After my portfolio viewing with Stuart of Thoughtful, I got to thinking about how my work has been portrayed in the photos I've taken. For the book I really wanted the foods to be in 'setting' but Stuart said it would make a big difference to photograph them in a more minimal setting, so this is what I've done using the mini-cove. I've put a vintage-effect filter over them so they 'match' the rest of my work but I don't even think they need it. The only problem I have is you can see how dirty the mini-cove is in most of them! I'm quite happy with how they've turned out though, mostly, and I'll be able to put them in my portfolio so I don't have to drag the real things around. I'm going to display them for the deadline and possibly in the show as I think it shows a good contrast between the foods in context, out of context and the real things.

Baked by Millie from Millie Connors on Vimeo.

As part of my Final Major Project, I have to make some form of animation to go onto my website. At first I was a bit wary because I've already got quite a bit to do, but after some thought, I've decided that anything that could potentially give me an extra skill and more versatile to clients can't be a bad thing!


So, I've decided to do an animation that will tie in with my FMP, which is a cookbook featuring my felt cakes. It's going to be a stop-motion which goes through all the steps of my Vanilla Cupcake recipe. I am in the process of making all the 'ingredients', which will include eggs, flour, butter etc. I plan to use my DSLR, a tripod, and a long-distance remote, for extra ease and to eliminate camera shake. Rosie has very kindly agreed to let me use her beautiful kitchen and have her as my wonderful model once again for shooting! 


The animation will go through the process of assembling the ingredients together, mixing everything together (following the recipe), spooning the 'batter' into the felt cupcake cases, placing the tray in the oven and the cupcakes 'rising', then taking them out to cool, piping on the buttercream, adding sprinkles and then enjoying at a tea party!


I've still got a few elements to make, but I just wanted to show what I have so far. I'm feeling really optimistic about the animation after my burst of inspiration and I’m really excited to see how it goes. I want there to be a mixture of made and real objects, as with my book, for example I’ve made a felt kitchen timer. I’m not really sure how well it reads as a kitchen timer when it is static, but I’ve made a really quick (and messy!) stop-motion on my phone as an example of how it will move. This will be for when the cakes are baking.

Assembling 'cupcake cases'

Finished cases, two eggs and one cupcake!

Spatula, wooden spoon, kitchen timer, butter, knife.

We've just got back from London, and the trip was absolutely fantastic. After fretting for ages that we wouldn't have enough portfolio visits, I decided to just let it go and enjoy the trip, and we squeezed in so much stuff! We went to DDB Advertising agents, the Nobrow shop, Pick me up, Serpents tail publishers and the V&A Museum of Childhood to name just a few! I will blog about all of these important visits but first, some self-indulgent photos of the trip. I love taking pictures anywhere but I always feel really inspired in lovely places.

Okay, so as you probably know I had a website. I wanted it to be fun, emulate the style of my work and be interesting and informative. However, it looked like a teenager that had been let loose with a really bad website program, which it mostly was. I don't have the knowledge or skills of HTML to be able to make it exactly how I wanted, so I found myself stuck with this website I didn't particularly like. So I decided to delete the entire thing and start fresh.

I finally have some decent photos of the M&S Picnic brief - previously mentioned here - as I said before, I haven't actually entered it into the competition but I definitely think it played a big part in my development and therefore had to be documented!

For the most recent brief, we were asked to choose from any current design competition, so given my obsession with food I opted for the Marks & Spencers’ brief; basically you are asked to design the ultimate picnic so really I couldn’t resist. I don’t think I have really worked to the brief though per se, with the addition of my felt food characters it now seems more like a children’s picnic play set but I suppose that’s something I could look into making in the future!

It was nice to put my felt food characters into context and I have really enjoyed this brief. At first I was stressing out a bit about making it look perfect but then I let go a bit and just let myself have fun with it. I don’t know if I will actually submit it to the competition (and if I do then this version will be a very, very rough prototype; for one the box is smaller than your average lunchbox!) but nonetheless it was a very fun brief and I think it looks good! Something I could think about if I were to remake it for the real deal would be the sort of food that would go in; I have chosen quite traditional fare for this – sandwiches, salad, chicken legs etc – perhaps it could be a bit more interestingly themed – Japanese or Mexican? And also the size of the picnic hamper and the way it will be constructed to be made ecologically friendly.

I set up the mini-cove to take some photos while I was already photographing another brief – two birds, one stone – and I like the way they’ve come out, for some reason I can't upload the photos right now but I will when they're absolutely finished!

Despite the fact that deadlines are looming, I stupidly decided it would be a fantastic idea to do a stall at a craft fair today. Okay, admittedly it didn’t go badly except that I didn’t sell any of our D&AD Christmas cards, which I was really disappointed about because it’s sort of last chance before Christmas now. I went to the craft centre on Friday for a portfolio visit but unfortunately Kathryn forgot to set her alarm clock so she wasn’t there when I got there. We arranged to reschedule however because I was busy making things to sell I missed out on an opportunity for another portfolio visit which was very silly of me because I’ve only got one down so far.

The print fair we did a couple of weeks ago and today were quite similar in the way that I think people were mostly looking to buy functional things rather than prints, which is a shame because Carrie-Anne’s prints are really lovely. I made some Christmas tree decorations which did quite well, put out some of my tote bags, key rings and some new headbands but I didn’t sell any of them! I think it’s just a case of trying not to let it get you down too much and keep trying because eventually you’ll find somewhere that is in your demographic. For example, my Christmas tree decorations were sold primarily to small children that were there with their families! So that was sweet.

I’d really like to try having a regular stall at the Stockport market craft fair because if you’re a regular then you can build up a bit of a fandom and spread your name out there more. Although I am kicking myself a little bit now because I have loads of stuff to do, I am glad I did the stall today because it went a little way into figuring out things like this and what to do for the next one and so on!

Below are the images I created as my response to the compound noun 'ice cream man'; the brief we were set by Lord Whitney. I chose Ice cream man as I wanted to do a larger piece related to the small fiddly work I normally do, it was a lot easier to work on a bigger scale as you don't need to worry about every thread being visible. I also chose it because I love to make sweets related work as most of you probably know! I tried to spend as little money as possible to create the costume; I used ironing board underlay felt from Aldi and cardboard boxes that I took from Poundworld! I sewed him together mostly with my sewing machine which took no time at all and hand sewed the rest. The ‘idea’ behind the ice cream man is that Mr. Whippy was once a regular man but his obsession with frozen treats got too much and he became an ice cream! :) I've included some of the 'making of' photos so you can see the progress.

I really enjoyed this brief; it was so much fun if a little embarrassing. I had to get in the costume at one point and I feel the pain of my poor enlisted friends and family that I forced to post in the silly thing. I met some very grumpy shop owners that wouldn’t let me take any pictures (especially in the Arndale!) and some absolutely lovely ones like the nice people of Sivoris. Sivori has a wonderful history, they’re the best known ice-cream men in Manchester and in the 60s they ran an ice cream factory in Levenshulme (about 5 minutes from where I live), an ice cream cafe and over 40 vans. They were so sweet and let me into the storage room where they keep the vans, which are all absolutely beautiful, each one is so unique. It was so much fun to do something different and work quickly on this project. I love the work of LW and after meeting they just made me like them even more! Such lovely ladies and I'm hoping to go to Leeds to visit their studio very soon.

For the last brief, I was asked to create a zine that will be displayed in Salford Zine Library, so I decided to take this opportunity to focus on what I wanted to direct my work towards eventually. For my personal project I have been making plush toys that I will (hopefully) sell on Etsy, so I wanted to make toys to feature in my zine in a sort of real-life situation! So here are some of the images from my zine;