Vane Tempest sessions on a boat!

This Monday we're holding our most exclusive Vane tempest Sessions on the Prince Bishop, a boat that sails up and down the River Wear. During the day the boat normally transports tourists to see the sights of the city from the river but at night it is hired out for birthdays, barbecues and this time round for a gig!

As this is the last Vane Tempests Sessions of the year, it required a nice new set of publicity. I decided to embrace fully the predictable nautical theme but put my own stamp onto it by hand drawing rope and a life belt in the same style as previous flyers and posters. I especially like the coiled up rope, it was simple to do yet effective I think.

I originally only had colour on the blue and white stripes (incidentally, they're from a top of mine that I scanned!) but it looked a bit dull. I tried to make the life belt red in sections but it didn't look good so it ended up being font that was highlighted.

This poster was rather hastily put together this evening because we decided it would be good to have something bigger to catch peoples eye. I think it does the job okay.

I'm looking forward to this event on Monday night. The music is promising to be of a really high standard. Sir Paul McCartney is a fan of Thomas J. Speight which is a promising start and Rams' Pocket Radio is currently on tour with Foy Vance. If you've never made it along to Vane Tempest Sessions before and you don't have plans yet for next week than this isn't one to miss! Even if you have been before, this is looking like an evening on a par with Dry the River and Flight Brigade.

See you on Monday!

the June Project report video: a creative collaboration

A couple of months I was asked if I was interested in getting involved in making the June Project report video 2011. (If you don't know what the June Project is then check out the Kings Church Durham website.) Chris, who oversees art and media at the church, had seen the video I made for Durham University a little while back and wanted me on board. So of course I said yes!

Getting behind the camera. A first for me but so much fun!

Early morning filming. Free coffee for commuters.

I worked with another guy (confusingly also named Chris!) on this project and it was really fun to bounce different creative ideas off each other. I came up with the idea of using a map that we'd pan over during the video so that people could see where events were going on and Chris then suggested dropping polaroids onto the map that videos could spring up out of.

Original hand drawn map of Durham

We did the majority of the filming between the two of us although we did rope in some helpers when our timetable got too crammed! And we edited the footage together along with the very talented Andy Dykes who did all the effects on the map. 

As the June Project ran until Saturday and we needed the video to show in church on the Sunday morning, we had to do an all-nighter, working from about 11pm until 8am but it was worth it and we were very happy with the end result.

You can also see it on YouTube which may be a bit better quality.

Hope you like it. I'll keep you posted on the next Kings Church Durham video project: the June Project documentary!

my day job

A couple of months ago I started a new job at A Way Out in Stockton. It's an amazing charity that really does saves people's lives. I'd fully recommend you to check out the website and the work the charity does.

My job title is Fundraising Admin Assistant but I'm not entirely sure whether that gives the right impression of what I do. It sounds quite office based and a bit boring (at least that's what I thought when I was offered the role)! But in fact I love my job! It does have a more admin side to e.g. writing thank you letters to people who have donated money but that's a nice thing to do anyway. 

Our first big event - a jumble sale with a twist

But the vast majority of my job is to do with event planning. I'm one of two staff members in the brand new Fundraising department which means that we get to be really creative. All the work we've been doing so far has been centred around local, community events. These range from gig nights to fashion shows, golfing days to glamorous balls. So on a 'normal' day I might be pricing up Gucci boots for a designer jumble sale before heading out to a country estate to negotiate prices on a golfing day, then creating a running order for a gig and maybe designing a poster to advertise it!

I've blurred out the address as it was somebody's home

The poster design aspect of my job isn't one that I anticipated being allowed to devote so much time to. But good publicity is essential to promoting an event and so spending a bit of extra time making it look eye-catching and attractive is worthwhile. I've really enjoyed getting some more practice in graphic design and I really like thinking about the target markets for different events and trying to think of something that will really appeal to them.

Our under 18s warm-up to the festival season

I consider myself lucky to have such a fun job (even if I still have to write risk assessments and keep budgets)!

a springtime cosy for rainy days

I made this tea cosy several months ago but it's taken me this long to get round to posting about it. It was one of the first projects I wanted to do when I brought my sewing machine up to Durham at the beginning of the year because it would a) not take too long to make, b) not require me to buy much fabric as it's nearly all recycled bits and pieces and c) be useful - we didn't have one in our house before!

I bought the green background but it was only a fat 1/4 and came very cheap from the quilting stall (which I frequent regularly) in Durham's indoor market. Although you can't see it in these photos, the tea cosy is lined with some checked material which was left over from a hat my Mum made me when I was about six. The floral Liberty fabric is the same that I used for my pincushion and the pink printed material was brought back from Ghana by my aunt and uncle when they lived there about fifteen years ago. And as you can see, my Mum found something useful to do with it back then but I've somewhat outgrown the trousers and top now.

I designed the cosy myself and made a paper pattern for it which I've hung onto in case I make one of these for a friend. It did become quite fiddly sewing on the letters and birds though as I wanted the stitching to be invisible so it was done be hand and had to be quite precise. I also spent longer than I needed quilting the background, pinning and tacking it first to get the distances and angles right before realising that I had a quilting foot on my machine which would do all that for me!

Dress to skirt in 10 easy (or not so easy) steps!

I saw this dress about four years ago in a sale and loved the material so I bought it even though it was a size too small. I've never really got a lot of use out of it though because it wasn't very comfortable to wear. So this year I made the practical decision to transform it into a skirt. Luckily for me, my Mum who is great at dressmaking wrote out a nicely numbered set of instructions, which I followed (nearly) to the letter.

I had to buy a zip but the buttons I pinched from an old t-shirt that wore out. The most time consuming thing was definitely lining up the fabric because every time I thought I'd got it right and the pattern matched up, it would slide around and end up wonky again! But I'm happy with the end result and it's a pretty popular wardrobe choice for work these days...

Last-Minute and on a Shoe-String

We're running Vane Tempest Sessions for one final night this year and decided fairly last minute that it would be a good idea to have a poster to remind students we were back after the Easter holidays. However there wasn't any time to get posters printed in colour so I went for the black and white approach to keep costs down when printing from home. Normally publicity takes me a few hours to get looking just right but this one took about 15 minutes!

Recycled Cushions

I'm not always very good at throwing things away even if it's something I never use but I love to recycle. Clothing and other bits of material are especially good for this.

This green cushion was made out of a t-shirt that I'd had a little while and really loved but the style wasn't very good so I just didn't wear it much. It was fun to make (although not as easy as I'd expected it to be) and only took a few hours. I'd anticipated using the original side seams but they weren't straight enough so I ended up cutting a square each from the front and back and then sewing them together. I did however use the t-shirt's bottom hem on the back opening which gave a neat edge that I didn't have to do myself!

I also made the purple cushion from some old felt I had and another old t-shirt, but I can't claim originality for the idea because I found it on a Google image search!