Hello, long time no speak! It's been two years since my last post on here, and some things have changed! Last time we spoke, I had just recently graduated with a Graphic Design degree, and I was back in my hometown of Glasgow. Oh, and there wasn't a global pandemic happening either! 

Fast forward to the present day and I am now a fully fledged Graphic Designer, and I now live in Leeds! I took a break from blogging because quite frankly my mental health reached an all time low after I graduated, I didn't know where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I quit my part time job thinking that I needed time to chill (which was a BIG mistake). I was just spending my days applying for jobs and being a recluse really. 

Finally I managed to get out of that rut (with a lot of help from changing up my medication and talking to a variety of doctors) and I started working at an after school club whilst I looked for a design job. Those who know me will know that I love working with kids, so this was an ideal job for me whilst I looked for a job in my degree. After 6 months, endless interviews and so many times getting to the final two of applicants, I finally got this job in Leeds, and 10 days later I had packed up my stuff and moved. It all happened so fast, but I'm so thankful for it. 

I've been in Leeds about a year and a half now, and although the pandemic has meant I've not been able to explore or get to know many people, I love the city. It's a vibrant, cool city that has everything you need, so I'm doing okay. 

Recently I was trying to get back into things that made me happy, reading, drawing etc and I realised that I missed blogging. So here I am now, trying to get back into blogging. It's going to be a journey, so I hope you're ready!

I think this blog will now be a real mix of lifestyle, beauty, fashion and reading now, but I hope you stick around for all the fun stuff to come. 

Speak soon!

Erin 

 For those of you that don't know, I study Graphic Design in Dundee. I've just finished my second year (how scary, it feels like I just started!) and this was one of the projects I did. It was a group project, which was challenging at times, but really enjoyable. As you can see, we had to make a magazine, and we chose to base it on 'the art of print', and this is what we came up with! Let me know what you think of it!
Thanks for reading!

I love magazines. I love the physical connection between them and the reader, I love the design, the smell, the feel, the content, just everything. As someone who is studying Graphic Design, I am constantly flicking through magazines to find inspiration. A company I recently discovered during one of my class talks was 'Oh Comely'. I instantly fell in love with the style and design of the magazine. Minimalism is my thing, so this is right up my street. As soon as I got home from uni that day I placed an order of some magazines from their website, the arrived quickly, and I was not disappointed.
They came in beautiful packaging, and when I opened the box, I found some little post cards. I also am really into photography and these were completely my style, so they went straight on my wall!
The actual magazines themselves are breathtaking. They look incredible, and the content is so unique. All of the issues have a specific theme, but overall, I think the magazine is a bit of everything. It's described as 'where curious minds don't think alike', and I think it fits perfectly. It really is very satisfying to read, and I always find out amazing unique stories, it's a joy to read.

I really just wanted to share this with you, as I feel like this magazine deserves more recognition! I can't rave about this enough.
If you are interested, you can visit their website here. 

Thank you for reading!

Those are the final pieces that I put on display. I won't bore you will the whole meaning behind it, but to cut it short, we had to show who we were. I'm not a fan of sharing my personal secrets and qualities about myself, so that was my first problem. Instead of delving deep into the darkest areas of my brain, I thought, hey, why not make it some kind of game? This resulted in many trials and errors, before I finally settled on a pack of cards. The cards would work as playing cards, but also as a brainteaser. They all contain facts about me: some being true, and other's false. I decided to name it "Unidentified truth". The whole point was that these facts about me weren't being handed to people on a plate, the viewer had to work out the puzzle essentially. There was a simple pattern in all of the true statements, that the viewer had to figure out. Here are a few examples of the cards, can you figure out the pattern?

Have you got it yet?

I'll give you a clue, the top two here are true, and the bottom two are false.

 If you've figured out the pattern, well done! I found that many people couldn't work it out. It was simple: The true ones contained double letters.
Have a look at the images below.


See? Yeah so that was the project I was most proud of in first year of art school. Let me know what you think!

Until next time!

So, the craziest thing happened to me yesterday.. (Aside from it being my last ever official day at school - there will be a blog post tomorrow/Sunday all about that, and also about the paintballing my year did today)

I had gone up with my portfolio full of my weird, stupid ideas, which when I compared to others' work made me even more pessimistic about getting into Dundee. There's tonnes and tones and tonnes of applicants, from all around the globe, and only 170 places in the whole of 1st year. I kept comparing my work to everyone else's.. 'It's nowhere near as good!' I cried to my mum 'I'm not going to get in!' She just kept saying 'Erin, stop being so negative.. You will get in.' Of course I didn't believe her..
However, I opened my email today to find out that I had an email from UCAS (oh the fear that runs through you when that 'Dear Miss Docherty, something has changed on your application' email comes through. Anyone else get absolutely terrified when it comes through?) I was so positive that it was going to be a rejection that despite being surrounded by people, didn't mention the email, as I logged onto UCAS. I was prepared to be rejected , so you can imagine the shock on my face (I actually gasped out loud) when I logged onto UCAS to find this...



YESSSSSSSSSSS! I got an unconditional offer to ART SCHOOL! My top choice! It's been a dream of mine for years to go to art school. I worked so hard on my portfolio this year, so after getting rejected from both Glasgow and Edinburgh Art Schools, I was feeling pretty bummed, and had basically given up on Art School... If I couldn't get into those art schools, Dundee obviously wouldn't want me, right?
After an interview I got offered a place at Edinburgh Napier, and after a mix up of folios, I also got an unconditional to Glasgow Caledonian University, so I knew I was going somewhere, and I was happy about that, but in the back of my mind I still dreamed of art school. So to get this offer it honestly means the world to me, I'm on cloud 9, I couldn't be happier. I couldn't stop crying! One of my best friends started to cry when I told her because she was so happy for me, and that really tugged on my heart strings , I'm tearing up a little as I write this, so I'll probably just end this diary-style entry here.
Basically to summarise, I got into art school, something I 100% though wasn't going to happen, and I'm over the moon, and felt the need to share it with all of you lovely readers! If you've got this far through my ramble, thank you! (and well done!) Sorry if I bored you! I'll talk to you tomorrow!

Day three of Blogmas, and today is a post that I have been very, very, very excited to put up, because I am working so hard on this project. As I haven't finished my project, i'm going to split this post over a series of updates, over the month of December.
I should probably tell you what my project is, shouldn't I?
Well, I am an artistic person, and I want to pursue a career in this area, so I picked Advanced Higher Art and Design (for those of you who don't live in Scotland, it's basically a step higher than A levels? I think.. well, it's basically the highest level of education that is possible to do before you leave school, if that makes sense.) All of the Advanced Higher pupils get to create a painting, for the main hall, which gets decorated for Christmas. Now this isn't any old painting, this is a HUGE painting. I can't explain the size, so i'll just show you a photo.

my friend took a sneaky photo of me taping my photo, but i'm literally stretching to reach the top, it's that big (i'm 5ft3)!

Pretty big, right? Especially for a small person (5ft3ish)! They were made from four bits of card, glued together with strips of card on the back, then taped to the wall with a hell of a lot of duct tape! Because it's such a large scale, it would be near to impossible to draw out in exact proportion, so we were allowed to print off our chosen photo onto acetate, project it, and trace it on to the huge sheets of card. This sounds like a cheaters way to do it, but tracing it is harder than it looks, and so time consuming!
Every year, there's a theme, and this year it was "Home For Christmas". Our painting has to link in with this theme, but also with our own personal them for our folio, which gets sent away to the exam board. (mine is Journey's). I picked to draw a street scene, with a person walking away, presumably going "home for Christmas". This sort of links in with my exam theme, but I put a map behind the original photo, and i'm going to put bits of the map in the sky, to signify a journey.
Below is a few photos of what the set up looks like, and what exactly it is that i'm drawing.

a bit blurry, but this is what i'm drawing.

the acetate image on the projector, ready to be drawn

The very hi-tech, expensive projector and stand, haha

The image projected, ready to be traced!

So that's the end of my first update, there will be another in a few days, which will show the first part of the actual painting, yay!
Happy blogmas day 3! See you tomorrow!

It's December! How exciting is that? I love Christmas time so much, I love everything about it, (especially the advent calendar, you are never too old for it!
You might already know this, but I am going to be attempting "blogmas". (where you blog every day up until Christmas Eve) , so this is the first post.


The lovely people over at Homearama very kindly sent me two of their products, and I have decided to review them. This post isn't very Christmassy, but over the next 24 days, it will be a mix of Christmas, and not Christmas themed posts. Although, these product would make a perfect Christmas present for anyone, of any age, in my opinion! Anyway, enough rambling, lets get on with the review, shall we?
(Please note: even though I didn't purchase these items, this review will be just as honest as any other review done on my blog, I won't lie to you.)

First of all, meet Adam, The Doodles Man. he retails for £24 95, and on the Homearama website, and also the box itself, he is described as:

"the perfect companion to help you with your figure drawing. Made of stainless steel wire connected at the joints with aluminium rivets, his fully adjustable joints and limbs will hold any pose for as long as you need. He never rusts, never rests, never eats and never sleeps, so will always be on hand whenever you need him!"

Next, meet his companion, Rover, The Doodles Dog, like Adam, he also retails for £24.95, and he is described as:

"the perfect companion to help you with your figure drawing of animals. Made of stainless steel wire connected at the joints with aluminium rivets, his fully adjustable joints and limbs will hold any pose for as long as you need. He never rusts, never rests, never eats and never sleeps, so will always be on hand whenever you need him!" (pretty much the same as Adam)

Now, onto what I liked..
I love how unique these designs are. I've seen various wooden figures over the years, but never seen a wire one, until now! They are very quirky looking, and it's an alternative take on your average "wooden man". The variation of moves available is good, if not better than the wooden man.
Though considerably more expensive than the wooden versions, I think it's worth the money, as so much detail obviously has gone into making each of these perfect, and you really are getting the quality for what you paid, they are very sturdy.
Saying that, I am about to contradict myself, as at first, when I went to move their arms, legs, any body part, I felt like I was going to break it, and even though there is still some restriction in what way the arms and legs can move, I no longer feel like i'm going to break it, so just bear in mind if you are considering buying the product. You may think you're going  to break something, but it just needs a bit of "breaking in". (Is that the correct term?)
Another positive is that they are very easy to draw from, and it may sound weird, but because it's got gaps in it, unlike other mannequins, I find it even easier to see exactly where the body parts join together, and this helps me when drawing. They are definitely very easy to draw from.
I especially like Rover, the dog, as he is very unique, I have never seen a figure dog for drawing, and everything about him is great. They both look very pretty even just sitting on a shelf, or a table, as ornaments. Mine are currently placed on my shelves by my desk!


However with Adam, I found two minor things I wasn't so keen on. He doesn't come with a stand, like many other mannequins do, so I found it extremelly hard to get him to stay upright, and I found that I eventually had to lean him against something.
Also, his feet are very out of proportion, they really are massive! (bigger than his head.) But neither of these are major issues.

So to conclude, let's recap.
PROS

• Good variety of positions
• Unique, quirky, different designs
• Good Quality
• Very easy to draw from
• Look very nice as ornaments
• Will last a long time
• Dog in particular is unique, and perfect for drawing.
• Will make great Christmas presents for someone who is interested in anything artistic.