Beci Orpin

I received Beci Orpin's book 'Find & Keep' in the mail last week and I am so in love with it.  I keep poring over the pages, it is so beautifully designed and the projects are so inspiring.  I thought it would just be a projects book (albeit a really awesome projects book) but it is actually much, much more.  Beci goes through some of her creative process and talks about how to get inspiration.  Crafternoons, here we come.

Buy here or here.  Also check out this lovely feature in The Design Files.

Flexigon

I saw this video on Creative Mornings from Kelli Anderson (via Emma Dime) and was throughly inspired by her work.  In particular I liked her flexigon Christmas Card that she created.  I love paper and paper designs and all things folding and origami so flexigons really intrigue me.  I would love to have a go at creating one and found a couple of how-tos here and here.  Another one to add to my project list.



Image from Mathemagic.

Knitting

I am trying to incorporate more down-time into my weeknights and weekend in an effort to learn how to relax (instead of working continuously).  So, for the last 2 or 3 weeks, I've been knitting.  I haven't used any patterns, have just been trying out different stitches/stitch combinations.  I am having a lot of fun with circular needles, in various sizes, and have created 2 cowls and a necklace.  I chose knitting as a (hopefully) less stressful option to sewing (which seems to start out fun but quickly diminishes into unpicking and re-sewing over and over again). Even though I have unravelled and re-knitted many sections, I think it's still the less stressful option.

I'm not particularly happy with the blue one, my first effort, so think I will probably un-pick and re-do.  

The predominantly grey one I started four time, and each time had to unravel approx. 8-10 rows and start all over again in my effort to count to two.  I'm glad I did though, the combination of baby cable, cable and moss stitch has resulted in a really nice finish which is so soft (baby alpaca grey and wool/mohair light khaki).

My most recent effort is a woolen necklace.  I'm not convinced the smaller bronze/grey circle doesn't look tacky but I think with some more experimentation, the necklaces could work out quite well.

Web Design & HTML5

Last semester I did a great course in Web Design through the Grenadi School of Design in Melbourne.  I come from a print background and web was way out of my comfort field, but now, I love it!  Having a great teacher (Suzanne from Bluebicycle Designs) makes all the difference, her online lectures made things like html and css super easy to understand and we had a lot of fun along the way! I've now created a few different websites from scratch, and I'm really excited to create more.

This morning, on my week-daily browse of clients from hell, I came across this post about free-pitching (also this this blog from AGDA about Leo Burnett) which led me to a company called Topic Simple.  And there, I found this great little animation explaining what exactly is HTML5.  Enjoy!

My Issuu Demo Page

I'm in the process of putting together a publication at work and thought we might use Issuu to publish it online.  So, I went ahead and created a dummy magazine and published it to see how easy the process was and it really was very easy.  You upload the file, refine a couple of settings if you want, and they give you the code to embed on your own site.  Yes, there are ads down the side but it is nice to have a product that is easy to use and works first time!

Open publication - Free publishing - More applicable