Peace

Just took a few photo's of my favourite necklaces and a little bookmark I bought years ago. Hope you like them!

Rome

Rome was my favourite!! It was amazing. One complaint though - too many tourists. I know that's a bit of a contradiction but it was full of them! Spanish steps were packed! The amount of people trying to sell roses to you 'beautiful women' is very scary and intimidating. However at the bottom of the Spanish Steps is the designer stores. Very exciting. We went into the Luis Vuitton shop. It was quite small and pretty busy. I loved looking at the bags. I have wanted one for yeeaars! Haven't quite got the courage to part with that much money, especially on a bag, but they really are beautiful. The displays in the windows were too crazy or anything, just quite simple. Just round the corner there were men selling knock off designer bags, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and others, although I'm pretty sure some of them were genuine. Annnyyyway, Rome was odd because all the major points were just in the street, as if it were a normal building. The Colosseum was just beside a main road and a train station. Just like it was no big deal. The Colosseum was amazing. I just kept imagining great gladiator fights, as soon as we got home we watched Gladiator! (Such a good movie) There was so much history there, 'the Great Roman Empire' It was very cool. We also visited the Vatican which was beautiful. The Sistine Chapel wasn't as impressive as I thought it was going to be. We walked around a huge museum with about a million paintings, all impressive just pretty much the same, then we got to the Sistine Chapel, I grew up as a Catholic so I have a rough idea of what a Chapel should be like, but this wasn't it. I was a big room, with paintings all over, and a huge herd of tourists. The paintings of course, amazing however it was ruined with the amount of people. There was no altar no decorative jewels etc. Just a room. Ruined the ambiance and I felt I couldn't appreciate it properly. St Peter's square was beautiful, there was a big poster with the late Blessed Pope John Paul II. It was really beautiful and peaceful.

Here are some photos! Enjoy!

Florence

Florence was beautiful. When we first arrived it was 5am in the morning. We got a taxi to the hostel and the city was empty. It was soo still and peaceful. There was not a soul in sight. We promised to get up early another day to see it all again but we never did. All the walking in the scorching heat meant we were pretty tired. The hostel where we stayed was close to the centre so it was easy to get around. Florence is also pretty small so we were able to walk. We visited Campanile, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio and a few museum and other places. We of course visited the Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses Michaelangelo's statue of David. I didn't have high hopes for this because we had saw sooo many sculptures all over Florence. We had already saw 2 replica's of 'David' in the city. But the original blew me away. It was the epitomy of strenghth, but not like the other warrior sculptures where there would be some sort of slain animal or human, it was dignified and relaxed. There was so much detail in it and it was unbelievable to think someone had actually carved this and under the age of 30. I wasn't able to get photo's as the museum guards were wondering about and I was too scared to try. I did get photo's of the replica however I don't think it's as impressive.

We saw so much I lost track of everything. One night we visited the Ponte Vecchio which was lit up beautifully and we sat and listened to a street performer playing the acoustic guitar. It was really mesmirising. There's also a tradition in Florence in which people attach padlocks onto railings throughout the city. We saw this in Venice and Rome but it was most prominant in Florence. These are known as 'love padlocks' which mean you attack the padlock and throw away the key. I thought this was a sweet tradition and we had a padlock so we attacked it to railings on the Ponte Vecchio, just a little reminder that we were there.

Duomo

Florence at Night

Love Padlocks

Ponte Vecchio

Statue of David - Replica

Venice

Not posted anything for quite a while. I've been kind of busy. So I got back from Italy about a month ago now. Me and my boyfriend visited Florence, Venice and Rome. It was amazing. Quite stressfull at the time, and overwhelming, especially whe there is a bomb scare at the airport your supposed to be landing at so you get diverted to somewhere you can even find on the map, then your boyfriend loses his wallet in the most confusing place to get around (Venice), then we temporarily lose our passports, then the boyfriend (again) leaves his passport at the hostel when we're on our way to Rome, then leaves his bag at the bus stop when we're on the bus to the train station! I think it's fair to say I am now in charge of everything! He is trusted with nothing!

Apart from that it was a good trip! 

I could post about a million pictures from the trip but I don't want to bore you too much so I picked my favs. In Venice almost every second shop sells the Venetian masks. Some cheapy plain ones others just magnificant. Some of the detail and intricasy on the masks was just amazing. I bought a plain one that I'm going to decorate myself. Don't know if it'll turn out quite as good.

We visited the obvious tourist points, Piazza San Marco and the Campanile, Basilica di San Marco, Rialto and Ponte di Rialto and a few museums. We got lost constantly. We walked about Venice for hours without finding anything, we wandered back alleys and down little streets which just led to part of the canal. I think it would pretty cool to live in Venice, it's like it's own little world. We obvisouly saw the famous gondolas but we didn't go on one. Faaar too expensive, we did go on a little one, that just took across the grand canal. It cost 1euro so that done us fine. Here's some photos of Venice I took that I thought you might enjoy! 

Little tip - if anyone does go to Venice you can get on the water buses for free! It says you have to pay but no one actually checks if you've paid. We did not realise this until we were leaving Venice! It would have made the trip much more enjoyable!

The guy ruined the picture a bit by being on his phone!!!

View from the Rialto Bridge

Basilica di San Marco

Rialto Bridge

Menswear Illustration - Richard Haines

After researching illustrations for menswear I came across Richard Haines and his blog 'What I Saw Today'. He lives in New York and basically draws people in the street who look interesting. I love his drawing style, it's sketchy and messy but creates a nice effect. I feel it captures the mood of New York, as laid back cool but also busy. I'm still working on my illustration skills however I'm finding the male body quite a challenge. I'll possibly post some of my drawings later on. See how they go.

CANDID

Here's a couple photoshoots from our magazine CANDID. The photoshoot with the white mask is in was influenced by the surreal shirts we made in the first semester. The second photoshoot was done in the Binniemyre B & B in Galashiels. It was really quirky and cute but hidden behind trees and it was up a small hill.

CANDID

One of the most challenging projects of the year has to be Fashion Communications. For this subject we had to produce a magazine. We had a basic brief but were generally free to include whatever we saw fit. My groups magazine was CANDID. The theme of it was hidden eccentricity in Galashiels. At first we dreaded making a magazine about Galashiels. How on earth are we supposed to make Galashiels seem interesting. But after researching and talking to a few locals it's not as bad as first seem. Our front cover is my favourite image from the whole magazine. It's bold, quirky and in your face. I do honestly think if that were on a shelf in the shop someone would as least pick it up and wonder what it was.