Even though we have amazing places like the Tate and V&A which are free to enter (us Londoners don’t know how lucky we are) pretty much all the major exhibitions are a good £12ish to get into these days. Not scandalous, but not great if you have 5 on your wishlist, like me. Which is why I was super excited recently when I was sent an email about the Art Fund Pass, and invited to receive one, try it out and write about it.

You’ve probably heard of it; I definitely had – but never thought about looking into it. In a nutshell, you can get free and discounted entry to museums and art galleries across the UK, all year round, including (my favourite part) 50% off most major exhibitions, like the new David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A – which I am crazy excited about.

You also get Art Quarterly, the magazine from The Art Fun, exclusive shop, café and catalogue offers, special events, such as lectures, visits and private views (always good) but you also become a member of the Art Fund, helping museums and galleries all over the UK to buy great art for everyone to enjoy. Which is surely what it’s all about right? Art funded by the people, for the people! Yeah! Democracy! Etc.

So in the spirit of list making, these are the exhibitions I definitely 100% need to see. Definitely. One of my resolutions is to do more stuff like this. So here goes:

• David Bowie Is, for reasons there is no need to explain, he is quite literally King of Everything
• Man Ray Portraits, Surrealist photography being a personal favoured sub-genre. He also pioneered Rayographs, don’t you know
• Schwitters in Britain; Kurt Schwitters is probably my favourite collage artist of his time. Very very excited about this one.
• Death: A self portrait, this one is closing soon so I’d better get to it. Death and skulls; say no more. I’m there.
• Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things, The Design Museum always has really slick and well curated exhibitions. This looks pretty obligatory.
• Light Show, ’23 large-scale installations will offer visitors the first UK survey of light-based art.’ I love light based art. Neon, anyone?

Art Fund Passes are only £25 if you’re under 26 (like me… just!) or £53 if you’re a “grown up”. Whatever the hell that is.

Go forth and absorb culture. That’s what 2013 is for.

Got some really exciting news recently; Tea & Crayons, the illustration collective that I am part of, have been asked to take part in UNCONTAINED in conjunction with Shellsuit Zombie in June! For 30 days, 30 different creatives will take over the 55DSL space in the Boxpark, Shoreditch, and we’ve been invited to have the space on the 5th June! So far we are working out exact details of what we will be planning to do, but as it’s Jubilee weekend I think we will do lots of tongue-in-cheek, monarchy/royal themed stuff! We are Tea & Crayons after all so we’ll have some tea on the go, maybe some biscuits, lots of drawing on the walls, and also I’d like to run some drawing workshops, maybe even some portfolio reviews! We’ll also use the space to exhibit our work and sell some prints and other goodies – it’ll essentially be a one-day pop up space full of loads of great things! We want to make it as interactive as possible, get lots of people off the street and involved! It’s a bank holiday tuesday so it’s gonna be amazing. We’ve got the space for about 12 hours ish I think so hopefully it’ll be like a mini street party! We’ve got an event set up on our Facebook page so give us a Like and register your interest here!

The other exciting news I’ve got to share is that you can now buy prints of my work on the Tea & Crayons Etsy shop! I’ve got A4 & A5 prints available at a rather lovely price – take a lil look here! I’ll be adding more things to buy in the near future such as Postcard sets and badges etc.

On Sunday 15th April I took part in the first Illustration & Design Forum run by Shipshape Studios; presenting a talk with advice for aspiring illustrators and designers! As you can imagine, I was absolutely petrified, but once I got going I really enjoyed it and realised public speaking isn’t as scary as you’d think… mostly! My fellow panelists Emma Block & Alice Potter were great, and it was really interesting because we were all coming from different angles – Alice studied textiles but has now moved into illustration, Emma has been lucky enough to be freelance right out of Uni, and then there’s me of course!

I gave a little slideshow of my work (here I am looking all profesh) from University until now – talking about how I got to where I am, my advice on what to do (and not to do) and my personal path from illustration student to in-house graphic designer.

A few of my slides showed my notable commissions to date, and I talked about how they came about (the power of twitter, essentially!). I then moved on to recent work, how I got my first job at Yumi, and some recent work from our Office SS12 in-store scheme.

All three of us had work & prints available to buy (some of mine are above) which was great – and has inspired me to sell my prints on etsy. Watch this space!

I was also given this beautiful handmade card from Astrid of Schwarzie Designs – with a lovely little note on the back!

How pretty?

It was a really fun day and hopefully everyon who attended enjoyed it and got what they wanted from it – I know just how hard and daunting it is straight after Uni, events like this were always really helpful to me in working out what I wanted to do!

The idea was based around the ‘Under the sea’/Metallics trend which has been bubbling away (excuse the pun) this Spring/Summer. Examples of it were at Versace, Chanel, Holly Fulton, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood Red Label – a mini sub-trend which is a much welcome relief over the ubiquitous and done-to-death Nautical trend that seems to crop up every spring.

Chanel SS12

Versace SS12

Alexander McQueen SS12

The list goes on… essentially, shimmering fabrics, mermaid aesthetics and under the sea creatures is the order of the day. Photos from here and here.

So the first stage is to do a little mockup fo the idea – this is what gets approved (or not, as the case sometimes is), and then we go and source props and design the vinyls, etc.

In terms of props, as this was quite a conceptual window, we didn’t want to have too many shop bought/pre made things, so we visited a fabric shop in Lewisham and bought metres and metres of all kinds of shiny, shimmery, swirly fabrics, which became the basis for the hanging props etc.

The jellyfish type things were  a stroke of genius in my (clearly not so) humble opinion. They were the one thing I was worried about looking weird but they came out great.

The hanging mirrored hexagons (in this window) and circles were a brainiwave from my VM manager as she walked to work and really give the window that amazing light-reflecting quality. When the sun shines in you get all sorts of pretty reflections.

Mirrored plinths and silver & gold mirror vinyls on the base reflect the props and shoes giving it an ethereal dimension.

This was one of my favourite windows to work on and I’m so pleased it came out how we envisaged it.

I didn’t take any photos while I was there but there’s a few I’ve borrowed from the wonderful House of Halcyon blog. I’m planning to go back at some point and take some better ones. The redesign has been cleverly coincided with the launch of the SS2012 Designed By… Collection, with the print designs on the range complementing the in-store designs and POS. It really is very well thought through and I love it.

Miss Selfridge creative director Tim Whitmore says, “We’ve been looking at all areas of in-store design for about 18 months.” They employed Belgian design consultant Creneau International to handle the first stage of creating the new concept last year, then it took further development in-house.

Whitmore says that the starting point for the project is “the stock is hero. Everything that we’ve done in the redesign is a canvas for the clothing.”

The 558m2 store will be the first to display a new logo, with the colour changed from red to pink, in edge-lit acrylic signage.

In-store the redesign features new display equipment, a “lifestyle” accessory area, wall displays and “video pods”, designed and manufactured by Kunick Leisure. This will enable shoppers to have an Mpeg (compressed digital movie file) of themselves produced that can be sent on a Miss Selfridge, headed e-mail to six friends:

I love the Cyan/Magenta (in fact I think it’s more of a spot neon than a print magenta, it’s so bright on the POS) solid type with the mirrored floral print. Mirrored and clashing prints are huge for SS12 as we know so it’s great that they’ve reflected this in the design, while still letting the collection speak for itself.

Canvases propped against high level shelves around the store display the press shots as well as repeating print patterns.

Oversized swing tags on foam board at the end of every rail of the Designed By collection really grab your attention. The swing tags on the garments are this design too; it was difficult not to buy something just for the swing tag itself (I have a weakness for well designed tags. Don’t ask.)

A lot of the fixtures have this brushed gold effect, which I love and seems to be quite ‘Miss Selfridge-y’ while staying true to the rebrand. I’m not a fan of the tight and crowded merchandising here but it works ok in this context.

And on to the actual collection. A strong pastel palette with black accents and clashing, opulent prints; I absolutely love it. I wanted this body a lot (below) but it had quite a swimming costume feel to the material and I’m not sure if I could incorporate it into my wardobe so much – I love a body but I’d have to wear it with something high waisted – which means the print would be pretty much lost. Shame.

DESIGNED BY Print Body £25.00

DESIGNED BY Neon Print Vest £35.00

DESIGNED BY Mirror Print Tunic £32.00

Lots of psychedelic mirrored prints. Love.

DESIGNED BY Pleated Maxi Skirt £75.00

DESIGNED BY Dress £50

DESIGNED BY Bird Print Shirt £50.00

DESIGNED BY Bird Pencil Skirt £40

I love this skirt but there’s no way I can pull it off – a pencil skirt on me would have to be a dark colour with the bright print on top; this kind of design on my hips would widen me out no end. Looks fab though.

DESIGNED BY Leather & Chiffon Cutout Dress £90

This, is pure lust in a dress. The pricetag was a bit eye watering but I just could not resist – it’s everything I love and more. Juxtaposition of tough leather and girly pastel chiffon? Check? Tight body with flowing, flattering skirt? Check? Longer leg length but tiny bit of cleavage? Yep. Amazing. Everything I ever wanted. Now I just need somewhere to where it…

DESIGNED BY Dress £85

DESIGNED BY Printed Playsuit £40.00

DESIGNED BY Print Legging £25.00

The leggings are a great entry price point but again, I have to shy away from crazy leggings this season. I love them but when you have legs like mine you just can’t draw attention to them like that. Boohoo.

Buy (what’s left of) The Designed By Collection here.

Miss Selfridge Designed By

“A panel discussion and networking event on careers in the design and illustration industry, with Emma Block, Alice Potter and Rachel Lewis.

During this intimate event, the panel will discuss careers in illustration and design, and will cover crucial aspects such as social networking and marketing yourself. There will be a Q&A session where you will have the chance to ask any questions about careers in the creative industry.

The artists will be exhibiting a selection of their work and it will be available to buy. Refreshments will be available to purchase.”

Tickets are £15 if you buy before 15th March, and as well as talking about our own careers to date, answering questions and generally discussing starting out in a creative career, we’ll also all be selling prints of our work on the day, and Emma Block will be selling and signing copies of her amazing book, Tea & Cake.

This is the first time you’ll be able to purchase archival prints of my work, which is really exciting… I’m hoping to start doing this in the future but for now these will all be exclusive on the day! I will also be creating some brand new work for the event too that you’ll be able to get your hands on for the first time!

All of the panel members have followed slightly different career paths since graduating and it will be great to hear about the different options that are there for aspiring illustrators, and hopefully each panel member can give really varied and interesting insights into how they’ve got where they are today. This is the first time I’ll be giving a public talk on my work since graduating, I’m a bit nervous but so excited! Will be really great to see the faces of tomorrow and hopefully answer some burning questions about how the hell to survive as a creative after graduating! I can’t say I’ve got all the answers (or many lol) but I’ve managed to begin a fairly successful career to date by being employed full time in a creative capacity so I want to show it’s definitely possible.

So get your tickets and hopefully see you there! It’s at The Brook Green Hotel in Hammersmith, which is a 5 minute walk from Hammersmith tube station, and it’s just had a recent refurb so will look lovely!

**UPDATE: FOR DISCOUNTED TICKETS EXCLUSIVE TO MY FOLLOWERS, CLICK HERE** http://illustrationdesign.eventbrite.co.uk/?discount=RACHELTALKS&ebtv=C

“Maybe this was all you had in the fridge. Maybe this was the best dinner idea you could come up with. Ever wonder what another girl in your heels was doing? Let Single Girl Dinner inspire your next dinner for one.”

The exciting and wonderful first issue of Lionheart Magazine has been published and is currently in a bookshop near you! I was asked to create a cherry blossom-themed illustration which I later learned was to accompany an article written by the rather lovely Cherry Healey. Above is my original illustration – the final version was cropped to fit into the editorial.

The magazine is amazing – well done to all the contributors, and of course Helen herself, for making such a wonderful thing. I’m very happy to be a part of it. I haven’t finished reading it all yet, so that’s what my Sunday will be spent doing with a rather large brownie and a rather large cup of tea. Perfect.

Abby Wright has written a great little roundup of some of the standout features and illustrators in the Magazine; including yours truly – check it out.

Click here to read Tantrum Magazine.

Day Dresses by Miss Selfridge
Platforms by Topshop

A/W11 is certainly abundant with the colour right now; there’s a huge trend at the moment for anything jewel coloured; the deep, rich, sister tones that were everywhere during Spring/Summer. In this respect, I’m very glad – colour blocking wasn’t just a one-season trend, but AW11 has updated it with much more grown up colours, accented with deep greys and blacks. I’m also glad because I get so bored with dark, dull colours in Autumn/Winter – it’s my belief that we should dress as brightly as possible during the dark months, otherwise it’s just a neverending procession of dreary grey until march.

Teal is a strange colour to define – it can range from dark turquoise to a more definite green, sometimes even a peacock blue. I’m irrevocably drawn to it, though unsure why; it’s definitely my favourite colour. Everytime I see it in store I’m drawn to it. Right now in my daily wear I’m rocking a teal Zara bowling bag – usually mixing it with pink or mustard. Both good colours to clash with.

Anyone else loving teal right now? Anyone hate it? Got any other colour obsessions?