15 Dec 2011

Final Major Project #1

Brain storming for my Final Major Project:


Just a few mind maps so get the brain going. Yesterday I started to write my FMP brief, it currently being looked at by my Construction tutor, tomorrow I'll get feedback.
Besides having my FMP project brief finished by tomorrow afternoon, the plan is also so send of my UCAS application! Wish me luck!

Thankfully its the last day of college tomorrow and then the christmas holiday starts hurray!

Now I'm of to see the christmas concert that my cousin is starring in!

xoxo
Hannah



12 Dec 2011

Grey Gardens #8


All photos taken by Charlotte Doherty check out her lookbook.nu profile!

So here's some of the photos from todays result. Charlotte, Zoe and I went out in Aylesbury and did a mini photo shoot in 2 hours, which was a bit pressured, but Charlotte managed to get the photos she needed - it was mainly for her and Zoe's purpose than anything, as they are doing a retail project based on Grey Gardens, but they could choose to promote on of the design students collections and they chose mine! So far Charlotte has posted 10 photos on Facebook and these are just my favourites...

What do you think - dress and photos?

You wouldn't have thought that I spend bloody ages pressing that dress, it looks so creased! But in general that linen isn't very cooperative as you would have hoped for!

Got some other good news today from my tutors; my form tutor reckons that if I do everything to the standard that I have done so far and keep working hard and pushing my boundaries my predict grade for the my final diploma would be D*D*D* - so the highest you could possibly get, translated to UCAS points thats 460! Wow, above an beyond, lets hope it all works out for me! No pressure as my form tutor Ali said!

Penny from Printed Accessories said if I hand in a beautiful sketchbook which contains all the work it should have tomorrow and I do some hemming and I can bring the scarf home! Hurray - watch out Mum that's your present! (Don't worry she already knows...) So NO preview pictures before Christmas Eve unfortunately for you guys!

I'm also currently working on filling out my UCAS application, only a few bits missing, which I need help with from college. There's different types on National Diplomas so have to sort that one out, which one?! Then there's the personal statement which Ali, is brutally sorting out (5th draft will there ever be an ending?) and of course the famous five choices... Won't be revealing those anytime soon, way to scary! And hopefully all this will be done by Friday, all paid for and accepted by Ali, with the reference too, send of! Hopefully with no regrets afterwards, fingers crossed!

Hope you have a lovely week!

xoxo
Hannah




Play #2




All photos taken by me, on a borrowed Nikon D3100.

When I started this blog spot I thought it was going to be a quick one; adding text on the pictures in photoshop easy peasy and then upload them on Photobucket. Well first of all I got so excited that I uploaded the pictures before adding the text, so gad to delete them and them upload them again after adding the text. While then uploading them for the second time, suddenly some of the text was missing on two of the pictures! Time to reload again... and again! 

Frustrating I'm telling you, but because I'm so determined I have done the blogpost for you!
None of these scarfs are the one for my Mum, but all of these scarfs have been made by the team that I was in. We made 6 in total, but cut one into pieces, because we didn't like it and ended up putting it your journals instead!

The prints are designed by Daisy (I cannot remember which building she used - embarrassing!) and I (Sydney Habour Bridge) and as a team we then printed them. As the actual building/bridges are cut into sections we could play around with the placement so it wouldn't become so obvious! I'm so pleased with all of them! Turned out so much better than I expected them to do. My favourite is the navy blue silk scarf, the effect has been achieved by using discharge paste and a leaking iron, plus an industrial steamer. I looks absolutely beautiful in real life... Although the hemming is absolutely dreadful...

What are you're thoughts? Would you buy any of the scarfs if they were for sale?

xoxo
Hannah

7 Dec 2011

Grey Gardens #7

So here's the illustration that I promised to post, I don't really like doing fashion illustrations as its not really my strong point, although I do enjoy drawing... Any thoughts, to my otherwise simple illustration? The actual outline has been done by my dear hands, the backdrop and the image has all been done on Photoshop.

The madness is over... I handed in my Grey Gardens project today and the past week has been pretty rough with trying to get everything finished for today, even ended up doing my Power Point Presentation on the bus on my way into college this morning!
Living the wild life of a teenager, naah not really...
I am beyond relived that I have finally finished this project, the projects always tends to drain me when I'm nearing the end, because I'm desperate to finish, as my patience is starting to ware of.

The next thing that's on the to-do-list is write that review of University of Westminster,perhaps updating a review on AUCB as I revisited that yesterday with Daisy. We had such a nice day together, her Dad took us there, really nice guy he's in the creative industry himself so there was loads to talk about, even though we attend the morning sessions I didn't get home till 7 pm as we ended up at TGI Friday for a late lunch, they were desperate for food!
I will also be starting to brainstorm ideas for my Final Major Project tomorrow as I will be starting to write the brief on Friday! Scary and exciting at the same time!

Hope you have a great week!

xoxo
Hannah


3 Dec 2011

Grey Gardens #6


Wuhu! I have finally finished my collection that consists of 18 designs, which was the requirement in the brief. The thing is that I tend to work a bit backwards, even though I finished this collection line-up the other day - I finished my final garment yesterday, which probably not how the tutors want me to work, but it works for me!
Am I pleased with the outcome? Well lets just say that I'm never satisfied and I'm a great believer in that you could always do better. The problem is that I constantly change my mind about what should and shouldn't be in the collection, think I have done over 60 designs for this project and still not pleased with the designs that I have done... and yes quality is better than quantity.

Anyway its done now and thank God for that, but I won't show you the final garment, before the illustration (which I haven't done yet) and you will have to settle with the camera from my phone, because there just isn't enough time in a day to get the photo studio booked on a Friday to get the pictures taken...

Oh and btw I still need to post one last university open day review and that is from University of Westminster, but that will probably not be up until a few days.

Hope you have a great weekend!

xoxo
Hannah

28 Nov 2011

Grey Gardens #5

Just to show an example of what I have been working on lately, when I have finished the final collection I'll post it, so you can see it. This collection was specifically requested by our Creative Director as for the main line is requested by our Construction tutor.
Hope you have had a lovely Monday, but if you ask me a Monday is a Monday.
I had to meet up at college at 8:30, that meant a early start - 6:00, we had to do a trip into London, to attend a seminar with six people doing each their own talks. A print artist, a graphic designer, two animation designers (they did it together) and two photographer (individually).
The trip didn't really have much relevance to what it is I'm studying, but the most interesting was definitely the photographers, can't remember their names right now, I know lazy, but will post their names when I get around to get!

xoxo
Hannah


22 Nov 2011

Play #1

I thought it was about time to give a little update, but life and college is busy and the rest of the time I spend on recharging and NOT blogging unfortunately. Heh, well read blogs of course, but not blogGING.
These pictures are from last week at Printed Accessories; our first try out on printing one of my designs on to a scarf, so exciting. Its a combo of Sydney Habour Brigde and a cut out of a map of Australia. As I'm not completely satisfied with the outcome, I have today experimented with different colours of the material, but also perhaps looking at other materials, such as silk, velvet (really don't like that though!) and an other fabric which I can't remember the name of!

This project is especially exciting as this is a 'live' project as they call them, that means that if my creative director is pleased with the outcome, it will be sold in the college pop-up shop, as a christmas shop.

I'm also currently battling with my fifth draft of my personal statement for the UCAS application, its coming along!
I have also completed all my Open Day visits at Universities, so all the other reviews will hopefully be up ASAP!
Today I caught myself in some mess, besides having paint all over my clothes, but at the student rep. meeting we were discussing events that could involve all the Art and Design students, so I have signed up for being apart of the event management team. We'll see how that goes, all the previous years a Aylesbury College, all the events have pretty much flopped, so lets see if I can help break that vicious circle! Or perhaps I'll just break under pressure because of the workload of my final major project... But it would be a great opportunity to get some extra work experience and be really proactive within the college environment - plus it would be so cool saying at the age of 17 I helped plan a fashion show/event/exhibition! Wish me luck!

Non college related stuff, spending Christmas in Denmark back home with the parents and little brother, be surrounded, I hope, by family and friends. A little piece of random information!

Hope you all are well out there behind the screens!

xoxo
 


18 Oct 2011

Grey Gardens #4

Grey Gardens Project, Play (Printed Accessories) and Personal. 4
Currently drowning in research - Grey Gardens, you guys are going to hear loads about that, this project is first going to be handed in on the 28 November! Well honestly is stupid for me to say: first, because it really just around the corner and the weeks are going to fly by. The first week of college is over and it feels good. The first week is always a bit hard, a LOT of talk from the tutors and not so much work from the students. Although I do think that little miss Emma (construction teacher) has been a bit hard on us, perhaps new at the teaching game, slightly shy and us students are a hard nut to crack, bless her! Oh my, that sounds so British! Unfortunately she hasn't been so kind to make us a time-line, that guides us through week by week, so we know exactly what we are doing, because right now I really don't have clue about; when I should be finishing my research and start doing my designing...
Been flicking through some of my ELLE magazines to find some inspiration, in the current October issue, theres Poppy Delevingne in a gorgeous Gucci dress, amazing print! And so in for this A/W season. Should probably have scanned in the images, but I'm so lazy! Sorry! There's also the 'Dolly Mixture', could imagine Little Edie wearing that if she moved to NYC right after her mother died, although all this clothes is from the newest collections; shearling coat and silk-organza shirt both by Prada, plastic cuffs by Marni, baby blue suede gitter and snakeskin boots and wool skirt by Prada, and then there's the boxy clutch bag which is also by Prada. Lots of '60 inspired dresses and shoes for that matter. I've also been looking into fabulous mature women such as Daphne GuinnessDidder RønlundGitte Lee and Iris Apfel.

The other thing that I'm currently drowning in is ... again research, but this time is all about universities! You are going to get so sick and tired of me talking about this, but hey, this is important to me! So originally my idea was to apply for a few English universities, such as London College of Fashion (LCF) and Central Saint Martins (CSM) (a girl is aloud to dream) and few Danish, such as the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - The School of Design and Kolding School of Design, but as I was speaking to my parents over Skype we came into a longer discussion about universities. I mean free education in Denmark vs £9000 per year in the UK, which one would you jump for? It's clear and with out a doubt that CSM is one of THE best fashion universities that the WORLD could possibly offer, but last year the whole fashion department had 3,500 applicants and the were only 25 available places for Fashion Design - Womenswear! Talking about competition! The short of the long is that should I go global? Meaning should I try and apply for some of the most prestigious fashion uni's in the world? Isn't that a bit insane? I mean we're ONLY talking about BAs and not MAs. Should I really put the effort in to applying to universities like Parsons in NYC or Antwerp in Belgium? Would I be able to survive mentally, when I'm so far away from what I know?!

It all seems a bit crazy to me, do I even have the talent? And financially, I should just be dropping this immediately, there's no way that either my parents or me could afford doing crazing things like this. Yeah, you could always apply to satisfy some curiosity, but filling our various different application forma, personal statements, that probably can't been used for all the different universities, one needs to be in Danish and the other in English, its all a great deal of work, and do I have time for it? Especially with the amount of coursework that I have got to do.

Wise words are appreciated...

Speaking of coursework, got a new project on the Friday, assignment description goes:
PLAY - 12/09/2011 - Part one: 31/10/2011 and Part two: 05/12/2011:
"A silkscreen can be remarkably versatile tool in the hands of an enquiring mind and an attitude of curiosity. Endless possibilities exist in terms of line, shape and texture. Capable of perfect precision and repeat pattering, the screen can also create marvelously organic, fun and spontaneous results" - Leslie Morgan, screen printer.

The use of a silkscreen is a varied and experimental, form posters, t shirts, fashion and scarves, to wall hangings and abstract art.
You will need to learn a range of techniques to ensure you have the skills to be able to do all these. Many of the techniques you will learn can be used for all manner of printed outcomes and it will be up to you to choose the best ones for the job.

EXPLORE - DOCUMENT - LEARN
To understand the process of screen print and dying fabric, and how it works - you need to get your hands dirty!

You will be given a series of techniques, showing different outcomes, textures and lines but all using a silkscreen, you will need to practice each techniques and document it in your journal.

You should produce a 'technical journal' in a 'book' of your choice, but as always, be creative, use an old school book, a small photo album, anything that is personal to you.

Included in this journal should be small sections of detail on print practitioners who inspire you, can you copy their techniques, can you learn from them, try...!

xoxo
Hannah



2 Oct 2011

Grey Gardens #3

Grey Gardens - Back to Basics Part Two


It looks a bit strange, but that is because it is a jumpsuit and it has legs, and this dummie wont fit a jumpsuit. This is a development from the top that you have previously seen in pattern paper, this is a toile made out of calico.


My imperfections: Seams that aren't lining up! I redid this around four times and I still couldn't get it right.

It was really rather annoying since the other side was perfectly lined up!


Things are really going to get crazy now, I haven't really showed you much of Grey Gardens, but don't really feel like boring you to death with lots of research. I would take snap shots of my research pages, but as my camera is nothing to get excited about, I will spare you from that.

I have ready started my designing and I'll be scanning them in during the coming week, so will try and post some of them - got 32 so far and need 50 by Wednesday! Plus a rough collection line up of 18 outfits, as the retailers are coming to see us that day, to get a feel of what we are doing, as they have to promote our collections.

xoxo
Hannah

1 Oct 2011

Techniques #2

Nick hand drew this fashion illustration on a screen print (the left hand side). Daisy did the right hand side, she's such an amazing illustrator! Love her drawings, this was done free hand. 


Daisy also did this one on the print screen, here she traced a template - excuse the poor photos. these were taken on my phone. 



I did this one, it was 'free hand' inspired, but partially traced from a painting, but ended up with my own version.

Here's a little update on what we've been doing in Printed Accessories lately. Sorry for the bad updates recently, but there's just hasn't been enough hours in the day!

This is all done to get some basic skills in hand drawn screen printing.
Have you ever done it before? Any thoughts?

Have other posts coming up for you, finished my basic toile on Friday and I'll give you a little update on uni's, went to University of West England today!

xoxo
Hannah




20 Sept 2011

Techniques #1



I have been discovering that my dress that I did last year, 1950's Summer Loving, has been to into a window display at the Aylesbury Shop on the inside windows. Just wanted to show it, probably already seen this dress a few times. But our dear Creative Director, kind of makes a big deal about having students stuff in the Shop. So I'm proud, which I honestly must say doesn't happen that frequently.
In my Printed Accessories I was asked to bring in an Illustration that would inspire me, as I would either have to copy it or get inspired by it to make my arkepak (I've clearly spelt this material wrong, but have absolutely no idea of how to spell it...) illustration, that will be used as a test print at some stage (next week). The artist is called Tadaomi Shibuya.

xoxo
Hannah

15 Sept 2011

Grey Gardens #2

Grey Gardens Project; Back to Basics. 
As the headline says we went back to basics in construction this week. Playing around with reconstruction a basic bodice block on the stand, I was working with Siân, thats the girl you can see in the second picture. This was done yesterday.

I must admit that its Siân that is more into the 50's kind of style compared to me. When we did the 1950's summer loving last year, I thought it was a nightmare! But hey ho, the important thing here was to find out the endless possibilities that you could do with a basic block. And we even might find it easier to experiment and come up with designs, by doing this, compared to sketching it out.

Talking about sketching the reason why these images look like this, is because I played around the the features on Photobucket, and I think it looks quite cool, the effects totally works for what course I'm doing! Haha, honestly I did it to compensate for the ridiculously bad quality of my cellphone camera! The first two images I have used the 'thin' effect and the last three images I have used the 'thick' sketch effect, otherwise you weren't able to see the details on the pattern paper.

Today we were working on darts and stitching samples - regarding to the samples, I think that its a right pain in the back side, considering we did a least eight really good ones, in the last 5 weeks of our first year - so now we have to redo most of them.. Learning how to pivot the dart was a great thing to learn and our teacher, Emma, even gave us a handy link, just in case if we were interested to look at other basic pattern alterations. I'm going to be ever so kind, because I'm going to share this link with you guys, just in case you were curious: lutube.leeds.ac.uk

Sorry for the late post, but the amount of work that I have to do for college is madness and we haven't even started yet. Okay so of it might have been my own fault because I got carried away. Like printing out 100 photos in the size of 9 x 13 cm (that should be about right?) - lets just make it clear I am not exaggerating(!), cutting them out and putting them into a A5 black journal, that seriously STINKS, because of some weird glue, since the outside is made of faux leather. I did this, because we are supposed to be preparing for our final major projects, that starts in December or otherwise it is after christmas.

Well better stop now, before this becomes to long and dreadful, which it probably already is! Haha!

Sleep well, to all you that must be behind the screens!

xoxo
Hannah


13 Sept 2011

Grey Gardens #1

September 2011.
Grey Gardens Project; Introduction. 
First day back at college! Can you believe it?
Can't figure out if those 10 weeks went quick or slow, perhaps more along the lines that the days went slow, but the whole 10 weeks has gone rather fast.

Today was more an intro day, meet our teachers - Emma (Construction), Allison (Head of Retail - Form Tutor), Will (Digital) and Penny (Print). Some I new, some I didn't. Just to make it clear, I have chosen to do the Fashion side of things rather than the Retail side.

First term will be all about our first project in Construction its called Grey Gardens; the assignment descriptions goes:

Using research based on the film Grey Gardens and the internet through searching for images and articles, compile a series of research pages.

Use these pages to make a mood board about your response to Grey Gardens and then use this to inform your design work when you will design a capsule collection of 18 outfits which would imagine Little Edie wearing if she were alive today.

Little Edie's great dream was always to leave Grey Gardens and move to the city. What would she have designed to take with her?

"My costumes? That's a protest against having worked as a model for the Establishment, believe it or not. A lot of models feel that way. Sometimes their lives are protests against having worked as models. Besides, I didn't have time taking care of mother to get out and buy many clothes. So I used what was left of mine and mother's in the attic." - Little Edie

Keeping the essence of her style and using your own response to the evocative images presented here.

Your research can be rough pages, your mood board must be digital bot paper and your final 18 illustrations must also be digital not paper.

We also got a whole lot of other information but won't bore you with that yet!

xoxo
Hannah



4 Jul 2011

50's Sommer Loving #2

50's Summer Loving Project; Final Outcome. 


Sorry for being so absent! It has been crazy times lately; handed lots of projects and few has been extended and a summer project will be pinging in my indbox at some point. Been to parents evening (which was a  morning) thing and been on a family marathon (don't really fancy explaining that).
So here is my 50's dress, made in French lining and dyed it.
At the moment I'm lost for words, currently still in the UK but tomorrow I'll be heading towards Copenhagen.
Hopefully this will be one of the best summers!

Tired going to bed soon. Oh there MIGHT be some good news on the camera! Which reminds me that I need to reply my auntie Julie.

xoxo
Hannah


23 Jun 2011

PLAY #5

June 2011. 
PLAY Project (Retail); Window Design.
I've currently been working on a project called Play in Retail - and I basically have to design a window that will promote the Oxfringe (Oxford Fringe Festival), there were a few requirements such as: the minimum of 3 mannequins, the slogan ABOLITION DU TRAVIAL ALIENE and the Oxfringe logo. It also had to have the same mood as the collection (Performing Arts).
The design above is my final design, mostly done on photoshop, the writing has been done on Illustrator with help from my drawing tablet. In case anyone was wondering it is a Selfrigdes window that my display has been put in.

Tomorrow I'll be going into college again, to hand in some work and a old journal that my tutor want's to storage, plus I need to get a digital journal printed of and bound, perhaps Staples?
In the evening I'll be going to a beer festival that my auntie Carol is co-hosting (as far as I know), to support the opening of the new scout head quarters building. The rest of the family will be there too!

Good night!

xoxo
Hannah


22 Jun 2011

Personal #1

On A Roll: 
Jeg har dansk på hjernen fortiden, egentlig noget underligt noget, hehe. Måske er det fordi at mine klassekammerater fik mig til at tale dansk, og de kunne ikke finde ud af hvad det var de ville have jeg skulle sige så de gav op. Men det endte med at de begyndte en samtale og pludselig begyndte jeg så at deltage, men jeg snakkede bare dansk og så kørte det ellers bare i ca. en halv time. Haha, det var nu egentlig meget skægt, de var opsat på at jeg hele tiden sagde noget ondt, selvom det slet ikke var tilfældet!
Faktisk er det jo nok ikke særlig interessant for jer, fordi det er sikkert en af de scenarier hvor man skal være der for at fange det sjove i det. Men nu til noget mere spændende: i går var der en af andet års designerne der havde brug for nogle modeller til et photoshoot, fordi hendes model havde aflyst i sidste øjeblik! Ja ja, jeg valgte så at lege frivillig sammen med Zoe og det blev Mel (designeren) mægtig glad for. Så kl. 21:00 i går aftes mødtes vi ved Aqua Vale, som er en svømmehal. Jep, Mel havde lånt en svømmehal fordi hendes gennemgående tema er halvfruer. I går legede jeg altså model og skulle lave et undervands shoot! Det var et hårdt arbejde og noget af en udfordring at holde vejret længe nok så Mel kunne nå at tage et billede. Vi var fire modeller, en makeup artist (eller rettere sagt bare en af de andre designere fra andet år - Mima) og så Mel. Vi blev der til 23:00. Vi blev nød til at gøre det uden for åbningstiderne, fordi disse billeder bliver vist for offentligheden, og de kan ikke have offentligheden med i billederne, med mindre at de alle sammen skriver under på at det er okay. Alt sammen en længere process, desuden ville Mel jo selvfølgelig hellere have billeder hvor der ikke var andre mennesker i baggrunden. Altsammen en super fed oplevelse, og når jeg en gang får nogle af billederne, så jeg nok vise dem her på bloggen!
Mel, skal bruge billederne til hendes portfolio og en lookbook der indeholders hendes kollektion! Disse to ting bliver fremstillet på en udstilling som colleget holder inde i centrum. Nogle af mine ting skal også derind!
Og med hensyn til det, så så jeg der mærkeligste i dag! Min kreative direktør rendte rundt (på college) i en af de jakker jeg har været med til at lave! Han kom senere ind til konstruktions studiet og sagde at dette ville være en jakke han ville købe, bortset fra han ikke køber tøj han får det foræret (han har rimelig høje tanker om sig selv).. Han sagde at det lignede noget Comme des Garcons ville lave (det er en af hans yndlingsmærker. Desuden er jeg ikke enig med han i at det ligner noget CDG ville lave..), der var bare lige en ting der skulles ændres, hætten skulle af. Og den kom af og nu skal den så med i udstillingen, samt en ande jakke + bukser jeg har været med til at lave! Det høre alt sammen under samme projekt - Performing Arts.
Udover det har jeg taget en beslutning om hvad der er jeg vil næste år og det er konstruktion, så jeg skal uddannelse i at være designer og mønster konstruktør (pattern constructor)! Glæder mig faktisk ret meget til næste år, det bliver lidt mere frit, i den forstand at vi slev kan vælge hvem eller hvad der skal inspirere os. Og i de sidste 2 semestre skal vi arbejde på vores FMP (Final Major Project).
En andens dagens bonus er at jeg har fået distinction (topkarakter) i mit CA projekt, der hvor jeg lavede skulder-kappen med bladene.

xoxo
Hannah