Simon's Cat! by Simon Tofield

How cheeky is this little guy??

Simon's cat is one of the funniest short animations I've seen. Simple but so entertaining. Check out what he gets up to. If you're a cat lover you will know what I mean...

http://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat?blend=1&ob=4

There is also a shop dedicated to the Best Little 2D Cat Ever! :D

http://www.simonscat.com/index.html

This is my Favourite one of the lot so far:

http://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/5/s13dLaTIHSg

Back to University!

Back for Round 2!

University second year has begun now. On Wednesday it was great to see everyone again when we re-enrolled. Today we were given our first Communication Design brief of the year. "Defining Britannia!" So I may require a little audience participation at some point for research. I'm really looking forward to this project - loads of ideas but I always find it hard to get them down on paper so this year I'm going to overcome that issue. Let's get cracking!!

We also have a trip to Whitby next Friday which will be fun. Going back to where we used to go when I was little :) Lots of family history there on both my side and my wonderful husband-to-be's side. Will be interesting to find out what Whitby's direct relevance to our project is. Looking forward to it :D Road Trip!!!

Check out the skills!

Would you like some cake?

Cake is one of my weaknesses. Food in general is a weakness of mine however, I love to bake and I'm trying to build up my baking itinerary for when we get married :)

So far I've accomplished:

1. Chocolate Muffins

2. Scones (not 100% but getting there)

3. Banana Loaf!! Woooo! Finally

Next on the "to learn before we're married list" is Carrot Cake. But I don't think that will be yet as I've just been introduced to a great new easy-icing technique for cup-cakes (thanks to my wonderful sister) so I think they are next on MY list :D I'll keep you posted on progress! Mmmmmm!!

The Wedding Planner (Continued)

I finally got the card for my invites. It's beautiful! And was amazing value at £4 per box (in-store). The amount of brown I needed spilled into a second box so I topped it up with loads of colours to use for other projects I may do in future.

If you want professional (high-quality guaranteed) card, buy from these guys:
http://papermilldirect.co.uk/card

Why didn't I think of that??

What a brilliant idea! So simple but so effective.

It's great to blog hop. On my rounds today I hopped over to 'I Heart Hand Made' and I found this posted on there from 1st September 2010.

Take a peek:
http://blog.indiehandmade.com/2010/09/to-do-crayon-initials/#comments

It's well good! I would like one of those :)

Worst Order Ever!

WARNING!!

(I'm not normally a negative person but I felt this needed to be shared).

Always check the product before you buy anything online especially with craft materials!

Me and my husband-to-be-in-15-weeks bought card for our invites from an online supplier. Everything ticked the boxes and added up. The price was good and within budget. So we ordered more than enough to do the job. It arrived rapidly within 2 days which was great. It professed to be high quality. However, I treat it exactly the same as any other card I have, cut out and marked up 120 cards ready to be marked up again, ready to be folded. Step by step getting closer to my deadline of this Sunday (12th Sept). When I finally came to fold the card it decided to crack and go ugly!!! The quality was the worst I've ever seen! You can see from the pictures how awful it was! The darker brown is an original mock-up (with card bought from a company that discontinued it's card - hence why we bought elsewhere). The darker brown was thicker than the new card but better quality! I was appalled with the new card which was faulty!! I'm not naming the supplier publicly as I don't know what's allowed when you blog. I just wanted to warn you for future reference. Thanks :)

Bouncing Baby Shower Book!

These are some photos of the book I've been putting together from the Baby Shower I co-hosted in August! I've kept the theme used for the invites running through the book to tie it all together. I also added an album type area after all the notes from everyone. This used a LOT of glue!!

The Wedding Planner (Continued)

This is to give you an idea of what I was talking about previously. The wedding planning is coming along really well now. Not long to go! Managed to design invites, re-design invites, write and design the inserts, make the place cards ready to be written, found and got bridesmaids dresses, found jewellery, made appointment with florist, met up with our photographer and then had a major boo boo with the card supplier!! Ugh!! 1 week behind now!

Note

My camera has died so I will feature some photos of the crafty things I've been doing as soon as batteries have charged! Watch this space! :D

The Wedding Planner

Another crafty personal project is my own wedding stationary. Now I had the invite design sorted for ages, however we decided to change it last week. We bought the materials from an on-line supplier & my deadline to make 120 invites was for Sunday 12th September to give my step-mother to hand write names on (she has beautiful writing). However, I want to warn you that there is a major fault with the card we were sold. It all came as a high-quality card which said suitable for card making. I cut 120 invites out to find that when you fold it that the card cracks across the fold! It looks awful (see 'faulty' photo post). I am gutted! This now means that we won't get a full refund & that time-wise we are set back a week!
We'll hopefully get some more card which is what it says it is by the end of the week. Sorry I'm ranting on, it just really annoyed me & I don't want you to ever have the same problem buying materials online. A lesson learnt here is that you should physically feel & see any materials ordering online when you can. Or ask for samples before you buy. At least me & Mum are going to make a trip out of getting the new card later this week.
Apart from this issue everything seems to be going OK :D My wonderful man is as amazing as ever and working so hard! He is such a blessing. He booked our honeymoon the other day & got his wedding ring! It's all sinking in now. 15 weeks to go!

What date is it?

What date is it today? Can you believe another month has flown by? Oh my word!
I apologise that I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. It has been hektic! So many events & occasions to orgonise & be at, job searching, friends babies being born, wedding planning, dancing, running around Halifax dressed as Lady CARCAR (whoever said church is boring?), & trying to design my brother-in-law's logo. Mix all these together, add some family time in there somewhere & you get my past month! It's also been the height of the wedding season - 4 down & 1 to go!! :D
I wanted to say what I've been up to so you don't think I was just sat on my butt sice my last post. I also didn't do much comptuer based work to upload.

Most of the personal projects I've been running have been hand-made crafty type ones to do with occasions & events for friends & family. For example the baby shower I was co-host for was a complete success. Working with Vanessa was amazing! Great team work. We received 100% possative feedback from the ladies who attended and Celeste had fun too. I was mainly in charge of the design/crafty side to the party which entailed invites (which I posted earlier last month), name badges, a couple of games - which were so funny - & putting a baby-book together for Celeste which I'm still finishing off.

Big Bro Drum Kit Logo

It's a start!

My brother-in-law asked me a while ago about a logo to promote his drum teaching which I finally started today.

He e-mailed me with a small brief and a sample logo he liked as a start.

Brief:
"A very simple, stencil type image, nothing too complicated. Can be done with multiple colour schemes."
Please don't laugh at it - I know it's nothing spectacular -yet. This image is my very raw beginning version as an idea. I have used basic shapes and as little detail as possible. He liked the idea of an overlay so I made a quick one using a repeated brush tool for a background (left).
However, my next step is to ensure it's a professionally well finished complete logo - not just a bunch of shapes! So I will try a few ways to draw the final logo and see which works the most effectively for the job.