hampstead

Having homework free weekends still feels like a total luxury. It’s been soooo nice to be able to properly catch up with friends and family, enjoy this gorgeous summer weather we’ve been having and get out and about in London again.

On the ‘last day of summer’ we headed up to Hampstead Heath for a nice long walk followed by lunch in the sunshine in Hampstead Village. It was a completely gorgeous day, totally relaxed and un rushed, and followed by some reeeeeeally good food and wine at home with a film. It was so lovely, also, I really want to move to Back Lane. I hope you all had wonderful weekends!

Photos - mixture of lumix DLSR and iPhone 5 + vsco cam.

nice pins

Pinterest is my fave, it's always been my fave. But when I was studying I used it so much for design inspiration and research that it sort of just became a big collection of design homework and I had little time for pinning everything else. It's been nice since I graduated to just use it to pin, collect and share all things that I think are wonderful and beautiful. Here are some things which I've pinned recently that I thought I'd share with you all...

1 | Lovely hand painted type by The Weaver House.
2 | 'My Daughter Kanna' by Japanese photographer Toyokazu Nagano. I cannot get over how adorable and hilarious this girl is. I want one.
3 | Talking of Japan, Claire & Dave's photos of their holiday there have been making me want to go back so much, times a million.
4 | Love this photo by Monica Moraru.
5 | I may have seven zillion of them already, but this striped tee from Zara looks pretty perfect.
6 | Love this branding inspiration moodboard by Cassie of The Veda House.

Maybe I'll make this a regular feature? Obviously I'd have to start blogging a bit more often to make it regular, ha... but you never know! You can follow me on pinterest here.

cornwall

Last weekend Nick and I headed out of London, borrowed a car from home home and drove right down to West Cornwall. We went for a friends wedding on the Saturday, which was beautiful, but thought we'd make the most of it so booked to stay three nights. We stayed in an adorable fishing harbour village called Mousehole (pronounced Mauzel!) and managed to explore quite a bit of West Cornwall. It was a pretty perfect weekend away, and brilliant timing having just finished my course! I hadn't been that far down in Cornwall for years and years - it's ridiculously pretty, hard to believe that it's England at times! We explored Sennen Cove, Mousehole, Newlyn, St Levan, Treen and St Ives, had lots of pasties and seafood, and stayed in a lovely little B&B right on the harbour. I definitely recommend this little part of the world if you've not visited before! Photos taken on my Panasonic DSLR & my iPhone, edited with the vsco app. 

graduation

well i graduated from design school last night, this has honestly been the fastest year of all time! i'm mostly exhausted but it's so nice to be at home with no homework and deadlines looming over me. and it's such a huge relief to finally have gotten to this stage. my online portfolio is live, my business cards were handed out at the show last night, and i can finally relax a bit. i've already caught up on a lot of sleep today! and now i'm looking forward to blogging, reading, seeing all my friends and family and hopefully getting out of london a bit! but i'm also excited about working on some non-student briefs, and developing my portfolio more. i hope you like it! (the business cards were printed by moo - i used their printfinity service so i could have six different designs with my contact details on the back. they're really nice quality, and were printed super fast, so i definitely recommend them.)

right now | 3

two weeks today i will have graduated from my design course. it's a pretty terrifying prospect right now, but explains why things have been so quiet around here! over 200 unread posts in my bloglovin' haaa! however, it's also really exciting, and i cannot wait to get back to normality, catch up with all my friends and have loads of summer fun! so i'm currently just trying to stay motivated and get as much work as i possibly can done every single spare moment, but it's definitely not easy, especially in this heatwave. can't wait to be all done though and share my final portfolio with you guys! in other news, i finally got my vsco grid the other day, yeay! i have been a huge fan of vscocam for ages, pretty much all my instagrams are edited with it. but i love the style and design of the grid - so clean and simple and loads of white space, yes! you can check it out here, and i've put a link in my sidebar too. let me know if you have a vsco grid and i'll check it out!

photo taken in brighton where i was away with work this week.

designer | alyson fox

i recently discovered alyson fox, through the gorgeous collaboration she did with & other stories, which i LOVE. and i want to buy it all. it's mostly all gone online now, but trust me, it's all beautiful. as is all of her work - drawings, patterns, designs, jewellery and other collaborations... i feel like a bit of a wally because my big sister has had that print hanging in her flat for ages and i never bothered to find out who it was by! anyway, just a little bit of inspiration for your wednesday!

thanks all for your comments on my identity design! i'm giving myself the night off design work tonight, partly because i can barely keep my eyes open, partly because i want to catch up on wimbledon with a glass of wine. yes.

currently designing | my brand

it's the end of a very long day of designing for me. but just the first of four this long 'weekend'! i'm trying to get all my work up to a good standard for my portfolio, before i graduate in july. it still feels like i've got such a long way to go though! and i'm a bit terrified. a lot. one of the things i've been working on recently is my personal brand identity, which I've really enjoyed. so i thought i'd share some of my options with you. please let me know what you think! they're all much of a muchness, and i think i have a favourite. but there is a bit of tweaking to do, and i'd love to know your opinions before i finalise things. i've really loved using hand done typography throughout my course, so i imagine that's the route i'll take for this too.

i'm also starting to work on my online portfolio, i'm thinking of using squarespace, or maybe behance prosite. let me know if you have any recommendations? and i'll try to pop back here again soon :)

designer | erin ellis

recently discovered the gorgeous work of erin ellis, a designer and illustrator who specialises in hand lettering. i love love love hand lettering, and have used it myself for a few of my design pieces on my course. erin's style of hand lettering is super gorgeous and fun, i love the way she uses it with delicate illustration and rich photography. it works so so well! i'm currently working on my personal identity branding for my portfolio, hand lettering is a route i'm definitely thinking of going down... but we'll see!

found via miss moss.

right now | 2

apparently the flowers are super amazing this year because spring started so late. eh? but anyway, they are, aren't they?! and if you follow me on instagram you're probably already aware that i'm pretty obsessed with them at the moment. i took this snap in a cute flower shop in clifton, bristol when i was visiting for my sister's birthday. i cannot believe it's june tomorrow. JUNE?! say whaaaaat? less than two months until i graduate from design school, woah. I just wanted to pop by and apologise that my blog posts are a bit few and far between at the moment, and also that i've been rubbish at visiting your blogs! this may not change for a while i'm afraid. my social life is going out the window now as it's time to concentrate on my portfolio - can't wait to share it with you in a few weeks time!

i'll still be posting on instagram, twitter & my tumblr from time to time so you can still catch me there. oh, and thanks for the lovely comments on hello it's you, so glad you all like it!

hello it's you

just popping by to introduce a new collaboration with my lovely friend claire - a tumblr called hello it's you, filled with photographs by us. a new colour every fortnight... i hope you like it! as any of my friends will tell you, i looove taking photos, as does claire. so this is quite a fun little project, and a very easy way to stay creative day to day. claire and i met on our first day of uni and we lived together for several years in nottingham and then london. but now she lives in sydney, which sucks, so this is a nice little way to stay in touch a bit more too. yeay!

you can check out claire's blog here, where she posts beautiful photos, cute diys and wonderful stop motion videos.