Nail polish & Eye palette – Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2015

Click below to watch ↓

In collaboration with CollectPlus, who kindly helped produce this video!

While I’d like to think I have modified and refined some of my online-offline behaviour, Instagram is one beast I still have trouble leaving at the cloakroom at restaurants; one that compels me to publicly perform tai-chi moves above the table that makes my partner shrink into his collar in embarrassment. It also means I’d have deliberately allowed perfectly fine, freshly-cooked food to cool down in the expense of a birds-eye snap of the table. If there’s such a thing as a reverse-microwave, I’ve just invented it. (Is this why mega-grammers just eat salad?) Funny thing is though, it works. Flat-lays statistically ‘do’ better on Instagram and this is probably why I, along with about ten thousand instagirls out there, own a thing of roll-up marble.

There are no equations, or rules – in fact, I’m going to be honest and say nobody really seems to know what ‘flat lay’ means (about 5 gillion results when searched #flatlay, including the odd selfie) – but my trick is to either capture it in the most organic form (i.e come as you are or go super-regimental and curate the crap out of the snap from ground zero. (WOW I poet?) Here’s a video I did with CollectPlus showing you the latter. At the end of the day, it’s not too bad as long as your partner is wearing a turtleneck, and hey, so far it’s the only superpower we’ve been able to obtain = flying 2-feet above stuff. (Coming soon, Avengers: Age of #NoFilter.)

Also, it this all makes me a PRO, then I assume PRO actually is short for ‘PRObably needs a life outside the internet’, which means I am PRO everything in the entire universe.

Click above to watch ↑

In collaboration with CollectPlus, who kindly helped produce this video!

Two things I learned from my graphic design degree at CSM: how to write a thousand words between Liverpool Street and Holborn, and how the triangle shape can be so fresh and so friggin’ hipster at the same time. Bookbinding, sadly was one of the workshops that I managed to put off as acting Admiral Webdesign sitting on my high-horse that only insisted on pulling the Live Online broadband-a-wagon. I thought all I needed was a Wacom tablet and a keen eye for pixels, and my hands would ever be clean of ink or glue. But in my first year, I met Ellen – a fellow flâneur, for those who remember – a deft hand in all things hand-crafted, and a keen collector of rare paper and sketchbooks.

Over one bleary-eyed all-nighter at her house, she effortlessly demonstrated how to bind a book while fixing a midnight snack, and I’ve been putting some easy tools to good use and making my own sketchbooks ever since. Granted of course, I had filled most of mine with wireframing scribbles, hex codes and the occasional existential babble of a 22-year-old, but some of those notebooks I remember using until the book tape wore off. So, here’s a tutorial on bookbinding, as quick and simple as Ellen first taught me. I partnered up with CollectPlus, a nifty service I use and abuse often – especially when I rock up to the nearest corner shop looking like a hot mess with not a smear of make-up on and smelling of cheesy Dorito’s, demanding for my box of stationery. I wish I could’ve gotten Ellen herself to explain things better, but you’ll have to do with me for now; she’s currently illustrating a book on Autism, while I’m picking my nose making fart jokes (aka fashion-girl noise like ‘omg shoes‘).