Kin launch

Thats right! I'm back! Within a week - it must be a full moon!
Just a quick post to say that I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the recent Kin launch event at the Camp & Furnace the Thursday just gone.

Here are just some of my photo spoils:

It was a pretty hip party!

This event was to celebrate the re-launch of the liverpool company Kin's brand spanking new look and website: kin2kin.co.uk
The website was designed by the clever new media people in my office at Splinter Design, and they've done an amazing job! They also organised a lot of aspects of the launch party, such as the groovy badges, lanyards, drink tokens - even massive rhubarb & custard flavoured rock!

So if you haven't already, and you're a creative in Liverpool or are looking for a creative FROM Liverpool then get your faces over to kin2kin.co.uk!
I'm on there, and I'm following a bunch of cool people who you could follow too! So go have a look! Nafftastic on kin2kin

Be Hospitable - Opening night!

Heeeeeeeeey! 'Be Hospitable' opened last night! And it was awesome! Do you want to see some photos? HERES SOME PHOTOS!!

The swanky flyer for the show:

I really liked this wall of postcards - were guests were encouraged to take one for themselves. A lovely idea and a nice selection of designs to choose from! (Which are all themed on hospitality).
(Psst psst, me and my boyfriend slightly helped in putting up the postcards a few days before the show! FACT!)

One of my favourite pieces! Its an interpretation of a popular dish in Germany called Currywurst - and its made out of towels! Its pretty cool, and the chips look so tasty!

The word 'welcome' created out of pins.

A piece done by a suave illustrator whom I've had the pleasure to work with at Splinter Design called Stephen Chan! You can check out more of his amazing work at his website OVER HERE!

Heres a collection of some of the work - and thats mine peeping out at the bottom of the photo!

Wa-hey! There it is! The second piece I've created themed around the Channel 4 show 'Come Dine with Me'! (You may have seen my first piece a couple of years ago which was for my boyfriend's birthday) In this piece I was trying to explore rudeness/a guest's true opinion of their host's hospitality; and I think 'Come Dine with Me' shows a great cross section of what a mix of people are thinking... so I thought, 'Yeah, I'll do that!' So it was done!

This was another of my favourite pieces in the show - it was a piece of actual collage and it was made by a lady named Amy Husband. She illustrates children's books and I remember seeing her work about 5 or so years ago at the JMU degree show (it was this particular degree show that swayed me to choose JMU as my uni as I loved all the work I saw there!) and you can see her work by heading on over to her website: Amy Husband's website.

Another great piece by one of the exhibition's curators (one of the members of The Souvenir Collective) Marie Jones! Guests were encouraged to send some Fan or Hate mail to a loved one (using the unique postcards provided) Who doesn't love some voluntary interactivity at an exhibition? Hmmm? Now go look at Marie's work at Kochi Kochi!

Heres some coolio wall art that was created especially for the show, made by faunagraphic

And heres just a few more awesome pieces that you can see if you head on down to the show!

See? See? Its awesome! I thoroughly recommend that you go see it! Right now! Or when you've got time or whatever!
'Be Hospitable' is on at the Camp and Furnace (which is located on Greenland Street, about a 15 minute walk from Liverpool city centre) and its going to be on until the 29th September, so go get your bum bums up there!
(The Camp and Furnace is a very nice bar/exhibition space where you can get a drink and choose from a range of very suave meals to put your face into as well!)
Now fly my pretties! Fly!

The first story I wrote...

Its Sunday, I've just baked two batches of biscuits and I'm watching Come Dine with Me - so its time for another blog post! Whoopee!

I clambered into the attic yesterday to root out a story I wrote when I was a wee child (about 9 years old). It is an account of a family holiday to Tenerife, and I thought I would share some of the amazing illustrations accompanying the one-page chapters of my book! So here goes…

My brother was kind enough to bind my book for me and make a snazzy front cover!

Its funny looking back at drawings you did as a kid, I always thought I did perfect colouring in and that I was being good drawing each individual finger on person's hand!

And this is how I saw myself as a kid! Wowzer!

And here is a couple of extra pictures I found - the following was supposed to be in the style of those painted plates you can get (to go on your wall and such) and it was of one of our pet dogs! (I loved them to pieces!)

I also went to a pretty religious school, and we got a piece of work once were we had to illustrate each stage of Jesus' crucifixion (gritty stuff!), so heres a couple of my interpretations (I particularly remember feeling like I was experiencing an "art funk" when doing this piece of work!)

So there we have it! Whats especially strange is if you look at any bits of my hand writing in any of these pictures I can say that it has not changed much now that I'm 25! Eeep!

To end the blog post here is just a couple of pluggy plugs! Splinter Design (the place I work!) has designed the new Kin website - a place for the creative people of Liverpool to post their work, be discovered by clients and generally just mingle and meet other like-minded people! And the website was officially launched this week just gone, and I highly recommend that people go check it out cause its pretty darn awesome! Go here to see it and sign up!---> kin2kin.co.uk

And also, the 'Be Hospitable' exhibition I have been mentioning the past few blog posts is approaching ever nearer and opens this Thursday at 5.30pm at the Camp & Furnace! And all are welcome to come and enjoy it! Woo! So come on down on Thursday to see some amazing work for the Liverpool Biennial. You can check out the 'Be Hospitable' website here: Be Hospitable

Sneak Peak

Just a quick post to show a sneak peek of what I've made for The Souvenir Collective's 'Be Hospitable' event!

I employed a similar technique to what I used when making a comic for Off Life a couple of weeks ago!

I'm really excited about the event! There looks to be many awesome graphic artists there, I tell ya! You can take a look at some artist highlights by going to the The Souvenir Collective's website! I'm certainly going to be taking a thorough gander!

But yes! The launch party for the event is Thursday 20th September at about 5.30pm at the Camp & Furnace (which is on Greenland Street - about a 10 minute walk from Liverpool City Centre!) and anyone and everyone is welcome to pop on in! May I add that the Camp & Furnace is a pretty hip and coolio bar/eating place that has its own LOG FIRE! Now if thats not enough to entice you down there, I don't know what is!

Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook

Happy 1st September! I bought this thoroughly awesome book a couple of months ago called 'The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook' - you can drool at the pages on Amazon here: The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook on Amazon. (And I dare you not to buy it!)

Apart from there being ten billion amazing recipes in it (that teach you to make egg-free cookie dough - so you can chomp on it all day long!), I thought the design of it was pretty nice too, hence I'm here to share my photos!

This cookbook was composed by Lindsay Landis and designed by a company called Sugar (making them pretty difficult to hunt down on the internet!)

I think the photography is pretty amazing for this book and gets my saliva flowing at an exponential rate. I think the light pastel colours work well and I like the use of hand-written type used with the more sophisticated typeface used in the photo above. The layout is simple but not boring (thanks to the full page photos mixed with the typefaces and colours.)

One of the first recipes I tried out of the book was one of Landis' most popular - Cookie Dough Truffles! And man oh man, they are ADDICTIVE!

I made some milk chocolate truffles with regular cookie dough in them and then some white chocolate truffles with a chocolate cookie dough in them. My personal favourite was the white chocolate truffles but thats cause I love a bit of white chocolate!
They were easy and quick to make - the only trouble I had was coating the dough balls in chocolate and thats cause I didn't have the proper equipment to do it! The instructions were easy to follow - the measurements use American quantities (such as a cup of sugar etc); but there is a helpful conversion of measurements at the front of the book to help those who want to be more specific!

All in all, lovely design and delectable recipes - definitely a great present for a friend or for yourself!

….And now I'm hungry...