Package Deal

Recently I've been thinking that it's about time I released some of my creative wankery upon the world, so I decided to start selling some shizz. Sales were at an all time low with my trademarked "Wait-until-someone-asks-you-to-make-them-something" approach so I decided I should probably make a fresh start by setting up shop somewhere. I have an Etsy shop although I've never done anything with it, but I'm not completely in love with the site. I feel it's gotten a bit big for it's boots and kinda lost it's initial charm, plus then I run the risk of something I make ending up on Regretsy though I'm not totally convinced that's a bad thing! A friend of mine uses Folksy, but I haven't properly taken the time to check that site out so if anyone could give me any info that'd be much appreciated :) also, a lot of people I know are doing the whole "Selling Your Shit On Facebook" thang, but that doesn't appeal hugely. I'd like to be a bit more professional than that.

So. To my point. Pardon my french, but I'm fucking obsessed with packaging. Obsessed. If you're gonna give me a gift the contents of the package are relatively inconsequential compared to the joys and delights of well-designed packaging.

One of my favourite boxes. It was like getting an enormous easter egg!!

When Woody handed me my gift bag for my birthday and I pulled out that little Tiffany-blue (cos it was, y'know, Tiffany) card bag I was already in raptures, but when I looked inside and saw two little rectangular boxes I was ecstatic. Not because I had two pieces of Tiffany jewellery, but because that meant there was two lots of packaging to squee over! And THEN, when I opened the boxes, there was *gasp* another layer of packaging!!! Each item was in a little drawstring bag which was (be still my beating heart) divided inside to keep the silver from rubbing. You could have chucked two cheap bangles from Claire's Accessories in them and I would still be in pig heaven just because of the presentation. I want other people to be as excited about my packaging as I was that day. I want to spread the happiness brought to me by layers of cardboard and tissue and paper and and and....

Ok, NOW I'll get to my point! I'm struggling to come up with a packaging design I like. I like colour but only when used sparingly. I'd normally go for classic black and white, but I'm not feeling it this time. So what's a girl to do? I think I might combine the three! Like, black and green with white accents, and vice versa. And then there's the dilemma of what KIND of packaging to use! Plastic pouches, paper wrapped, boxes?

SO MUCH CHOICE!!!

Methinks it's about time to put what graphic design knowledge I have to good use and try to come up with something. I'm doing Visual Communication at college this year so hopefully that'll get the old creative juices flowing properly! If any of you have ideas you care to share, feel free to leave me a note in the comments :)


Do YOU have any odd obsessions?

Under Construction

Still farting about with a lot of things, so if you stop by and nothing seems to make much sense and links go nowhere, then you know why!

She called out a warning...

"Don't ever let life pass you by."

This post has everything to do with the title and nothing to do with the rest of the lyric. I just wanted to warn everyone that reads this (all 3 of you!) that I'm going to be changing the title of my blog. Just wanted to warn you so when you see a new title in your blogroll and are like "Who...?" you'll know! Not absolutly certain what it'll be yet, but I'm sure you'll figure it out! Hopefully be a new look to go with it...I've always preferred clean, uncluttered, black and white themes on my blogs (anyone who's ever seen my old Livejournal will testify to that!


Well, at least the black and white bit...

A Tune a Day: Wednesday 25th August

How you been? It's been awhile,
I heard you found someone to make you smile
Stick around, you got a pen? It's just so great to see your face again
Take a chair, pull up a glass, do you remember when I saw you last?
Things have changed, and no regret, I'm glad we got to share a little etiquette

One of these days in a classical way I was just in lust with you
Shutting out fire where the flame of two lie I was just in lust with you
And in the passion that plays in a chemical haze I was just in lust with you

I know you felt it too

'Cos I miss you, but not that much. We only shared a little human touch
Nothing wrong or impolite - you're acting like pleasures got a copyright
So backtrack, get the record straight. We only had a day to intermate
No one signed on the dotted line.
We never said there'd ever be a second time



One of these days in a classical way I was just in lust with you
Shutting out fire where the flame of two lie I was just in lust with you
And in the passion that plays in a chemical haze I was just in lust with you

You know I felt it too

So why the worry, so why the guilt, huh? So why deny a night under the quilt?
So we were lonely, so we agreed:
We only did it for the company

Things is wrong and things is right, things got a way of changing overnight
What's so wrong in turning on? Instead of being alone when the chances are gone

'Cos it was one of these days in a classical way
I was just in lust with you
Shutting out fire where the flame of two lie
I was just in lust with you
And in the passion that plays in a chemical haze
I was just in lust with you

D'you know?
'cos you
You felt
It too

It looks kinda like this...

Have you ever had someone say to you "What does YOUR world look like?" sarcastically when you say something that they think is ridiculous? Or something to that effect? Well, I had that said to me rather nippily recently, so I think I'm actually going to answer that question.

It looks something like this -




In my world colours are hyper-saturated, with darker tinted edges you can see out the corner of your eye. Every day is the first day of autumn and you can faintly smell burning tangerine skins on the air. Girls dress in polka dot dresses and turned up jeans with heart-shaped glasses, red lipstick, and scallop-edged aprons, and all the men have greaser quiffs and bowling shirts. The time of day is always the golden hour of twilight, just when the clouds go pink and your cocktail starts to look extra colourful. Stargazer lillies and orange roses are in abundance and Cheap Trick, Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Lit and Everclear feature heavily on the soundtrack. Brightly coloured muscle cars with flames up the side hold drag races in the alleyways and couples giggle while cracking crab claws on the beach front. In this world I am the perfect size, with the perfect wardrobe, and the perfect teeth to go with my red lipstick and headscarf, with my husband on my arm in his bowling shirt and quiff, smiling at me in a way that makes my heart race as only he can.

I don't think my world is so bad, do you?

Liebe ist fur alle da (or the story of our first wedding anniversary!)

One year on - "To the world you are one person, but to one person you are the world."


So yesterday, the 13th of August 2010, was my hubstand Woody and I's first wedding anniversary. A lot of people have told me the first year is the hardest, but to be perfectly honest we didn't get that atall. Perhaps because we've already lived and acted as though we were married since day dot of our relationship. We've always lived together, dealt with money jointly, all the things that a lot of couples don't start doing until that commitment is made. We don't see it as our first year of marriage but as the 3rd year of our relationship, which is 3 of the happiest years of my life.

As a married friend mentioned in her blog(where she describes marriage beautifully), we know what is it what makes our marriage work. We have fun, laughter, trust, compromise and respect. We take the light things in life lightly, and the serious seriously, and we do it all together with the others help and support. He's my rock, my best friend, my conscience and my voice of reason. We don't live in each others pockets and we do our own things, but we're happiest when spending time with each other because as I said, he's my best friend and there's no one else I'd rather spend time with! We work hard to make and keep each other happy and to make our marriage solid and content. Sure we have our falling outs and hard times, but these are blips on the radar of our happiness, and as such we don't dwell on past arguments or cast things up but move on, because we know what we have is too important to let something silly get in the way.


I love you Woody, oh best beloved xo


NOW! On to our night!

As most of you may know, Woody and I were married in Las Vegas by Elvis last year! Because it was just the two of us and we didn't have any family there we didn't have a wedding cake. I've been dropping hints for pretty much the entire year and I think his mum must have gotten fed up because I got to her house yesterday and was presented with this:

She got us a cake! She even wrote "Woody" on it which I was very touched by (obviously his mum calls him his proper name!). His daughter made the little bunches of roses at the corners too. I love it! We all had a slice each and it's now sitting in my mums kitchen getting slowly decimated by my neices and sisters!

Because we're both foodies we couldn't think of a better way to spend the evening than going for a nice meal so we decided to go our for dinner. At first we couldn't think where because we were torn between wanting to go somewhere familiar which didn't feel very special, and going somewhere new which was a bit worrying incase the food wasn't very good and let the night down. So after browsing 5pm for ages (holla at Mich who works for them!) we decided to go to The Blind Pig on Byres Road in Glasgow. We heard they did a head-to-toe of pork and seeing as we're both big fans of nose-to-tail eating, it sounded perfect.

Oh, and it was.

First the decor is spectacular. As Woody mentioned it all looks like Fee of Niche Handmade decorated it! It looks just like her blog and shop!

Look at the cornices and chandeliers and and and...everything!

Even the menu itself was gorgeous! I actually quite liked the way it was presented, just as one large sheet as opposed to a book. I don't like too much choice on menus so this was quite reassuring!

 We decided to have a big meal seeing as it was a very special ocassion so we had 3 courses and a lovely bottle of Pinot Grigio wine. To start I had the prawn and brown shrimp cocktail (but they had no shrimp which was a shame) which was incredible, and Woody had the smoked mackerel, lemon and herb pate on sourdough bread which was also amazing!

Then we both had the "Head-To-Toe" of pork which included belly, loin, cheek and trotter. It was my first time trying trotter or cheek so I was a little nervous I needn't have been, it was immense!

Stunning presentation!


We both had the whiskey pannacotta and coffee for desert than hopped back on the train home. We considered picking up a bottle of wine for in the house but were both too shattered to think about drinking more so we just headed back to mine. 

A wonderful night was had by all! Here's to many more!

We(eds)

It happens to all of us sooner or later. Even I myself have been guilty of it. It was covered at length in Bridget Jones.

Do you know what I'm talking about? No?

What I'm talking about is couples, previously two separate entities, becoming "we"s. It starts off innocuously enough. When people get together at first, it's obvious they're going to want to do things together, and go places together, that kind of thing. But then things change. Slowly it creeps in and takes over. "I" and "s/he" vanish, replaced by "we". Suddenly you never see your friend alone again, every social outing must include the significant other, or they only ever want you to come over and hang out with "us", never "me". Before you know it your friendship with this person is gone like your pretty Geraniums, replaced by something else entirely. A grotesque singularity that cannot be separated. The We(ed).

This is what's happened with my "best" friend. I use quotation marks because I don't really know I can call her that anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still care for her a great deal and her boyfriend is a sweetheart I have a lot of time for, but that doesn't mean I want to spend all my time with THEM. I want to see HER once in a while. I want HER to come into Glasgow for drinks or lunch, and perhaps to go round to her flat to spend time with HER. But no, it's always "us us us" and it's tiring.

Now, I have lots of friends who are part of a couple. Take the lovely Lisa and her equally lovely husband Dave (Lisa, my apologies for using you and Dave as an example without prior permission! If you wish me to change it to Mr and Mrs X or change my example altogether, just say!). They've been married almost two years (huzzah!) and do almost everything together. Generally when I speak to Lisa about doing something Dave is generally involved as well. But this is not because Lisa in incapable of interacting without Dave, or vice versa. It's because they're the best of friends! Their friends are very much mutual, so it's never a case of one is hanging out with the others friends, they are socialising with THEIR friends. But Dave does things on his own, and Lisa does things on her own. If I was to ask Lisa if she wanted a girlie night out, then Lisa is who I'd have the night out with! The same is true for my hubstand and I. We don't do everything together because one of us feels we HAVE to, but because we WANT to. It's when you can tell a couple do everything together because one or the other cannot do anything alone anymore and has become completely co-dependant that I become frustrated.

I think some of the most important things in a relationship are retaining your sense of self, your independance, and your individuality, because if you don't you'll just become another We(ed).

Are there any relationship issues or quirks that really get YOUR goat?

(I stole the idea for this bit here from pretty Miss P. Her blog is one of my favourites, go check her out!)