Giftware Inspiration

This past week I had some time off of work and have been all around the country, visiting some uni friends in Plymouth, family in Cornwall and then up to Birmingham today for the Autumn Fair trade show! This post is just a few photos of some of the lovely things I stumbled upon!

I went with my family to Port Isaac, a seaside town in Cornwall where they film the programme "Doc Martin" (if you like random trivia). There were loads of gorgeous little gift shops including a pottery gallery in this amazing building:

Where you could look down over from the top level into the space below. They had some amazing hand painted pottery.

There were also loads of beautiful gifts and decorations:

And today I went to Birmingham for my first ever trade show (as a visitor rather than exhibiting) to see what it was all about and get inspired by other peoples work.

The NEC in Birmingham is a huuge place, there were 5 halls filled with all sorts of commercial goods, mainly types of giftware, greetings and homeware. I stumbled upon some fun things, and we also watched a popcorn making demonstration and found a dinosaur! 

All in all a very fun day with too many amazing things to see and take in at once, some beautiful displays with varying levels of sparkliness and lights, suck uk was quite extreme:

T-rex!

Dancing sandyclaws!!!

Oh and a little inspiration for any fellow graduates who are freaking out about life right now, if this is too cringy just imagine Dory from Finding Nemo "just keep swimming" ;)

Degree Show Prep and Private View

So I had my final assessment just over a week ago and since then I have been doing a lot of eating, drinking, being lazy, and also freaking out about the fact that actually I still had things to do to finish off my degree show walls...

We were locked out of the studio until thursday afternoon when everyone came in and started to hang all of their final work. I had cards to print and glitter up (never thought putting glitter on cards would be stressful - I was wrong...). I also had to iron some more wrapping paper and finish labelling many things for the pop up shop.

Got some photos of people's work going up:

Ben and Joe making a playlist and disliking me with my camera...

Andjela's  zodiac wrapped presents

Katie Keith had a bistro set out to show off her icecream prints.

Jenny M has been printing lots of tshirts.

I was pretty knackered and may have tested out my cushions before putting them on display

And now for the opening night!! Such a stressful day as I was organising the bar and running around with bags of ice cubes and plastic cups. 

Cakes were out

Booze was being poured

Shop was stocked

We took some cheeky photos of us with our walls before it got too busy! Here is me with all my work and a glass of pimms (yay!)

Jess with hers

and Holly.

The tutors then did illustration awards which were proper trophies of golden eagles! Super awesome, all were well deserved :).  

After this the photos end up a little bit more silly because of all the free cider, wine and champagne so not sure they are suitable for here... 

maybe just the one... 

The degree show is open 10-5 every day from now until June 26th so if you can come see it, there is all sorts of work up, from fine art and illustration to graphics and 3D design!

santas grotto

If anybody is in plymouth right now I suggest you go down to the Plymouth City Museum where they are have a santas grotto mainly decorated and designed by Plymouth Illustration students!! 

I Mostly did lots of snowflake painting and also had the idea of having 3D structures on the floor lit up by lights. These are some work in progress photos, I have yet to see it fully finished as I was going home for christmas!