Samantha Booth Textile Design : February 2013

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Surface Design for Gift

Our third project of second year is Surface Design for Gift which is a live brief with Hallmark. At the end of the project one student will be chosen to receive a two week work placement at Hallmark and this would be a wonderful experience!

We have to produce a range of gift designs including cards, wrapping papers and tags. I have chosen to focus my theme on travel and have attached some photos of my related drawings.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Purchases!

Whilst on my placement in London, I went a little crazy with shopping!

Here are some of my purchases, as you can see I'm a sucker for shoes!!

1. Miss Selfridge - £65
2. Topshop - £32
3. Zara - £49.99
4. Zara - £39.99
5. Miss Selfridge - £39

Wednesday 20 February 2013

H&M

I work part time at my local H&M store and I love it! I think H&M is a great company to work for and has great career developments and discounts. I have also met many life long friends since working here.

H&M is ranked the second largest global clothing retailer in the world so it is a pretty impressive comopany! As well as being a good company to work for H&M also offers lots of great fashion pieces at competative and affordable prices!

Alot of things I see in H&M I see very similar stuff in Topshop and River Island etc for double or triple the price so it is worth checking H&M first.

At work I see the best pieces first hand so sometimes my bank balance hates my job!

Here's some recent H&M purchases.

1. Knit Jumper £24.99
2. Black Top £19.99
3. White Top £19.99
4. Jacket £34.99

I will warn you, you may see many more H&M purchases related posts!

Tea Cup Candles

I have a few birthday's coming up and always like to get super special presents for my friends. I went to a vintage fair in Leeds last year and saw these gorgeous vintage tea cup candles and ever since I've wanted to have a go at making them!

They didn't look that hard to make and I thought they would be such cute birthday presents so off I went to some charity shops to try and pick up some lovely vintage tea sets.

Here's my finished product!! What do you think?

Below is a little tutorial of my tea cup candles.
I ordered some 1kg wax flakes, wax dye, wicks, and glue spots off ebay for about five pounds. 1kg of wax is enough to make about ten tea cup candles.

So I got a pan with boiling water and put an old glass jug inside the pan. To caluculate how much wax you need, wiegh the tea cup and then filling with water and weighing again. The difference between the weights is the approximate ammount of wax you need. If you are adding fragrance, add just before pouring the wax into your tea cups.

Pour the correct ammount of wax flakes you need into the glass jug. Also put in the wax dye if you are wanting to make coloured wax. I added a bubblegum pink dye into mine. This should take about ten to fiveteen minutes to melt but never leave it unattended as it can be very flamable at a certain temperature. Keep the boiling water on a low heat, it is pretty easy to melt wax.

While the wax is melting cut your wick to length allowing enough wick to protrude from the top of the tea cup. Push the wix through the sustainer (Round silver disc) and press a glue dot and stick to the bottom of the teacup. I also used a bit of all purpose glue to stick it down as it worked better than just the glue dot.

Keep stirring the wax using an old utensil or in my case I used wooden skewers that I could just throw away afterwards. Using the skewers i placed these across the top of the tea cups to keep the wick central and in place for when pouring the wax in.

Once all the wax flakes are completely melted carefully take the jug out of the pan and slowly pour the melted wax into your tea cup. Leave these to set. I thought they would take ages but mine took about half an hour to an hour!

Decoration! Now you can leave your candles as they are or you can add almost anything to them. I decided to add some sequins and glitter! Even if the wax is completed set, don't worry just get your hair dryer out and hair dryer the top of the candle until the wax is melted a bit. Then add glitter and sequins. It is better to add sequins as this stage as they won't sink to the bottom.

And the finished products! What do you think?!
All photographs my own.

Monday 18 February 2013

Happy Anniversairy!

I hope you all had a nice Valentine's day, I know some people love it and others hate it!

It was our anniversary at the end of January and this is a little something I made for my boyfriend, a photo album. He got me one for my birthday last year and it's kind of our tradition to fill one for every year we are together.

I bought this sketchbook from paperchase for £8.00. I also bought a heart stamp from their valentines range too to decorate the album.

I absolutely love photo corners, they are so simple and easy to use but look so lovely and vintage! So I attach all my photographs with corners, you can get them really cheap off Ebay!

I started the album off for him by including one of our first photos took together.

I also treated him to a Barbour shirt! (I am a keeper!)

I hope he likes the gifts!

Saturday 16 February 2013

A Little Bit More About Me

You can find me on Twitter at booth_samantha.

You can find me on Instagram at sammybooth_

Friday 15 February 2013

Work Placement at Baxter Fawcett

I have recently completed a two week work placement at the fashion textile studio, Baxter Fawcett.

I had such a good time and learnt alot working alongside the designers including how the company works. I even had some of my designs printed and if they sell I will receive comission!

During my time I assisted the designers with drawing, heat pressing, setting up and helping on a trade show, running errands and many other jobs.

Here are a few of my photos from my time in London.

I also did a lot of tourist-y things including Portobello Market, Borough Market, The National History Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Spitalfields Market, Columbia Road Flower Market and Brick Lane Market.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Second Year of Textiles and Surface Design

Back in September 2012 we started second year. Our first project was a live brief with a company called Trend Bible. The module was called Surface Design for Interiors and I really enjoyed this project even though I do prefer fashion. I completed the project with a first which I was so pleased about! I was very fortunate to be picked to have not one but two of my prints published in their latest published book. Unfortunately we could not post any images of our work for this project.

Our next project of second year was Surface Design for fashion, I chose the trend, Sublime Nature from the trend website WGSN, here are a few of my photographs from this project.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Las Vegas and Los Angeles

Over the summer of 2012 I went on vacation to Las Vegas and California for two weeks. It was amazing, Vegas is so crazy and LA is just so beautiful. Here are some of my photo i took.

Monday 11 February 2013

Indigo, Paris

Last year I went to my first trade show with university. It's called Indigo and it's held in Paris, France. As i mentioned in my earlier post I was lucky enough to have two of my designs picked to be exhibited here. I loved Paris, it is such a beautiful city and here are some of my photos.

Saturday 9 February 2013

First Year on Textiles and Surface Design

I wanted to recap what I did in my first year of university.

My main aim for this blog is for myself to keep a visual diary.

My first module was called Visual Communication, a seven week project consiting of drawing sheets and practing my drawing techniques.

My second module was called Print and Embellished Surfaces, where we used our drawings from our first module and converted them into our own style of embroidery and print. During this project I had two designs chosen to be exhibited at the Indigo trade show in Paris.

My third module was Introductory Surface Design which included fashion fabrics and furnishing fabrics for interiors.

Friday 8 February 2013

Welcome to My Blog

Hi,

I'm Sammy and I am a second year student studying Textiles and Surface Design at Cleveland College of Art and Design.

This blog is carried on from my old one at www.samanthatextiles.tumblr.com

I have a passion for all things textiles, print and fashion and this blog is to showcase my work, my inspirations and my purchases.

Thank!

S x