It’s begun.. A week since we got home from our trip to Japan and Thailand (and a hint of China) and I’ve only made a tiny dent in the 1500 or so photos I took while we were traveling. Not all are worth sharing of course, but there are still plenty that are. I’m going to try to post a bunch every week until they’re finished. Here is our arrival and first day in Tokyo. There are captions and some descriptions for each photo, so you can find out where they were taken.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and sadly it’s been a while since I’ve made anything. I mucked about a bit last weekend though, starting with a sharpie + paint doodle, which inspired me to carve out a new linocut block print. The silver circle things with rectangles are the block print in this image. I worked with it a bit in photoshop and made something which may work for a fabric design on spoonflower.com, a neat site where you can upload and produce your own fabric designs. I will be fun to have some of my own fabric to make some clothes and such with! The second image is the potential fabric design.

I really need to get a dressform so as to show this stuff better, but here’s a couple of my newest upcycled pieces. Coda 004 was a plain purple hoodie. The hood wasn’t great, and the zipper was broken, so I morphed it into a bolero.

The grey dress was a plain hooded dress, also with a bad hood. I cut the hem off at an angle, removed the hood, and cut a window out above the bust. I made use of some vintage lace on both the bolero and the dress, as well as a section of pleats from a pin stripe mini skirt which you can see on the bottom of the dress. It’s a fun little detail to dance with as it fans out while you boogie!

I found this great metal bird on an ugly old worn out bolo, and took a liking to a chain that had some potential to be worked into something more funky. After working both items into reusing some old pleather material, I must say I’m quite happy with the result!

Coda 002

I’ve had a pile of old clothes sitting in a bag for a long time, with the intention of reworking it. My basic sewing experience doesn’t get me far in new designs at this point, but it makes it possible for me to work with pre-made items. A couple of weekends ago I finally started playing around with a few things, and was pleasantly surprised at the end of the day! I wanted to share a couple of the items on here.

The first is a hooded tank which consists of part of a black hooded tank, and part of a tank top that has funky artwork on it. I didn’t like the front of that one, so I just made use of the top shoulder area on the front and kept the back. I also redesigned the hood to incorporate a portion of the discarded front of the coloured tank, and lined the hood with some remnant corduroy fabric.

The second piece is made from the remnant corduroy and some left over pleather. I wanted a roughly made fabric arm cuff that fastened easily with velcro.

This series of upcycled clothing and accessories will be named and numbered using the musical term “Coda”. (eg: Coda 001) Some definitions in case you’re not sure what I’m taking about:

• Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece (or one movement thereof) to a conclusion.
• Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value.

This is a beginning of a new tangent for Side B Design, so keep your eyes peeled for new work! I’ll be starting a pattern drafting course next week which will no doubt expand my skills and variety of work.

My immune system has decided to ring in the new year by letting a nasty cold in… So here I am sick at home putting a much needed post up onto the site.

I haven’t created anything new yet this year so I thought I’d put in one of my favourite photos from last year.This was a happy accident with my Holga camera in Havana last March. My film got stuck and I had to open the camera and re-roll inside Scott’s sweatshirt, but some light definitely got in. The result is a strangely beautiful, eerie and old looking image.

For our halloween party tonight, we went with a post-apocalyptic theme..for me this meant paying homage to the game Fallout 3. I went super geeky and made food labels based on the ones found in the game and set up our bed to be suitable for a Raider den.

Thank dog it’s Friday. Too bad I am home sick and can’t enjoy it, but I guess that gives me time to putter with my blog.

I went out a few weeks ago and decided to take blurry pictures. This was inspired by my realization of how beautiful blurry vision can actually be, when I took off my glasses one night while camping and observed the star-full sky. Some of the photos turned out to be kind of pretty, and I’ll probably use them for digital art at some point.

It’s been much longer than a week since the last time I did this post! Enjoy.

I’m back! and here to show you where my creativity went for the last few months… It went into wedding projects, since I was trying my best to do a mainly handmade, cut flower free wedding. It turned out pretty well. Click on the images in the gallery below if you so desire. I have to give credit to our friends and family for helping me put the centre pieces and flower boxes together!

The numbers are hand painted and stamped with an original lino-cut print on the backs. Snack bags are hand printed. Photos of work have been treated with ‘vintage’ digital processing.