Fascination of the week

4 weeks ago:
Spider silk is stronger than steel, it is being used in medical research to create artificial ligaments.


3 weeks ago:
The reason the silk industry in Britain never took off on a global scale is because JamesI ordered the wrong type of mulberry tree to feed the silk worms. Silk worms are monophagous so without the white mulberry tree they died. No one dared say this back in the day - it would have been treason, so they blamed it on the weather!


2 weeks ago:
The amish community has strict rules; how to dress, what to eat, where to work, and the God to pray to. It seems that most who leave are not in search of a more free-ing or exciting world - but a more free-ing and real relationship with Jesus. They are becoming born again Christians, and ex-communicated for it.


Last week:
My upstairs neighbor only has about 10% of her sight. She is completely independent, her computer talks to her - and she can type faster than me. Amazing. It is fascinating to describe things to her - without using visual descriptions too much.

Big Hair

I've been in London for the last couple of days having a fantastic time off from uni work. Daniel Blake invited me to his womenswear event where you select a piece from his collection to have made to order.

I worked as the photographer for the event, with Andy Teo aka photocillin working alongside me as my assistant and support (and to keep me calm and functioning!) We got some awesome shots, you can see a small selection of mine here.

The event was at 'Kink' - a luscious hair salon. James, one of the stylists had 'a go at my hair!' and taa daaa! I have big hair that I actually intend to sport for the next few weeks. Thanks James x

Big hair is fabulous. What with graduating in the next few months - I don't intend to take life too seriously! Just going to work harder than ever, putting my heart into gear instead of my head and do the best I can. I'm not going to mind what outfits I end up in, or how late I am for Church ! Just going to get on and live with my big hair. Yeah :)

Photo courtesy of Andy Teo x

Lazy Baking

Tesco cookie mix 64p

Takes 12mins, makes 6 good sized cookies

Yom!

I unashamedly love this cookie mix, take a look in my cupboard and there'll be at least two boxes!

Photos taken on J's canon 40d, with his lovely new 50mm f1.4 lens

New Flat

I'm absolutely loving our new flat, right in the city centre of Wolverhampton. It'll be a great base for more Resa Smith work, and fantastic for my current commute to Uni.

We've just had our selection day at university, where the tutors decide who is going to showcase their work at Graduate Fashion Week. Unfortunately I am not one of the few who made it, but I'm still really pleased with the work I put forward. It was probably too commercial for how the university want to represent themselves, we joke at uni that if we'd have stuck some dead birds or meat to our work then we might have been picked. Lols

The show is in June 2011, it'll be interesting to see what my classmates achieve.

Now it's time to concentrate on Resa Smith 2011, organising a photoshoot, and writing a dissertation.

Must dash - got some cookies baking in the oven x

Illustration

Illustrations from last month's design project.

Using soft pencil, photoshop and of course, my favourite - Brushios

So much to do so little time!

It's been a while.. Ive still got about 4 or 5 maxi dresses to put online, but I'm at uni now and things are hectic. The journey to Birmingham isnt too bad - 40min walk, 20mins on the train and a 20min walk to uni. Keeps me fit I supose, and the time on the train is some good 'thinking space' (except when I fall asleep)

Well here's one of the dresses that needs to go online, and a page of uni work.

Birmigham uni is very diffrent to Bournemouth Art's. They don't like anything contemporary in your reseach unless it is your own interpretation of something. I've made a lush little concertina book full of interesting finds... Got to do 100 designs from it by tomorrow and only 45 done so far !

J&M Photography - Matt and Sophie

Last weekend J and I photographed a wedding together for the first time. I've been at several weddings as second photographer - but this time we could do it our own way :) Exciting!

I started the day at Sophie's house (beautiful bride who used to be my housemate in Bournemouth) and got clicking some fun prep photos. I got to play about with Andy's wide angle lens - Andy is the guy who shot the Resa Smith photos in a previous blog entry. Could easily get obsessed with this lens!

Then on to the Ceremony, J and I had a list each of what we needed to capture, and made sure we were always on oposite sides of the Church to cover different angles - then quicky swapping places saying things like 'ahh quick - you need to get a shot of whoever!'

J was a great help, anything I hadn't managed to cover, he went off to do for me. He captured the amazing moments after the ceremony - photo above.

I must say, we had an amazing time, I wasn't nervous, but next time I will slow down and bring a visual list as well as a written one. It was a lushious wedding to start at and hopefully J and I will be able to photograph some more in the future.