Houses - Tshirts - Xbox- Fashion

My online presence has been muted lately by the ongoing presence of stuffs...

•House

We've been in the process of house hunting for a little while now, and we managed to find a property that ticked many box's. The offer was accepted, our mortgage has been granted and we are just waiting for the paperwork to be double checked before we get our move in date. Each chapter of my life has been a ruddy good read so far, and I've got a feeling that this next one is going to be a real page turner. Especially as I now have the perfect proof reader ;)

The house it's self has oodles of character, and some nice intact Edwardian features. It has the all essential mysterious loft that hosts the remains of a 1930's workbench - I just know it's got a secret compartment somewhere! Ani has her large (and very pink) bathroom, and I get both a shed AND a garage, where much growing, sculpting, fixing, polishing, constructing and general boyishness will be taking place =) 

•T-Shirts

I've finally swallowed the risks and am pushing forward with my T-shirt designs.

The brand will be called Geeksticals and the .com is coming soon (although I may need a hand making the site - eh hem) Two hurdles have been jumped this week, the first being I  placed my first order for a design to be made. The design is based on a local May bank holiday  event in Rochester called 'Sweeps' which attracts people from all over the country.

It is strictly limited edition and only 30 are being made with 2 available sizes M & XL (15 of each) and they will be on sale for £10 at a few vendors in the high street. But as a special offer to friends, if you fancy one, let me know asap and I'll keep one aside for you for only £8! Bargin :) Here is the design, I'll post a picture of the real article when they arrive on FB.

Limited Edition - only 30 exist!

As things have been moving so quickly I had yet come up with a logo, so this was the second item to be accomplished.  I like it when the brand name becomes the logo, so working with that concept here is how it developed:

The final stage just has a few tweaks to make it usable as a stencil, as all the labels/tags will be handcrafted. I'm designing more prints each week, and when I have another 10 that I am happy with I shall post them (hopefully on the new website too) so watch this space!

•Xbox Mk1

Due to the house buying situation I've been on a very strict budget, which means I haven't bought a new game for my 360 in 3 months - with so many great games out there, this has been absolute agony. To suppress the new game itch, I decided to dust off the old xbox and mod it up. This is something I first did a couple of summers back with a buddy, but I never got it working quite right. Fortunately shareware, emulators and tutorials have all developed over the past two years and within no time at all, a fresh breath of life has been restored to my dusty Mk1. I now have a massive suite of SNES, Megadrive, MegaCD, 32X & N64 games at my disposal and am loving the flood of nostalgia that kicks in every time I load up a new/old game. To make the experience even better, the emulators make use of the xbox's inbuilt filters which make the games look as fresh as they did all those years ago - happy times :)

•Fashion Photography

Despite spending quite a bit of each week in a photographic studio, I do not get that many opportunities to be creative. So when I was asked if I'd like to take pictures of this years Fashion Design garments - with a teams of stylists, great models, plus hair & makeup - of course, I said yes!  As usual our backs were up against the wall, we only had two days to get through quite a lot of garments, but teamwork won the day and much to our relief (and surprise) everything went smoothly.

Taking inspiration from 1920's studio lighting, I let my instincts take over and had a great two days. I had forgotten how great it feels to do a big shoot, to have confidence in your own experience when you can feel the nervous expectance of those around you. It felt great to be in charge of the studio again - I really should try and shoot more often. There are hundreds of pictures to sort through as yet, but here are a few non-edited teasers :)

I shall post again soon as time is against me today, but next up will be motorbikes & boot fairs plus more of my ramblings - cheers for reading =]