Monday 26 December 2011

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Postage Stamps

I designed my own set of postage stamps.

Just so you know, One JAE equals one square of chocolate!

























These are all being stuck on my Christmas cards :)

I handed all my uni work in today, a big relief to finally get it all done.
It's now time to relax for Christmas and get ready for the second semester in January.



Love
Julie
xx

Friday 9 December 2011

Looming Deadlines, IBS and Room Decorating

It's that time of year again, Christmas is coming, those uni deadlines are looming and of course I have not posted for a while!

I have been working away on my uni projects, along with a couple of other little projects aside from uni. I can't wait to post some of these up once I have handed all my work in!
In the mean time, I thought I would take a little break from my work to update you a little on what's going on in my life at the moment. 

As some of you may know, I am suffering with IBS (it has nearly been 10 years now!) and it has recently been getting to the point where it is getting in the way of my life. I have been back and fourth to the doctors getting different prescriptions and sent to the hospital for a number of different tests and nothing has really helped. So my last resort has been to go to a homeopath. I know a lot of people have reservations about the effectiveness of this remedy, but as a last resort, I have put aside the negative view on it and tried to see if it would help me. After a long chat with the lady about my symptoms etc. she gave me some little tablets and a list of foods that I need to avoid as they may be causing my IBS symptoms to become worse. 

The foods that I am to avoid are: dairy (cow's dairy), wheat, yeast and citrus fruits. I have been on this diet for just over a month now and have seen marked improvements in my symptoms, I am not sure if the tablets have helped though! 
Unfortunately, I have also noticed that it's not just food that is affecting me, stress is also a huge factor. I have found that days that have been full of stress, for one reason or another, have sparked off my IBS symptoms, regardless of what I have eaten. So, I think the next step is to seek out some stress management and get on top of this finally!
I am going to carry on with avoiding the food that affect me and I hope over Christmas the stress will calm down a bit.
It sounds silly, but I have reached the point now where I am scared to go out, through fear of my symptoms starting off and not being able to get to a rest room. Obviously the anxiety over this apprehension causes the symptoms, making it a vicious cycle that needs to be broken some how or it's just going to get worse and worse! 

In other news, I have been having a little creative fun with the fireplace in my room. Here is a little picture of my efforts. :)


Having the fairy lights in the bird cage (yes, it's the one featured in my Bird Cage Antics post) makes it look as if there is a real fire, making my room feel very cosy. :)

I hope to post something a bit more interesting next time, after (hopefully) successfully handing all my work in! :O

Love Julie xx

Sunday 30 October 2011

Charlie Simpson

Friday 28th brought a highly anticipated day for me, the day that I got to meet Charlie Simpson!
We arrived very early at Concorde 2 in Brighton for our meet and greet.
When we finally got in, we watched a little bit of the sound check and then he came over to meet us! He signed a set list for us and then gave us a plectrum each.

 Watching the sound check...

 Me and Charlie. 
He was VERY tall and was even bending over slightly here!! (or I'm just really short..... )

After the meet and greet, we were put to the front of the queue for the gig. So we managed to get very near the front.
The gig was excellent, the support acts started it off well. They set the crowd off with their lively and engaging performances.
There were three of them; Andrew Balkwill, Dave McPherson and We Were Evergreen.
I was very pleased to have Dave McPherson as one of the supporting acts as he is the lead singer of one of my favourite bands, InMe. Which was an excellent surprise and just made the evening just that much better.
Charlie was just as good and put on a great performance.
He played my two favourite songs from his album: Sundown and Please Let Me Go as well as many others.
I really didn't want the gig to end!








Love Julie
xxx

Monday 10 October 2011

Better Late Than Never

My birthday was just under a month ago, I am finally sending out thank you cards!
Whoops.

All sewn on the sewing machine, using different patterned papers.






Yes, my obsession with Elephants continues.


Julie
xx

Lowestoft Drawing Trip

I recently went on a drawing trip to Lowestoft.
It is required on the second year of my course to do one solid week of location drawing.

The rest of my class went to Seville, Spain, however I am not keen on planes (which didn't help) and I didn't feel quite strong enough in myself to take on this task just yet. Which is a shame, as I do not want to be holding myself back from all the fantastic opportunities I have. It was a hard decision to make, but I feel that I made the right choice in the end, doing something I felt comfortable with.

My trip to Lowestoft was with two other class mates (their reasons for not going was not being able to afford it) so I had people to spend my time with and to help motivate me and give feedback of each others work, which was great.
One of my class mates partner lives in Lowestoft, so we were lucky enough to be shown around by him to ensure we didn't get lost and to find all the best places to draw.
As well as going to Lowestoft, we traveled just along the coast to Great Yarmouth for a couple of days to broaden our drawings.

We were extremely fortunate with the weather as we went away during the September 'Heat wave'.
It felt like Summer as it was so hot and sunny and there we no clouds in the sky!

The week went extremely quickly and we came home feeling absolutely exhausted.

Below I have scanned in some of the drawings I did over the week.
I used three sketchbooks, one long thin, one square and one large Moleskine.
The drawings are not perfect as the idea was to get down as much information about the place in as little time as possible.

Enjoy.

Felt tip and fine liner

Coloured pencil

Fine liner

Crayon

Fine liner and water colours

Felt tip and fine liner

Fine liner

Wax crayon and water colour paint over the top

Pencil

Ink

Water colour and diluted ink

Fine liner and Crayon


Fine liner
(Below)
Colour swatch of drawing
Coloured pencil

Fine liner

Fine liner

Felt tip

Fine liner

Pencil

Fine liner

Pencil

Fine liner

Pencil

 Pencil

Fine liner

Coloured pencil

Ink

Pencil

Fine liner

Fine liner and crayon

Pencil

Fine liner

Fine liner

Pencil

Fine liner and crayon

Crayon

Pencil

Fine liner

Fine liner




During our time there, we did manage to find some time to have a bit of fun.

I ended up buying a dog on a lead from one of the seaside shops.
We had a lot of fun with it!!!

We also found a hole dug on the beach, so I jumped into it.....

[Video to come]

Julie
xx

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