| a message on the eve of mother's day |

Tomorrow is Sunday, Mother's Day for many countries around the world. And we have all been overly bombarded with ideas for gifts, flowers and all the other pampering products, but, as with other such days ie Valentines Day, it never really should be about the material things. I simply feel it should be about celebrating and being so aware of who your mother is and what she means to you.

Six weeks ago, tomorrow-on Mother's Day, my mom passed away after a long and hard fought battle with cancer that she most definitely did not deserve to fight, for a second time. And so, some would think that tomorrow is going to be a day of sadness, not a day of celebration and gratitude. But that's not the way I see it, and so, I thought I'd share my views and realisations that I've had over the past couple of months. 

Your mother is someone that you can never and will never replace. It doesn't matter whether you get along with her or you scream and fight 90% of the time and don't see eye-to-eye ever; she is one of the people that will always be there for you. In my case, I had a very good relationship with my mom and will cherish that forever more. 

Your mother is the person that makes the difference in your life in small ways that you, sometimes, don't even realise, and thus, that ever so cliche saying-you don't know what you've go till it's gone- is very pertinent here. I did know what I was loosing, but I was only aware because of the nature of the events, and the fact that we knew she was going. Think about what it would be like to have her taken away from you, to have all the things missing that she used to do, to miss the comments that she would have made when a certain advert came on the TV, to miss the oh-so familiar sound of her keys when she came home and to miss not being able to just sit down and talk-whether you live at home or have a family and life of your own. Because if you think about not having those things there, it seems unimaginable and altogether unfathomable, which is quite how I felt when she was diagnosed eight months ago. And here is where part of my message creeps in, think of these things on Mother's Day, and appreciate your mom for all the things that you love and all the little things that may annoy you about her, because you'll miss them all one day. 

But, your mother will always be with you and you will always know what she would have said and how she would have reacted. And that's the biggest thing with death, it's the physical that you miss, because the memories are all still there, the relationship you had with her is always going ti be there with you.

And so, like we did on her birthday, we will celebrate Mother's Day just as we would have done if she was here. We will celebrate her and all that she stood for and all that she was to us and all her dear friends. Because she was, in my world, the best mom that I could have asked for and the she taught me how to be the person I am today. She would have wanted us to spoil her, and so we'll celebrate for you Mom. 

This post is not intended to be sombre and I do apologise if it has taken that tone slightly. All I want reader's to get out of it, is that tomorrow, whether your mom is with you physically, or with you in your heart and in your memories, celebrate with her or for her and all she was! And appreciate her for being someone vital and special to your life.

Have a wonderful Mother's Day all!

My mom, me and my dad

Me, my mom and my brother, Adam

A beautiful picture taken last year in March

Getting used to having Adam around

A day trip to Robertson

Still getting used to little baby Adam

A family shot at her birthday last year in April. We went for breakfast at Suikerbossie in Hout Bay.

Me as a baba and my beautiful mother.

|something slightly different: louboutin different|

Being a female, I have the natural obsession with shoes. More specifically, I have an obsession with heels, classic in style more often than not, and very expensive taste. And so, as a special birthday approaches, I decided I'd research into the financials of the Christian Louboutin shoe, made ever so famous by the numerous celebrity customers and of course, the red sole. This post is going to end in disappointment, rather than excitement, which has bubbled through me for the last 24 optimistic hours. 

As I began searching, I came across more than one site offering Louboutin shoes for remarkable prices; little over 100 pounds, and the excitement started to grow. 100 pounds was more than affordable. However, when I settled down and began looking into the site reviews, I discovered that little over a two years ago, various scams hit the internet, claiming to sell original, hand crafted Louboutins with nothing less than a 50% discount. The sites look real, they have pages and pages of shoes, copyright dates at the bottom of the page (which are recent), free shipping etc etc. Only someone that truly sat down to look a little further would have realised the grammatical errors that the information pages were ridden with; that there weren't telephone numbers in sight, only contact via email and tiny other hints to the fact that the page was fake. First and foremost, grammatical errors and contact details should be dead give aways as to whether a site is fake or not.

Doing further research, I discovered some of these articles, confirming what I feared...my excitement was too good to be true. 

Beware killer heels: Warning over fake versions of designer shoes worn by celebrities

Fake/Counterfeit/Knock-off Christian Louboutin Shoes

I would love spend the R5000-00 odd rands on these gorgeous shoes, but unfortunately, I have more important things to think about spending that kind of money on. These sites showcase the real deal as far as images are concerned, but on taking delivery, you will discover that they are knock-offs and complete fakes. The site that I was on was www.christianlouboutinuk.uk.com. They even made an error in spelling Louboutin, "Louboution". 

Anyway, as my hopes have now been slashed, I just thought it a good idea to make it known to all the other shoe lovers out there. And should you wish to look and revel at the authentic site with sky high prices, it's www.christianlouboutin.com.

| discovering style in year two |

And so on the 24th of January 2011, AAA recommenced it's school term, as usual, ever so much earlier than other tertiary institutions. And bang, we dove in, head first and not really knowing if we were coming or going. You see, second year is the year of the ever so illusive computer, more specifically, the jump to the Apple Mac, and very few students are accustomed to the workings of these wondrous creatures after surviving a first year of working everything by hand. So, they briefed us on what is to be a brief that will continue throughout the first term, culminating on April one [my birthday-hip hip horray]. 

Our brief initially required us to write a research essay outlining the design elements of our most weird and wonderful museum shop. We had several types of shops to choose from, I chose the hoax museum and streamlined it to April Fool's Hoaxes. Along with the research essay came the task of learning how to manipulate Adobe InDesign to your every command- as we all know, computers sometimes have a mind of their own, and only if you stroke them and talk to them nicely, will they co-operate. Adobe Illustrator was also on the cards, and so the hours began. However, along the 18th Century European research path that I chose, I stumbled across some beautiful images that were to inspire the style of my shop. The shop is meant to have an eighteenth century neo classical (new classical) design approach, with a more classic modern touch. Thus, incorporating light colour palettes and the beautiful blues that enriched the era, I began my design inspiration. Florals and stripes are also prominent features for this time period, which suite my actual taste so wonderfully, that I enjoyed the image research. Enough babbling, here they are (please note that these photos have been found on blogs, museum sites and the like, and are not my own):

This glass feature is beautiful

Designed by Pentagram, Corporate ID is so elegant

A beautiful French store front

Packaging, also designed by Pentagram

Illustration reminiscent of the French style. The colours and type are a perfect fit.

This logo, designed by WeMadeThis, has exquisite graphic elements.
The colours are also elegant and classic, yet grasp the modern atmosphere.

Ah, and it comes down to the one and only typeface, Bodoni. Ironically, it comes freshly designed straight out of the eighteenth century, so I didn't have to do much persuading.

The combination of styles of the typeface is an example of how different line weights can be incorporated into design.

Another packaging design from Pentagram

Gorgeous soap packaging that captures the mood beautifully.

I stumbled upon this just before hand in, and what a lovely discovery.

Typical eighteenth century room decor. I could do with a little less
gold, but the style is beautiful on its' own.

Beautiful eighteenth century pattern design, found on the V&A Museum Website.

And, the perfect store front for the museum, which had been placed in Britain.

We have just finished designing the logo, forcing us to delve even deeper into the world of Illustrator, but learning the ropes is very rewarding when the finished product is produced. Next up, we'll be designing signage and posters as well as packaging for some of the crazy weird products that shall engross the shelves of our mysterious shops. One of these days, I'll be a Adobe wizz, until then, I'll claim ignorance and fear.

| brush in hand |

This post is going to contain some of my make up work, which is few and far between at the moment because I have focused all of my attentions on my current degree. However, I do have some interesting pictures from some of the work I did last year and a couple of experiments that I have dabbled in this year. I've decided that all posts related to make-up and hair styling will be in a different typeface, in order to distinguish between the disciplines. 

This was done with photographer Mark Freebs for a personal porfolio.

Model: Jenna Upton

Make Up & Hair: Amy Olivia

Photographer: Mark Freebs

Model: Christina Lubushagne
Hair & Make Up: Amy Olivia
Photographer: Matthew Schrire

Kirsten Bing
Springfield Matric Dance 2010
Hair & Make Up: Amy Olivia

Model: Megan Petrie
Hair: Tandem Constantia
Make Up: Amy Olivia

 Thats that for now. I have a couple shoots coming up, so I will be sure to add some more. I also have editing to complete on other photographs, so those will be joining this lot.

| zine infested |

For our final brief for the semester we had to create a zine. What is a zine? A zine is a less-influenced-by-popular-culture-conventions form of a magazine. It's purpose it to advertise you as a person, agency, organization in any way you see fit. It is generally something that is put together in a format that is as cheap as possible and then photocopied and distributed as need be.

We were briefed with the task of creating a zine in a group that was metaphorically a design agency, had it been in the "real world". We had to come up with an agency name for our design agency, use a specific theme and run with it throughout "issue one" of our zine.

My "design agency" came up with the name Flint, the conceptual link behind it being that we are instigators of great things. After a long process of finding the right way to conceptually design our zine, we arrived at the ever so marvelous point of using lemon juice to write secret messages on the paper. People would then have to hold a flame underneath the page to reveal the message. Therefore, when you received our zine, you would receive a "blank" book with a box of matches. We decided to go with the theme: a world ruled by designers. We put our own spin on it and altered it to read LITTLE TRADE SECRETS IN A WORLD RULED BY DESIGNERS. 

Below are some pictures of the already burnt book, we had to hand in one blank one and one already "burnt".

This is the front cover [we named our zine issue one HUSH HUSH to extend the concept]

Page One: The theme page [designed by Adeline van Eck]

Page Two: Design Secret One [designed by Natalie Retief]

Page Three: Design Secret Two [designed by Adeline van Eck]

Page Four: Design Secret Three [designed by Lara Heley]

Page Five: Design Secret Four [designed by Amy Soule (me)]

Page SIx: Design Secret Five [designed by Genevieve Chorn ]

We thought it came out pretty well, and I am so glad I got to steal Adeline's camera to take some decent photos for a change.


So long.

|something that I covert|

As I might have mentioned, I was a serious dancer for 12 years of my very short life, towards the end, it became very intense, to a point where I would have been professional (by South African Standards) if I had been paid and was part of a company. Anyway, I had to make some choices and ended up giving it up in 2008. Over the past two years I really have missed it and regret the choice indefinitely.

However, what has this got to do with this post? We had to dabble in the art of printing methods but with two colours. I choose to go the route of Lino cutting. Our theme was: something that you covert. Hence, that's where the dancing comes in.

Here are some of the images from my process. (Please excuse the hideous picture quality, I am in between camera's right now)

This is a series of dancers. I found inspiration in images that were taken of a good friend that I used to dance with, Mila de Biaggi.

These are the final prints in the various colours and layouts that I experimented with.

The above blocks are the printing blocks. You have to carve away the surrounding negative space in order to be left with the image that you want to print.

The final product.

I enjoyed working with this medium. It was definitely something different for me and, in my personal opinion, I really like the way that they turned out.