Make do and Mend

I loved my "leather" jacket, but I started to get embarrassed when I wore it because of the scruffy cuffs.
Being of slightly low quality material, the cuffs on my jacket began to peel and flake off. But I love it so much and I'm a bit short on funds this winter, I decided to Make Do And Mend!

 So I reached for my knitting needles and went to work.

The price of the wool was under £2 and I did a knit 5 pearl 2 rib effect pattern to help make it look expensive.

It was really simple because I only had to knit a straight line. I would of gone with a crazy coloured wool but decided black would go with more. Leaving the gap for the zip I just stitched the cuff on with heavy duty thread and I'm really pleased with the results:

Then the money I saved then went on this awesome scarf.

Summer Window Competition

My day job was at a Pawnbrokers (until I quit last week), and they like to inspire their staff every so often by putting on competitions for us all to compete.

This time it was a design a summer window. The brief was to make a summery display that shows off the jewellery stock we have and not hide it or make it look tacky.

Being a model maker (as is my other half) I felt pretty confident,

here is what we did:

I made these little deck chairs out of balsa wood for the watch displays

My other half, Alex Young, made these melted ice creams, used to display the biggest diamond rings in stock:

I also made a suitcase out of foam board and card with a few chains falling out over the edges.

A colleague made some palm trees and we ended up winning the best window in the region and £100 for a night out for us all.

Steam Punk Necklace

Working in a pawnbrokers has its perks.
A regular customer came in to sell some watches, old gold ones. We had to dismantle them to weigh the gold to give an accurate price. Normally I detest taking apart watches, knowing that someone so skilled put them together. I know how I would feel if someone took my work apart!
But these watches were long past it. Beyond fixing.
So I decided to "Up-Cycle" them, I believe that's the term for turning something old and broken into something new and useful/beautiful.

Here is what I did:

 I found this necklace in an alternative clothes shop in Hanley, stoke-on-trent, when I went there for the Staffs Uni art exhibition this year. (I like to check out the competition.)

It took me forever to take the watches apart, they were made so well. Eventually I got all the individual components and arranged them onto the necklace using it as a base. I am really happy with the results. Now I know I have a totally unique piece of jewellery.

Woods Film and Vocality

This is the finished Vocality #3  film.
On this project I was in charge of customizing the little people to the specifications I was given.
I had to transform, pre-made little suited figures into the 8 white shirted workers, the grey suited boss man and the IT man.
I started by buying some plain white hankees, I was able to use the seems along the edge to make the shirt collars look neat.
I also painted a few of them different nationalities to give the office some diversity, as well as a few other details to give them all unique personalities.

My other half, the talented Alex Young, got involved when he saw the light sabre and tardis on the animatic. He was also responcible for the IT mans unique look by using milliput to sculpt the messy hair and painting a space invader on the existing shirt. I think he had a personal connection with the character. cough *nerd* cough cough.....
oh er excuse me.......

I have worked with Woods Film before on another vocality project and that is where the little army people come from. getting the cammo on the GIs uniforms to look the same was hard! I also did a bit of animating on that project too,
The rest of the animation on this project and the others is done by Rhiannon Evans.
you can see it hear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-3vHSRDR0

I've heard that another project for the same client is on the cards and it's meant to be bigger and better than the others. I cant wait to get involved as working on these projects is always a pleasure.

Spare Fimo

What to do when you have some free time, but a limited colour pallet of Fimo.....

Roger Hargreaves' Mr Men and Little Miss series has always been a part of my life.
The simplicity of the characters and stories just make them so accessable and enjoyable for children everywhere, (I'm 24 and I still love them), and it's because of their simplicity that I was able to use my limited resources to make a 3D representation of Mr Messy:

It was hard, but I love it.

LaplandUK and The Catfish Collective

Whilst In London working on Santa's Grotto I read a Tweet that asked for assistants on a paper cut out animtion.
The request cam from the lovely people of The Catfish Collective.

I helped them out by grabbing my trusty pair of scissors and getting to work cutting out what felt like thousands of elf heads hands legs and feet amoung a billion fur trees and a multitude of santa hats!
wonderfully animated and beautifully illustrated, I had a great time meeting such talented people and was more than happy to help them out.

Catch up! Santa's Grotto

Just before Christmas I was spending 4 weeks working with a company called Hot House in London. A model making company whose ethos is "If you want it, we'll make it".
I was helping to construct the Santa's grotto they have been putting up in East London's Westfield Shopping centre for the last few years.
I had never worked on something this scale before. I had to go and buy steel toe cap boots specially for the occassion as well as wear a high vis jacket and a hard hat whilst on site.

I had no idea what I had signed up for!

This building was like a flat pack house. The brick work was made of mod roc plaster rectangles on large sheets of MDF painted to look like bricks. Each year these sheets were screwed to the side of the building in a kind of 'Tetris' fashion. Over the years the bricks had chipped and fallen off each time they had been taken on and off. I was given the task (with many others as this was a huge undertaking) of repairing broken brick work and repainting it.
Another member of the team had already prepared a large amount of replacement mod roc bricks on other sheets of MDF, but getting them off the wood proved to be a task in itself.
After selecting a suitable not too shattered replacement brick I could stick it on and then paint it in to match its neighbours.

For some reason I dont have a pic of the fully painted articals but you get the idea.
after the outside work was done, we were put to work on the finishing touches, refreshing the paint work and placing props.
It was truely a spectacular set up!
I found these pics online as I didnt get any of the finished grotto the first might be from a different year, but it shows how well the flat pack idea works.

Sweet tunnel, everyone needs one.