Little stabs at happiness

About Me

I'm an Aussie-born, London-dwelling brand designer. I work at The Partners, which is the 'number one' brand agency in the WHOLE WORLD.

I love my home, I love my job and I love my husband.

This blog is a combination of stuff I make and stuff I like. The tags below can be used to filter the content:

• Work = my work
• Play = crafts or fun stuff I make
• Inspire = other peoples stuff

My Other Sites
Tags
Get Updates
Filed under

play

See all posts on posterous with this tag »
 

Stitched & hitched: the best wedding card ever

(download)
We have a habit at The Partners of always going overboard with creating individually designed creative cards for anyone who's having a birthday, or leaving the company etc.

Before I left the country to go back to Sydney and get married my colleagues created me a card that was up there with the best (I think) we've ever done.

Because I'm interested in craft and stitching (and have been running a slightly abortive Stitch&Bitch session on and off at work) they designed and created a custom cross stitch and had it framed, writing me their personal messages on the back of the frame. They designed the two figures based on my husband and I, and our planned wedding outfits. They even took the trouble to indicate the slight difference in skin tone between me and James (who is half West Indian). They also added a small hair clip into my planned finger wave hair style, but I made a last minute decision not to wear the hair clip that I had planned.

Miranda Bolter sat up until 4am the night before my departure day stitching the piece. The card was such a lovely and touching gesture, I had a small tear in my eye. It makes me happy to know that I work amongst such kind and creative souls, its a great job perk.

I've uploaded a few pictures from the wedding day so you can see the comparison between the real and stitched elements. 

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted
 

Hot pagan buns

The hot cross bun is a tasty treat that is so embedded in our culture that I think people often forget its deeply Christian roots and think of it as a nice bit of 'seasonal produce' from the supermarkets or bakeries. 
 
I've always had a massive weakness for hot cross buns, so I decided this year to bake some buns at home, and to look to Easters original pagan background for the decoration, rather than just piping a cross onto the bun without giving it a second thought. As I'm not a Christian this didn't strike me as blasphemous at all, merely experimental.
 
The one benefit of making the traditional cross buns is that the straight lines would be far easier to pipe onto the bun than the more complex shapes I was attempting!
 
They were delicious. Recipe from the Guardian magazine.
 

(download)

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted
 

Freya's birthday cakes

Every time someone has a birthday at work we go a bit mad and create some themed card or something which takes up a lot of thought and more studio time than it should. For Freya's birthday we did the card messages on cupcakes as a tenuous link to the Alice in Wonderland fever that had hit London at the time. The icing was a bit of a disaster, way too runny - men should NOT have been left in charge of that aspect.

The two last photos were an experiment by Eagle to see how much Paul's cupcake really looked like him. Answer: not very much.

(download)

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted
 

Knitted bird

I knitted this blue bird for my aunt Coralie a while ago and posted it over to her in Australia. She has a special affinity with birds, and she made it a little home in a real birds nest on her window sill. One shot shows the bird in the company of another felt bird that I'd made at an earlier time. Coralie makes tiny felt birds herself, sometimes the small ones hide under the wing of the bigger knitted bird. I'll blog the tiny birds another time.

(download)

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted
 

Re: Glósóli Funny Walks - video birthday card

via youtube.com

My colleagues at The Partners made me this outstanding birthday card last year in response to the Glosoli walks video. This was all filmed around our office in Farringdon, London.

I was so touched by this card and the effort they went to that it brought a tear to my eye. It also brought a tear to the FD's eye when she realised how much studio time had been wasted on non-billable work...

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted
 

Glosoli funny walks

via youtube.com

When I was travelling around Europe with my sister a good 4.5 years ago, we made a decision to always do a 'silly walk' whenever we got to a new location, and to film ourselves doing it. I don't quite know what inspired us to start doing this, but we continued until we had a cache of footage. My little brother Alex then took all the footage and turned it into a music video.

There is a moment right at the end of the film when a group of French art students spontaneously joined my sister Heather in her walk, which we thought was getting towards the pinnacle of our achievements. I think some of them are working now with arts grants to continue the project.

The locations in the film range from the Picos de Europa, San Sebastién, Barcelona (Spain), Rome, Athens, Kew Gardens and Sydney.

Filed under  //  play  
Comments (0)
Posted