Baked goods!

I think it's pretty much globally known how much I adore baking.
This year I've been doing my best to test out new recipes and expand my culinary repertoire.
I made some cupcakes this eve for our uni party on Thursday and I was rather proud of the outcome, so I thought I would post a couple of successes!

The "fauxstess" cupcakes, so worth the effort. Plus it gave me an excuse to buy an icing piping kit!



These "mookies" (muffin-cookie hybrid) were a complete experiment using some delicious muesli.. I called them crackookies.

I Don't Draw!

Last night I got inspired by listening to one of my old favourite Canadian bands - the Weakerthans. Bless John K. Samson for being bequeathed with such an extraordinary gift for music. I randomly began drawing John K. Samson and then the lovely bearded Jim James. I was quite proud that it didn't look awful, so I thought I would post it!

This is one of the beautiful songs I had on my rotation.

No excuses, no more monotonous conversing!

For the latest project, we have been asked to rewrite/redesign a previous brief we worked on. I chose the "R-Kive your music" brief because I wanted to use music in the next graphic outcome. My idea comes from my own disappointment in having really lame conversations with people who either a) are dull or b) can't be bothered to make an effort. Particularly because those who know me, know I love to ask (mostly unmethodical) questions. I decided to make it easy for people to engage in thought-provoking dialogue by throwing a bunch of random questions generated by various artists lyrics.

I combed through my music library and wrote down and questions that popped up that would be relevant to inciting a verbal exchange. I generally make little notes on my hand to remind myself of things.. and I know this is pretty common.. so I thought why not use that technique in the outcome. I jotted down the quotes on my hand/arm, in different coloured ink (artists were colour coded) and photographed the lyrics on my blackberry. The concept would be to either download these questions from a website.. or text "lyrics" to a number as many times as number of lyric images you would like sent in return. This would make it very accessible in transit and also on the sly, no one would know where you were generating such stimulating material.

It was something I just sort of threw myself into, out of idea desperation. But you can see the images of lyrics below.






I've since photographed a proper final outcome:


My other idea for this project was to create a newspaper insert so you could pretend you were reading the paper whilst you scanned a fake newspaper page loaded with questions at your disposal. It sort of sprung from an article I read about a BBC research study that discovered London has been rated as the loneliest city in the UK consistently for the past 40 years. So here is my somewhat hideous phony newspaper spread below:

iScream!

So because I love food so much and food experiments... and miss that Coconut milk ice cream that we had at health food shop I worked at this past summer + the recent spring like weather... I tried to make my own. Craving vanquished!
It was a bit too coconut-y so I think I will use more almond milk next time and give it a bit more sweetener. : )

Carol Mania

This has kind of turned into a photo blog!

I scanned the photos of Carol on the great Nikon scanners at Uni and without technical difficulties/destruction. I am missing a strong one that I left on the school computer.

Not sure which one to use for the portrait assignment, any suggestions?

Spring Showers

It may only be February, but we've been experiencing some bi-polar weather. We've had warm showers...


Then a brilliantly sunny frigid day followed..


The Lethaby building has some neat shadows when the sun shines.

More lovely sun on the way to the Irving Penn exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery...

Portrait Assignment

My lovely cousin agreed to be my model for the photography - portrait assignment. She was an incredibly easy subject and such a good sport about coming into the studio at Uni. Love her to bits.

I shot 3 rolls on the pentax (as if that needed to be mentioned) and processed my own b&w negs. I love getting my hands into everything. This is the gist of how they turned out. Quite a few seem rather overexposed so I hope it isn't so when I get proper scans next week.