Meet Sakura - revisiting an old friend and tackling infills

Meet Sakura

A business assosiate of Rob's (husband), a lovely lady who helped me with some HR advice last year, commissioned me to produce a papercut version of a digital illustration that I made for Heidi's nursery in 2013.

The design never considered the closed paths that papercutting requires so there was a wee bit of adjustment but overall I am very happy with the cut. In fact it's my new favourite. I was always fond of the illustration but it was a little crude, I am not master of Illustrator and my formal graphic design training was minimal.

I cut the design from a piece of 160gsm smooth white card, as a negative cut, removing all sections of detail rather than cutting away the negative space. The blossoms were infilled with pink 120gsm paper and rather than struggling with my cocktail stick and wanderlustful superglue, I secured the infills with slivers of masking tape. (thank you to Paper Panda and By Charlie's Hand for that revelation! and seriously join the Papercutting groups on facebook, an education and social life rolled into one!)

I then superglued my firm favourite, kraft card, to the back of the piece, dotting superglue over the masking tape slivers too for extra security.

Client wants to piece mounted so her friend can chose her own frame.

Here are the pictures of the original print, through to completed conversion into cut. Links to papercutting groups at the bottom.

Sakura Digital Illustration available as print only £4

Negative cut Sakura - cherry blossom

Infills, secured with masking tape 

Detail of negative cuts

Papercutting Groups on Facebooks: Advice, support, inspiration, chats, hints and tips.

Papercutting Hideaway,

Papercutting and Paper Craft, Trainee - Expert,

We Love Papercutting

Mothering Sunday

I am back in the studio, OK so I am back in my front room that has my mac, books, paper and paints in. After 4 years of study, designing to spec and meeting briefs and targets, it is rather enjoyable to be practicing and learning at my own pace.

This month's task that I have beset myself is to use Illustrator with confidence.  I have used it since I was 19 but have never mastered it, simply using the tools I felt comfortable with and fudging around with the pen tool.

So I am currently practicing my bezier curves and getting to grips with the pathfinder options, knocking out paths, making compound paths, clipping masks etc.

I have been practicing these methods on a design for a Mothers Day card. Terribly basic, but by applying the theory from Ted Alspach's Illustrator CS4 for Dummies (I know! I bought it a long time ago and can't bring myself to by a newer version having never read it) with the hands on practice, I hope to get to grips with the paths and all that they will allow me to do.

Final Assignment - Group Project 2013

This is our final project and I worked with the most wonderful people, Famida, Rebecca and Judith.

The blog at finproductions.co.uk shows all the work that was created but I just wanted to post some of the highlights here to showcase my contributions.

We produced a web resource for an imaginary client Wedding Proposal.  This was a website created in Flash with advice, tutorials and supplier databases for the novice wedding planner, Brides and Grooms to be.

I had taken on the role of Production Manager, so was responsible for the planning and ensuring all aspects of the brief were covered and on schedule.  I wrote much of the body of the presentation and it's supporting material.  I also took on graphic design work, wedding photography including photo editing, video production/post production motion graphics, blogging and social networking.

Rebecca was our Web Developer, Famida Lead Graphic Designer and Judith Marketing Manager.  As we were a small team we took on other roles too helping produce all the research material and visible content for the site.

The site is no longer live due to hosting costs, something I may seek to address as I think it would be worth keeping up for the near future.

Here are some examples of the work I did.

Click for link to Pitch Document

Click for link to Working Product Presentation Handout

Click for link to Final Presentation Handout and Video

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

Stationery Design

Advertisment Design

Advertisment Design

Advertisment Design

Wedding Photography

Initial design for the itunes profile

Wedding Photography

Producing the company blog/ production diary.  Customised with own designs and HTML/CSS

Stationery Design

Wedding Photography

Finding and shortlisting colour schemes for the corporate branding

Design the corporate branding for our production team

Created full suite for the corporate branding

Creating the motion graphics titles and straps in After Effects

Creating the handouts in InDesign

Initial designs for the appearance of the thumbnails in thw website/ app

Wedding Photography

Forecast and managed the project scheduke, taking details from the brief and setting manageable deadlines

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

Created icons for social network sites

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

Designed assets for itunes submission

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

I filmed and edited a video tutorial

Mock up of how app would look in mobile device

Wedding Photography

Research for Supplier Database

Mood Boards

Wedding Photography

Wedding Photography

I supplied full access to my wedding photography

For my research paper I chose to answer the question "Why Blog?"


Overall grades: Project evaluation - 77, Project Implementation - 72, Project Research and Plan - 75