Mood Board

There is one thing I think you should know about me...I love mood boards. Putting together a mood board helps me to set the tone for a project, consider colour and texture combinations and get inspired. The following board is for a character illustration I'm working on for a Skillshare class I'm taking. If you are interested in taking this class as well you can get 10 dollars off (that's 50%!) by clicking here. I'm currently enrolled for a few classes through Skillshare so you can expect more mood board and progress posts in the near future. 

I always start my moodboards by collecting and grouping images to my pinterest. You can see all of my pinterest boards here. 
Have a lovely day.

'Meeting of Minds and Scissors'

I'm so excited to have discovered this wonderful meet-up group in Toronto called collage collective. Every so often this group of lovely people get together to chat, eat, drink and of course collage. Stacks of magazines are supplied and everyone brings a snack to share. For me this is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a weekday evening.

Two weeks ago I learned that the collage collective will be participating in an event called 'come up to my room' that's happening Jan. 23-26th at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. They needed to submit a promotional video for the event so I offered to help out. We put together the following stop motion clip.

Learning Processing

Flashback
In my first year of Industrial Design we used Daniel Shiffman's book 'Learning Processing - A beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction' to learn basic programming for designers. Skip ahead to today and I'm up for a refresher. This book provides an excellent introduction to programming concepts that can be carried forward into many interactive digital projects. One of the first exercises in the book is to create a character using simple shapes. I decided to make this little robot friend.

I then used the robot to create the following pattern. I love the way it turned out. I think it could be a really cool textile print. I would sew it into a clutch bag or something! If there's anyone out there who knows how to print an image like this onto textile please contact me or leave me a link in the comments;)

Don't forget that robots need love too:) I love this Dan Mangan track.

Stained Glass

Hello again,
after more than a year away from this blog I'm finally feeling ready to pick up where I left off. For a long time it was the thought of making this very post that kept me from returning. I kept thinking "what will I say, what will I show, will I have to explain my absence etc." Then it finally occurred to me that it doesn't have to be this stressful. The important thing was to start somewhere, anywhere in order to get the ball rolling again.  Pull off the bandaid you know. I kept thinking it had to be this spectacular post that explained in detail all the reasons why I stopped... but who wants to read that anyways. So today I'm sharing a little glimpse at the stained glass project I'm currently working on. I recently picked up a few courses to further develop some skills: stained glass being one of them. 

Choosing the colours was my favourite part so far. There are so many options: colour, opacity, texture. I spent two hours in the shop ahead of time making my selection and I'm pretty excited to see how they look when it all comes together. I'll post the final piece in a few weeks when I'm finished:) 

Happy to be back! 
Jacqui

hand stitched floor pillow

Hello!
So, as some of you may know I am a big fan of second-hand shops. There is always a little treasure hidden in there just waiting to be loved by someone new. Some of my favourite things were second-hand goodies like this typewriter, this chair, or this chair. Most of all I love to find things that can be transformed into something different.

That's exactly what I did with this wool blanket that I scooped up for 50 cents! I cut the blanket up into two squares, put them through the wash and then stitched them together as a pillow case. Super fun.

I don't have a sewing machine, so I searched for a way to hand stitch it. I found the blanket stitch to be the best method. It was so fast and easy. I will definitely use it again in the future!

I stitched the three sides of the square first then fit the pillow inside

and finished up by stitching around the opening.

it was fast, simple, and cheap! My kind of DIY 

we took a drive

 

 

Friends of mine recently bought this adorable orange car and invited me to come with them for a drive down to Belgium. We wanted to check out the beach so we headed to the coast. We took a map instead of GPS and navigated our way along some very charming country roads. However, when we got to the coast we found a beach full of these little huts, it was so bizarre. We made the most of it and all in all had a lovely day. Congrats on the 'new' car you guys!

personalize

Do you ever come across that really comfy sweater in the back of your closet that still fits but you don't wear it anymore because it is a little too plain? Well I did recently and I would like to show you what I did to give this sweater a burst of life again. 

I took the plain blue knit sweater and stitched in a pattern using this pink zpagetti yarn that i picked up at the craft store. (source)

I used a crochet hook to guide the yarn through the knit holes creating this triangle pattern.  It was a very simple project to give this old sweater a new look.