FINAL POST

Best feeling EVER handing in!! Absolutely knackered now, my brain cant even function properly. Had one hours sleep last night from the time of 5am til 6am. Went for breakfast after with everyone, and only just woken up now after coming home and completely passing out fully clothed! AND everyone is going out again tonight drinking…don’t know if I can manage it!

To be honest I was quite disappointed with what I handed in, as I left so much to the last minute…..and seeing the amount of work some other people had done was pretty depressing…cant believe we have to wait to the end of june to get our marks.. Not looking forward to that…

Uh Oh..

This has got to be the worst weekend OF MY LIFE!!! For the past week I have been getting up at 5.45am every morning and going to bed about 2am. My whole body is so so so exhausted, I feel mentally and physically drained : ( I have drunk so much red bull this week I think I am getting heart palpitations!

The list today looks like this:

- Finish design sheets
- Finish range plan – pricing and heel heights
- Finish spec. sheets
- Put together concept bord
- Mount photographs
- More sketchbook pages!
- LABEL EVERYTHING
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Luckily I have my trusty little helper Aaron, gluing and sticking things together for me which is saving me lots of time! Need to go to get on!!

Also forgot to say about Zara calling me (and Sam) up and asking to interview us on skype, had mine on Friday at 9 am! Probably could not have come at a worse time!! But I think it went well as they asked us both to do miniature projects for them, but said in like a week to send it! AS IF I HAVENT GOT ENOUGH TO DO!!I guess it’s an amazing opportunity, but not to sound ungrateful, doing another shoe project after handing this in, is literally the last thing I want to do!!

Oh Em Gee..

Cant believe we only have 6 days left eeeeeeeeeek!!! Not even funny how much work I still have to do. Made a list earlier and it made me want to cry. Went into uni today and finished off the socks and got to mess about with the heat foiling machine up in accessories which was fun. Also had to finish making the samples box as it needed some bits of wood screwed onto the underside of the removable wooden parts. Didn’t take too long, but now I have to finish them off at home, as I still have to mount all the samples and attach them onto strips of canvas and THEN screw them into the wood. Its going to take forever and I don’t even know if it will get me any more marks!!

Photoshoot!

Today we did the photoshooooot! We being, my older sister and her boyfriend Chris. Chris was doing the photography and my sister was in charge of holding the mirror and reflecting the light, I was the foot model… We were so lucky with the light, went to Southbank at 8am this morning and it was really sunny and bright, but just as we were finishing a couple of hours later it had become really cloudy and threatening to rain, so im glad I made them get up early to do it! I owe them dinner now though! Had a quick look at the pictures, but Chris is going to take them home and edit them and hopefully send me some on Monday or Tuesday! So excited to see the final ones!
I haent quite finished the shoes, I still need to put the insocks in as I didn’t want to have them in for the photoshoot as I didn’t want them to get dirty or damaged.

Still so much to do!

Had such a good couple of weeks, well in social terms! It was my birthday on bank holiday Monday, and obviously ive had so much work to do, I didn’t really want to go out or anything. Went out for lunch and then came home where my boyfriend had arranged a surprise party!! Was so nice of everyone to come even though we have so much work to do! Back in uni on Tuesday and just really wanted to finish everything! My aim was to finish everything by today but unfortunately the soles have been taking longer than expected so now my aim is next Tuesday! Been getting on with design sheets and finishing off range plan, but even though Im quite close to finishing, I still feel like theres so much to do on them! Still not completely happy with my design sheet layout…

Peer Critique

Just got back from Sandra’s, had a really good chat with her about laying out sketchbook. Nice to see how someone else is working, as at uni we don’t really see each others paper work etc. I had tried to do some initial like sketchy drawings to put in, but they didn’t look right. Sandra suggested that I just used the drawings I did for the final shoes, as I never really did much sketching in the beginning, but drew them neatly straight away. It looked better once I ad done that as I wasn’t making things up. Hard to know how much annotation to put in the sketchbook, I cant remember who said it, but a general theory is that if you cant read the page of imagery without words then you’ve done something wrong. The images chosen should be clear to understand how they link in with the rest of the images. Need to do some more experimentation to put in sketchbook.

Repetitive Strain

FINALLY finished my uppers yesterday after having a nightmare stitching in the lining of the ankle boot. George couldn’t believe that I had been stitching the same stay stitches all day!1 Woops!

So now moved downstairs and starting on lasting. Only had to make my insole for my sandal 8 TIMES! Don’t know what was wrong with me but I kept messing it up by bevelling it too much or having cut the insole board in slightly the wrong place…

After all those bloody insoles, me and Darren struggled getting the insole to fit properly. Went for leather insole in the end!

Also spoke to my dad who is coming down this weekend for my sister’s birthday and he’s found me a box! I found these pieces of wood that originally must’ve been part of some kind of photo album box or something in a charity shop a couple of years ago and I’ve always wanted to use them for something. I wanted to use them to display my samples, but didn’t have a box for them. Spoke to my dad and wanted him to make me a box, but we had the issue that we may not be able to make it look aged. Coincidentally though, when he was shopping in Plymouth with my little sister he found the perfect box! In an antique shop, an old scallops box, the PERFECT width of my wooden things!! So happy when he told me! He showed me on skype last night and bringing it with him on Sunday!! Woop woop!!

H and M

Me and a few others went to an H and M recruitment talk a couple of days ago; (this one being the real recruitment talk, as me and Sam turned up to a instore recuitment day at HH mistakenly – where we were asked what kind of sales assistant experience we had! Haha felt so stupid, oh well at least we got a free bag!). Anyway went to the proper recruitment talk and was really inspired. One of my best friends moved over there to design for the childrenswear dept. and is absolutely loving it! I have always loved Sweden and this would be the perfect opportunity. HOWEVER, when we asked about footwear design positions, they said that the dept. has only really just been set up, as previously it was all bought it, so there aren’t any opportunities at the moment, but possibly in the future…. : (

Also this week, had to present our work to the external examiner, which was scary! Actually she seemed really nice and asked us questions about how to improve the course etc, which was good.

Continuing with making mock ups at the moment but hopefully ready to start on the final ones sooooon!

Guild of Cordwainers!

Another busy week! Was at Michael Lewis on Tuesday and single-handedly had to put together a big presentation for John Lewis, which was a bit scary but Michael just emailed me today saying that he loved the presentation and it was well received by JL! Could’ve really done without going to the studio as I have so much to do at uni and cant afford to be missing days! So that’s good! ALSO just done a different sort of presentation to the Guild of Cordwainers! None of us really knew what we were doing, but we each sat at tables and presented our work to about 3 or 4 people from the Guild. Met some really interesting people there, my favourite being Christopher King, who seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing and we swapped email addresses. Didn’t like so much the secretary guy, who was patronising and a little obnoxious… oh well! Hopefully they’ll come to the exhibition, which might increase funding in the future!

Range Selection

Today I had my range selection tutorial with Sue which I think went well, she liked the ones I’d chosen and also my latexing samples! Pleased with the selected range, but now have to work on other colourway options, but she liked the leathers I got from Northampton so that was good. Going to look at ways of incorporating rubber onto a leather sole too, as I like the way leather soles look but I think they are SO stupid! They are so impractical! After deciding the two final ones, I decided that it would be best to get my wedge made by someone else as I wanted a really high quality finish and also in my design there is a platform as well that needs to fit to the wedge, and Im not confident I can achieve it myself. Sent off a spec. last week to Springline so looking forward to getting that!!

Exhibition Meeting!

WOO!!! So pleased!!! After weeks of negotiating about organising our own exhibition, today was the day when we found out how many people wanted to be involved. We’d booked out the main lecture theatre at High Holborn and were terrified that no one would turn up! We spent ages trying to get this exhibition to go ahead, and putting posters up advertising this meeting. When we first got there, there weren’t that many people there, but after about 15 mins, loads of people turned up and we had, I think over 80 people there in the end which was awesome!! Had to talk to everyone which was a bit nerve-wracking, but really good presentation practice!! So me and Sam are super happy now!!! Our hard work paid off! Now we’ve got to organise the bloody exhibition! The next stage will be to get everyone to pay some money…

In other news, sent off my Inditex application with my CV and cover letter, however I didn’t send any of my work, as I haven’t really done any projects I have been proud of to date, so hopefully that wont affect my chances too much…

Also been doing more rubberisng ssamples and getting some really cool results, tried different colours, inspired by some pictures I took in Whitstable, pinks, whites, blacks etc. And been doing pattern cutting, after having just about chosen the two final shoes Im going to make EEKK! Such a big decision!!

Northampton

Had a brill trip to Northampton! Went with Sandra, Sam, Gary and Julie to go leather shopping. Found the perfect coloured nubuck, just exactly what I wanted from A and A Crack Leathers, unfortunately I’ve only got a little bit, as it was a remnant, so I’ve got enough to maybe make two of the pieces of my shoe, but if I mess it up then I’m not sure what I’ll do!! Also got some lambskin lining in a really nice pinky colour. Went to meet the Tempesti leather agent at his house which was interesting! His wife was really sweet and had made us all chocolate brownies! Ordered some really nice vegtan rosey pink leather (pretty expensive!), but its reeeeeeeally nice! Good to see some leather places outside London.

LFW

Had a really busy few days! Last week I went to a talk from the Inditex Group, (people who run Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and some other brands), and it was really inspiring! Nice to have an opportunity like that, Zara would be such an amazing company to work for! So we have to send our CV’s and cover letters to Adam by next week and he’ll send them all off. Friday was the start of London Fashion week, but I didn’t go until Sunday. Had a look around and saw some really cool stuff, highlights:

• Nicholas Kirkwood for Rodarte
• Christopher Raeburn
• Atalanta Weller

Wasn’t massively impressed with Georgina Goodmans new collection, quite a lot of similar structures to previous collections, just in new colourways. Nice to see people I recognised and show my face a little bit! Worked on the ML stand for a little bit. I don’t know why they have LFW at Somerset House, the cobbles are IMPOSSIBLE to walk on in heels!!! They need a location change, possibly with no steps either!

Scanning Issues

Aaaargh!! My scanner is so unbelievably bad! Keeps coming up with this error message “ Sorry unable to allocate system resource to complete operation”, which is totally wrong, because theres loads of memory on my computer!! Checked loads of forums online and nobody seems to know how to fix it!!!! NEED it to do some colourway options!!

On another less intense note, organised a meeting with Adam Watling (FBRS guy) on the best ways to start applying for jobs. Told me some good tips and some websites to check out for example ‘LinkedIn’, which Id not heard of before which is where you set up like an online profile like facebook or something but you can add companies and things and see what job opportunities there are. Need to get on that!!

Placement Year Meeting

Went to a meeting earlier about the placements year we did. Was glad that one was finally organised as I think its really important to feedback about the year, (plus we got free wine!). Was a same more people didn’t turn up and I think in future that they should definitely organise this session for straight after we get back to uni. Was really interesting to hear other people’s experiences. Had a tutorial with sarah on Tuesday which went ok, she like my designs and some of the experimentation I did with the latexing! Was so much fun but had to be really careful on making it neat. Want to continue with experimenting a bit more with this technique.

Stupid Seminar!

Just got back from this really stupid seminar. A few of us signed up to it, a talk on setting up your own business. Im not really interested in setting up my own business but I thought it might be useful to go just out of interest. The woman who started the shop and brand Beyond the Valley was the main speaker. It was like a seminar for children! The first bit of advice she gave was to get some industry experience first, and in order to do that, to send CV’s and examples of work to companies that you would like to work for! That’s got to be the most obvious piece of advice EVER! Anyway it was funny to go and laugh at other people asking ridiculous questions at least!

A Weller, Weller, Weller!

Atalanta Weller came in today to give a talk to us about her career etc. Was a bit awkward at the start, she seemed quite nervous, and at the end it went silent for a bit too long and was pretty uncomfortable! Interesting though, didn’t know that she started out working for Clarks, I wouldn’t have expected that. Good advice about working in the industry in several different types of brands before even thinking about setting up a brand. Was nice to talk to her at the end as well, as I have met her a couple of times before at London and Paris Fashion weeks.

Also looking at my research a bit more, was interested in the idea of using some kind of rubber to seal the seams, like on old diving suits. I did a bit or ringing around and spoke to Pentonville Rubbers, and they said because they only do sheet rubber, they couldn’t help but they recommended Tiranti’s modelling shop. Went there and had a chat with the guy and he said I should try liquid latex. Bought a big bottle of it and some acrylic paints, as he said you can mix it wirth acrylic paint to get different colours! SUPER excited to try it out!

Oh also got my concept development back last week… was kind of disappointed…I got a good grade but being 3 marks off a first was a bit hard to hear. Especially since ALL my best mates at uni got firsts for theirs. Wish I could go back and do a little bit more. Not quite sure what let me down, but they said I hadn’t put enough initial research into it which was SUPER annoying, because I had done loads I just hadn’t put it in as I didn’t think we had to put very much in… : ( oh well… a bit late now. Just need to make sure I pick up the marks in the next bit.

Oops!

Haven’t written for a while been so busy with Christmas! Had a really good break and was nice to recover from concept development. Didn’t get much work done over the break to be honest, woops! Continued with designing which was fun, nice to do some of the creative stuff now!! No more writing woop woop! Kind of terrified to get my mark back now… Today we had a ‘materials review’ with Paul which was good, got some good contact names for things like leathers, heels and metal stamps. Also really randomly, got to go and meet a Norwegian cobbler yesterday with Julie! He had come over for a couple of weeks and was making some shoes at the John Lobb workshop near Piccadilly. Was such an odd guy, but really interesting to see the skill that goes into making handmade shoes. Such a cool opportunity! He was showing us how he carves his own lasts as well, which I was blown away by! The precision it takes seems impossible! So much skill.

Also over Christmas, my mum gave me the dental wax and I had a go at playing around with moulding toe caps! So difficult! Took them to show John today and he suggested some other techniques to try and also we worked out (because Im a bit stupid) that before we cast the toe caps, I have to make the upper so that we knoe the toe cap will fit properly. He explained to me the casting process (not quite sure I completely understood it!), but really excited about doing it!