This should never have been allowed to happen...

Madonna is no model. FACT.

Jazzing up my mirror.

I needed a full length mirror for my new room, and for £6 I managed to get this one from Ikea. Plain and simple. Rectangular, wooden frame, distinctly average...

One tine of vanilla emulsion, one glue gun, several hundred buttons and a handful of third degree burns later, I had managed to whip this little number up...

Since the only form of camera I have is my phone the photos are pretty appauling but you get the jist. It looks ace in the flesh, a very productive way to spend my afternoon!

I also got a hairbraid...

... because I am a child.

You know you're growing up when you go on holiday and spend your money on stationery...

I'm a sucker for a fancy book...

I love the handmade dried-flower paper used on this notebook, the texture is beautiful, I just find myself stroking the cover. The paper used for the leaves isn't too bad either, thick like watercolour paper but with a sugar-paper-like fibres, I can't imagine it holding pencil very well, I might have a smudge-fest on my hands but I'm sure I'll survive.

As beautiful as it is though, my 17 year old brother who has not a creative bone in his body could knock up something of better quality with his gangly shovel hands. The finish really is appauling. Oh well.

Unfortunatley it's the same story for this jazzy little number. This one's compiled of fabric swatches and scraps of ribbon and to be perfectly honest looks battered and abused but I think that's part of the charm. Again, the standard is poor and if I handed something of this quality in as part of my portfolio I would hang my head in shame. The pages are that of a blank diary, but the novel thing about this book is that once you've used up all the leaves you can remove the insert of pages and replace it with a fresh notebook, clever.

THIS one however... my oh my... this is something special! As a bookmaker this is the ultimate inspiration. Both the materials and the quality are immaculate, and as glaringly obvious as it should have been I have been making books with the traditional materials with which I was taught, for some obscure reason it never occurred to me to back the covers with fabric.. I'm kicking myself.

Holidays!

I haven't been able to update my blog for a few weeks due to me not being in the country or having a laptop readily available! So I've got quite a lot to catch up on I reckon...

I spent 9 days in Portugal, in my friend's apartment in Albufeira Old Town. It was stunning, not just the weather but the entire place was totally picturesque, and because it was away from the New Town there were very few English groups there. It pains me how closed minded we are in our country, I regret dropping French at A-Level. I'm going to have a browse for the price of French tuition outside of uni this year, I think languages are the best way to broaden someone's horizons.