Beach Birthday Cake

So I have not blogged for a long long time because I have just been busy and trying to job hunt etc.

Anyway its my dads birthday today and last night my sister and I made him a cake. My dad loves the seaside and deck chairs and we had thought about making him a deckchair cake but I am afraid that my cake making skills are not that advanced yet. So we opted for a circle, chocolate double sponge, half covered in sand and the other covered in sea. We went on eBay and found a doll sized deckchair, beach ball and we also found a kitsch, vintage, seagull broach which we put on wire and stuck into the cake. Oh and we also got some cocktail umbrellas and made a little sandcastle with a flag. I will go through what we did exactly:

1. So we started by baking 2 sponge cakes just plain chocolate. Sandwiched them together with jam, and put on a silver cake base/stand.

2. We then blitzed/crushed a packet of digestive biscuits until it was like fine sand.

3. Warmed up apricot jam and brushed over the side we wanted to be the beach including the edges of the cake. We then sprinkled the crumbled biscuits on top the areas we had covered in jam. It got really messy but we just used a brush to dust any excess of the cake base.

4. Next we made butter icing with butter and icing sugar and added blue food colouring until we got the colour we wanted. We then covered the other half of the cake in the icing and made a wave affect where the icing met the sand so it looked a bit like crashing waves.

5. We used a cube of sponge and covered in jam and crushed biscuits to create a sandcastle. To make the flag we used a cocktail stick and tissue paper. The cocktail stick also helped keep the sandcastle stable.

6. We then just arranged the deckchair, sandcastle, umbrella and beach ball where we wanted.

7. For the seagull we attached wire around the fastening of the broach and just stuck into the cake.

8. To finish we found a happy birthday plastic cake decoration and put it in the sea. Which we thought added a retro, kitsch seaside postcard scene, scenario.

9. We then just cleaned up the base of any icing or crumbs.

VOILA... seaside, beach retro cake.... well our interpretation   :)

Holiday in Nice, French Riviera

So I haven't blogged for ages because I have not really had anything to blog about and also i went on holiday to Nice, France. Oh the French Riviera is so beautiful. I have been before and i could not wait to go back its so lovely. 

We had an amazing tine and the weather was beautiful. We stayed in a lovely hotel called the Aston and it had a swimming pool on the top floor with amazing views. The weather was fab too it was about 25-28oC just about right for me. The food was really scummy and the ice creams too and it was just so relaxing walking along the seafront, exploring the narrow streets and looking at the beautiful, old architecture in the old town and of course sitting on the beach. I didn't want to come back but it was lovely just escaping from the boring normality of life. Cant wait to go back again soon.... :) 


oh and i have my own imac so i don't have to borrow my boyfriends macbook :) 

wasting my days!!!

Well after been busy and all motivated designing my Homespun portfolio project I have lost all motivation. I have been looking for graduate design jobs and work experience opportunities but it just seems at the moment that there is not much at all and I am starting to get bored of looking or getting e-mails saying NO!!!


Its just rubbish when you work so hard at university to get a degree and then when you finish you realise that degree is not really worth much at all to employers its all about experience, but how much commercial design experience can you have if your degree was full time for 3 years???? When you contact companies to try and get some unpaid work experience nothing seems to come of it.  Sometimes I just think that maybe I should have just chosen something easy to do at university, like law or something like that because at the moment I just feel like i'm getting nowhere and I really don' t see what opportunities there are out there....... hmmmm things to think about. I won't give up looking..... yet but sometimes I really think why do i worry or bother so much about it. Probably because I have so much free time to contemplate it all.


just a thought..

Homespun collection

So I have been completing a collection for my portfolio the last week or so. I wanted to update my work and this brief I set myself was for a collection of wearable separates to include outerwear for Autumn/Winter 2011/2012. I based the colours, prints and style around the theme of 'Homespun' so I looked at warm, earthy, natural colours and chunky prints, crochet and included a worn aesthetic to the collection. I also designed prints and patterns based on crochet patterns and south american crafts.  

So these are the designs I put together. I just need to put together my mood boards and I am going to illustrate the designs on figures and do a board for that. I will blog about those in a few days when they are done. 

portfolio work

Well just another blog about my portfolio work. I am currently working on updating my portfolio and I am designing Autumn/Winter collections for 2011/2012. I have decided to call the collection Homespun as I have researched into trends and have decided to design around a brief based on home made crafts, knit and crochet and things like that. Anyway its still a working progress and I only started it today. work soon anyway and then I will carry on designing this collection.


Bye for now.


Holly

Portfolio work and hair like Nicole Scherzinger

I haven't blogged for  a while mainly because blogger has not been working and I haven't had much to blog about thats interesting. But the last days i have been re-doing portfolio work and doing illustrations on Illustrator and making mood boards etc. I was re-doing an old project and I am pretty pleased with it. Its taken me a couple of days so not too long, i was a bit out of practice.

I have also been thinking seriously about jobs and my career future and prospects and I think I would seriously consider re- locating somewhere. Probably manchester or western england. I think if i want my dream job i need to think realistically so i am broadening my horizons..  also our poor little car failed its mot and is been scrapped. :( it's a bit sad and we are currently carless which i hate. 


And totally going off topic I really want hair like Nicole Scherzinger, which i understand is totally impossible but i can dream of waking up with long, dark luscious locks............one day...




Bye for now. 

Parcel arrived!!

My H&M sandals finally arrived after over 2 weeks. Best of all though they actually fit and i really like them. I posted a blog about them when i ordered them and they cost £14.99 plus £3 postage. They have a buckle fastening, toe post and fringing with little gold beads on the front. They are really comfortable too. 

Not much else to post about today, I'm at work tonight and i'm going to vote later. I need to really get more motivated and do my portfolio and more design briefs and also try and find some work experience or a real job in what i want to do. I realised that in a month i will have graduated a year ago and i'm really no further on in my career plans, but the problem is i have applied for so many jobs and been to lots of interviews the last year that i think i've become tired of rejection and feeling like i'm not good enough... hmm i'm not giving up though but i just wish someone would give me a chance as i've worked so hard looking. 


Bye for now anyway.