs of just the numbered symbols for each suit, Most websites were very slow with the uploads, they wouldn't let me edit the images to the way I wanted them displayed on the cards, Some websites stopped uploading my designs after a particular number. I was pretty much like 4 hrs of trying to get the right company to print these. I finally got it sorted. Although for one pack of cards it'll cost me roughly £15. Which sucks, although I think it will be worth it. 

I also have been trying to write my blurb, which will be the little bit of information that will go beside my work at the end of year show. To be honest, this week has been a complete nightmare. Just so much stuff to do and next thing I know a week has past, and the work I have done is not as much as I had hoped to have done. 

I have been looking at the whole planner for the end of year show, even looking at people from the past years, and I hate this feeling I have. I honestly don't feel like any of my work is good enough, the work I have done in my side projects I feel more confident to show than my main project. Even looking through it all, I can see exactly where I have gotten lost. I had originally wanted to do really mad, in your face posters showing consumerism. I am now doing student financial advice. Making a video, I honestly don't feel that comfortable about. I just really really lost.

So looking at the wall planners and everyone else's displays from the past years, I have decided to continue on with the video, and see how it is at the end, maybe Ill surprise myself and it'll be the most amazing thing. Although I have also decided to create posters, which was my original idea in the first place, many tutors have more or less talked me out of it. Saying in the usual nicest possible way, that they didn't think that it was the best Idea. I just feel like I'm drowning. So screw this, I am going to do what I want to do. If it ends up looking shit, at least it'll be my colourful shit and stuff I feel comfortable showing.

I also went back and re-edited my Coca-Cola portrait. I am actually really happy with it and have decided it will be my piece for submitted to the ViewBug unique portrait challenge. 

This is very simple, although I find it very effective and I think it really stands out. I am happy to upload this for the ViewBug Challenge, I plan to do a few more tweaks to this image, such as having a fact about Coca-Cola on the image, and even fixing the hair a little bit. I also finally got round to testing my line drawing skills, to make a ghost in Illustrator:

I am actually so happy with this, I want to fix the eyes a little more. But minus that I am really happy with this. One down, 11 more to go. 

That's all from me today, I am going to do a few sketches for posters for students on financial advice. But the way that I want them to be. I am even slightly playing with 

So, I missed a day yesterday. I took the day off from doing my work, I needed to shower my head and just chill out. Pressure is properly building and I'm not going to lie, I am getting so stressed out with work and I'm started to firmly believe that I may not even get my degree...  I have been working on my blurb for my end of year show, I have to admit I am actually not even too sure on what work I will be showing. So I have found the whole process of writing about my work incredibly difficult. I have also been doing a bit of photoshopping today, and re-took my Coca-Cola portrait images. 

So the above are my original images from today, I then took them into photoshop and began to experiment with them. I firstly started to clone tool out all the un-needed shadows, I then went on to actually take off all the  calorie counts and bar-codes off it. Mainly so the viewer doesn't get distanced by all things Coca-Cola put on their labels. I wasn't really satisfied with just that, so I decided to actually colour my skin, red. Just like Coca-Cola. However. I don't have any face paint, so I have been experimenting through photoshop. Although I may invest in some face paints and experiment further. Here is what I have come up with so far:

I'm still not too overly sure about it, although I plan to continue to experiment.  

While I was experimenting I ended up doing this, I am starting to think that this might look even better if I drew it. Although I have to admit I have a lot of things I need to start getting on with within Illustrator. Like my monster deck of cards. Speaking of cards, I got my business cards ordered!! whoop!, I ended up going with my original idea of having just the logo on the front and the text on the back. and going with the old school rectanglenessnessness look. 

So today I have started to edit my video, So happy with it so far, although I am still getting to grips with the whole program again, also slightly freaking out about rendering the video and such :/
As I am planning to do this all on my little laptop. I'm not too sure if that's being silly or not, but if I at least get everything done on here and it doesn't work out. Then hopefully it'll be just a point of adding the images I already have and then just getting the movements and so on and noises. Here's hoping eeeeeeeekkkkk Google is my best friend right now over this. 

Here's a screen shot of me in After Effects, I have just started to edit the first 40 seconds of my video. So far this has been alright, although I haven't started to add any movements to the graphics so far. But this is literally just how I have gotten on today. I am hoping to get a good bit done tomorrow, although this is going at a snails pace due to making the graphics, then adding the graphics to the video, as well as looking up millions of tutorials. I am still optimistic but this whole process so far I am actually terrified. I'm not too sure how this is going to work out. Although I haven't yet put up a time limit for this video, I can't imagine it being  any longer than 3 minutes. So currently this video is set at 3 mins, So I am able to cut the time, make the time longer if I need to. This may seem silly, But I am still figuring this whole thing out and I don't want to pressure myself. 

So yea scary stuff. Short blog today, hopefully more to show tomorrow or at least more development of the video. 

I have done so much work today and I am actually still working away after I write this post. So I have designed a few new bits and pieces for my surveys:

So the 2nd image is simple, but I actually really liked how I gave the answers a facial expression. I also tried my hardest to have a the scales of all the heads to the correct proportion of the percentage I got from my surveys. The rest of my surveys I kinda felt because I want to make a small video of my findings and give people the results of my surveys. I think sticking with pie charts and graphs will go a long way, although they are traditional I think this will make more of an impact. 

So here are just some of my pie charts that I made. very simple, all the info is there though, now down to real buisness. and start designing what I want to do for my video, so here are a few images from my sketch book on how I have been designing so far:

So one thing I am noticing about this is half way through drawing everything up, suddenly I get a new idea and I want to move things about and change my layout. This is where I have gotten so far with designing my video, I am getting nervous and excited about continuing on and actually getting this made. I hope I get everything I want done on time for hand in, as I have said before I have used After Effects, however it has been over a year since I have used the program. So yea, thats all from me today hopefully Ill have a bit more colour and things to show tomorrow.

SO, I am very excited to FINALLY! have my logo above being an animated gif! It took me forever to figure out the code of the website, although I have to admit, this had made me more interested in wanting to learn how to code websites. 

Which brings me to my main project, I ended up going to the website generator, "WIX" and I have to admit there are a lot more themes that I can really see working a hell of a lot better rather than the ones here on weebly, I signed up with them, and began to test out their websites, here are just some little snippest from the website on their themes:

I have to admit, I truly just find their themes a lot more inspiring, I have also noticed that they are easier to use to design the page, I did have a wix page years ago when I was first starting to make myself a website, I remember the editing of the website was highly difficult. Due to the fact that if you clicked anywhere on the page, suddenly you had activated 50 different components at once and your stuck and cant do anything. 

Also going over everything that is in my main project, I am really worrying as I am now in my last year of university, there is nothing that really pops and stands out, so I was thinking about perhaps doing a video as well as some of my photography Ideas I had previously had. I need to get my act together and get my portfolio looking amazing, oh and try and get a job. 

So for the nest few days I will be playing about with different looks for the photography, as well as drawing out stuff to make a video with, I have decided to do a simple video, mainly due to my experience within After Effects. I would like to use purely animation and not so much film. I have taken inspiration from some of the Buzzfeed videos that have done videos to exactly the same way I want mine: 

I just like how a lot of the illustrations are very clean cut and they float in and out of the space and a lot of the animation techniques they have used in making this video, I have done before. Its just going to be a case of getting the illustrations to be the way I want them to be.

I also have to apologize for not posting yesterday, all the above was my thoughts, feeling and what I did yesterday, I simply fell asleep early and didn't get a chance to post.

So today, I simply have been writing up my project to make sure everything is up to date, due to having a lot of projects, i usually will take one day out a week to just go back and write everything out and have a good think about the directions I am going in and just keep myself up to date, so for today I dont have anything really to show, I have just been updating all my work to make sure it's all up to date.

I have missed another day of blogging due to illness, I was so determined to go to uni yesterday, despite feeling unwell. I got ready, got the bus and began to feel worse. I got three stops away from my flat, got off and walked back home. I have to admit, I am so happy I got off and went home when I did, as I got so much worse. I did however manage to get a few illustrations of my cupcake done yesterday for the diamond suit. Although I have to admit, these aren't brilliant and my heart really wasn't in it. I just felt so ill but I wanted to do what I said I was going to get done yesterday, done. 

There is a lot of different variations of the same sort of design, there are at least two designs here that I really like and I want to use in my final designs, such as the 1st cup cake on the 2nd row and the very pink cupcake also on the 2nd row. I also really like the elements of the very first cupcake. This cupcake was actually the last cupcake I made of this set before I really started to take a turn for the worse. These cupcakes are in no particular order, just the order that they have been uploaded on here in.

Today I still feel very much under the weather, so I have decided to continue with my cupcake design suit. finishing off the diamond suit and continuing on to the spades and clubs suit.

So, I have finished the whole set of cupcake cards. It took me a little while, I started on the spades and clubs and got a little confused on what I was doing, so I looked up chocolate and coffee cupcakes for inspiration, warning this may make you hungry:

So here are all of my designs from today with the club and spades suits:

So with the coffee and chocolate cupcakes as my inspiration, I created all of the above, there are of course some that I prefer to others. But I am just so happy t now have two different themes of cards pretty much done. Here are the finals, the following orders and in threes, So they will be in the order of King, Queen and Jack:

So yea, these are my cupcakes, of course a few need wee tweaks, here and there. Over all very pleased with my results. I am hoping to continue on with my cards, my next theme will be monsters. I have previously spoken about maybe merging cupcakes and monsters together. 

Tomorrow I am going to continue on with my main project. I am going to go back to the drawing board with the website and really draw out how I want everything to look. Then I am going to experiment other website builders to see if I can really recreate the look and feel of what I want my website to look like. I am also hoping to go out and do some photography, depending on weather and hopefully feeling a lot better tomorrow also. That's all from me today.

Today has been a pretty productive day, I managed to get a lot done despite being pretty ill today. I have finally started to design banners and layouts for my main project. 

The poorly photographed image on the left was my original concept idea. I then finally put this into illustrator and created the image on the right. This has even developed  further, as I realized the pound sterling sign, the euro and the dollar sign didn't really go together. Especially as my project is aimed at universities within the UK. So I went back in and made them all sterling pound signs, I then began to play about a little with the design as, I felt everything was sort of floating in space. So I added shadows, banners and back ground colours to see how this would look 

Here are my mini experiments above, I do really like them a lot, although I have definitely decided against the green background. I was thinking a long the lines of the little piggy bank being free and running around. It doesn't look like that at all in my mind. I then began to look at the white and blue banners. I wasn't even too sure why I had three pound coins on display, so I went back in again and changed the display a little.

So as you can see my piggy bank is trying to be a horse, ready to charge into battle. Well that's what I get from it's pose, which I really like to be honest. So as you can see I have made it look as though the coins are going into the piggy bank, or flying out of it, whichever way people see it. I'm pretty happy with it, although I do realize how cartoon like it does look. I'm worried it may look even too childish. So I started to finally get started on making a website. I used Weebly as my website generator. I have to admit, when trying to make a website for a specific thing, weebly sucks. I was on here for about 3 hours playing around with themes, trying to get things to work, change menus, messing around with the HTML codes (which I know very little about). I have to admit, for the amount of work I was trying to accomplish today with the website, it really didn't happen. So now I am currently struggling with the idea of wither, just creating what I want the website to look like on paper rather than actually make the website, or go to a different website developer and try again. I am going to have a break from it for now, here is the home page however:

Currently it's very bland looking, there is a lot of restrictions within the themes which makes it difficult if you don't know HTML code. I have been trying, and I don't easy give up on things. I think I just need to shower my brain over it and think what else I can do. I also added my little protest character, he was a lot bigger but again on weebly, I found that once I got it to a way I liked it. As soon as I saved it, He was twice as big and took up all the space of the text. 
Here is all my sketch books where I also seem to brain dump all of my thoughts and feeling over my project:

So these are just the pages I have done in my sketch books today. Tomorrow, as I said I am going to be just concentrating on my Cards project to try and get the entire suit finished tomorrow, and possibly even start another suit, I would love to say Ill have the whole set done by tomorrow, but there are a lot of design issues that do come up, like I've seen today with the website, so we will see how that goes. 

I am also hoping to get some of my ViewBug projects started on Thursday, mainly if the weather is nice so I can get some underwater photography.... in fact even just to have the water to be calm, that might help me out more. 

That's all from me today.