School Projects [4]

It's been a while since my last school projects update. Of course, I blame what seems like a million assignments we've got in the past weeks and months. I'm working very hard (ahum, most of the time at least) to finish all of my assignments. I still need to finish a 16-page website, a poster, a website-design booklet, a stop motion movie, a logo and a poster design, a one-page website, take 10 pics of desingers/sketchers and I also need to put all of my tasks from the past year in one mind blowing and super awesome 44 pages portfolio magazine though, by... well, the end of this week would be awesome. Totally do-able. It's a good thing I've handed in one of my exam assignments yesterday. Ah the wonderful feeling of delivering on time...

This poster is inspired by COBRA (I hope that's obvious?), since we had to make a poster that would fit a poem that was inspired by a COBRA painting. The poem is by Elien Gheenens, a languages student at Artevelde. (Yay, copyright requirements fulfilled!) My professor told me it fitted the ugliness of the COBRA art perfectly. One of the more questionable compliments I've got this year.

Next up, my folder design for a charity against meaningless violence. We had to design a folder that contained a bunch of items that were up for auction. I was obsessed by hexagonal shapes at that time. I even put hexagonal shapes in one of my website designs, with absolutely no idea how to pull them off. It was hard fitting everything in, but I'm quite happy with the inside of the folder. The front page misses something, not sure what, but it just doesn't fit.

For the same charity we later on needed to design a second folder, this time it was a brochure with some information about the workshops they do and the anti-bullying games they sell. We had to make bullying sort of sexy so the brochure would be appealing for students, teachers and government officials. Pretty sure that's impossible, so I tried making my cover hopeful and combative. This time I like my cover, but I'm not convinced by the inside of the folder (although, I partially blame the very fugly photos we needed to use). We'll get there some day!

So that's it for today, I havn't finished anything else for my Graphic Design course, but I do have some things I want to show you from a course called LODO (it's about making lay-outs on paper and digitizing them). It's also the course I mentioned earlier, you know, the one with the finished exam assignment. And now it's back to designing my website (which I'll probably never dare showing on this blog, since it's not that *understatement* pretty)

Goodknight Simkins

My favourite artist, Greg Simkins, has a new show in LA. Since I'll probably never get to see one of his painting in real life (unless I win earn a shitload of money and buy an original), I just spent my time drooling over time lapse videos like the one below the main painting of his new show. Watch and be amazeballed.

GoodKnight Simkins from Greg Simkins on Vimeo.

Crazy Catlady Tag

A long time ago I got this awesome tag thrown in my direction by Kathleen from Verbeelding. It all started on the Team Confetti blog and now I have the perfect excuse to rant about my pets. Yes, I'm talking about the Crazy Catlady Tag.

Cutest picture of your cat(s)

A picture of all my cats together is a bit impossible. Pixel severly dislikes (hates really) Loki; so getting those two in one picture wouldn't be cute at all. So you'll just have to do with some random cat photo's.

Special characteristics

Hmm, I don't think my cats have any really special characteristics. They do typical daft cat things. Pixel loves her some cardboard boxes, the smaller the better. Schrödinger loves his humans and he doesn't like to be alone. He calls us in the hall or when he's walking on the garden walls towards us, like some weird form of sonar communication, hoping that we won't go away because he's calling out. He also loves snuggling with blankets, socks, towels or slippers if the person who owns them isn't around. Loki likes to walk on our walls. Whenever he needs to take a turn he will, if possibele, take that turn by doing some weird ninja jump on the wall opposite of the turn. If you ever come to our house, you know now why there are a lot of muddy cat paws on our wall.

Describe the sound your cat(s) make

Pixel is a very noisy and loud cat. She miauws intensely and is a bit of a nag. She also scratches doors and makes very loud purring noises (literally she goes "priaaw") when you pet her.
Schrödiger also nags a lot (he goes "praaauw"), but he is also a happy cat, so lot's of spinning happy cat noices
Loki is a quiet cat, he hardly makes any real adult cat noises, he stil goes "miew" very quietly and cutely. Recently he started miewing quietly when he's sitting at the door. Before he just sat at the door, waiting for us to magically sense he was sitting at the door and open it.

Nick-names

Pixel I often call Pixel Speeksel or Speekseltje (which means Saliva in dutch), because it sounds alike. We also call her Fritsel. When we tell people about her I never forget to mention (very lovingly) she's a bitch, because she is. So maybe that also counts as a nickname. My boyfriend often calls het "Monstertje" (little Monster).We also address all of our cats with "cat".
Schrödinger doesn't really have any real nickname, except from "cat". I think it's because he has such a long name and really he reacts to anything you say. Sometimes we call him Dikkerd (Fatty) because he is quite big for a cat and he weighs a lot (7kg!). In the past he was too fat, but he shaped up. :)
Loki is the only cat I never call "cat", because I keep calling him "kitten". I also call him Spookie (best translated as Ghost-y) and Loki-Doki.

Confession

A couple of years ago we came back from our summer city trip, only to find fleas had almost taken over our house. We let the cats sleep in our bed the first night we were back, not yet knowing they were covered in fleas, so the next day I was covered in flea bites (which I'm quite sensitive to, apparently) and we had to buy special anti-flea "bombs" to de-flea each room. Ever since we're quite adamant on treating our cats monthly against fleas.

Tips for crazy catlady's

Buy your cats decent food (no super market brand with too much salt or strange colouring), it keeps them healthy for way longer and it's not really more expensive. De-flea your cats every month when they go outside, you don't want to come back from holiday to find your house covered in fleas. Also make sure you have enough litter trays (we have four for tree cats).

What kind of cat would you be?

A lazy snobby cat, I think. I wouldn't care about what my human slaves would think about me. I'd probably avoid going outside though, climbing things and meeting other cats wouldn't be my thing.

Most awesome cat-related website

Hmm, aparantly I'm not much of a cat lady, since I spent very little time on cat-related sites. I do appreciate visiting I can haz Cheezburger once in a while or check the aww subreddit.

Best Cat-GIF

And also this one.

I tag everyone who has a cat and want to spam the internet with pictures of it. :)

Plans for May

I wasn't planning on writing a "Plans for May" post anymore, because I'm going to be extremely busy with desperately trying to finish all my assignments in time. But it just hit me, that in times of hard and overwhelming work I might just need to push myself to have some fun and do something relaxing. So here's a list of things I would like to do in May:

• Finish all my schooltasks in time
• Enjoy a lazy night of with some cocktails
• Go on a picknick (I didn't do this last month, so it's back on the list)
• Read some magazines
• Make a new illustration or painting
• Eat healthier
• Work on my Russian Travel Journal (write about it, sort & print my photo's and make some cute page in my journal. Also write some blogposts about our journey)

Ik was eigenlijk niet van plan om nog een "Plans for May" post te schrijven omdat ik het zo vreselijk druk heb, dat ik er geen extra plannen wou bijnemen. Maar toen bedacht ik dat, in tijden van hard werk en weinig ontspanning, het eigenlijk niet slecht zou zijn moest ik mijzelf juist wel pushen om af en toe niet bezig te zijn met de gigantische hoop taken die op mij wachten. Bij deze dus, mijn plannen voor mei:

• Al mijn schooltaken op tijd afkrijgen
• Een avondje vrij nemen en van wat zuurverdiende cocktails genieten
• Gaan picknicken (aangezien het er in april niet van gekomen is, staat het opnieuw op mijn lijst)
• Magazines lezen (want ik koop ze nog wel trouw iedere maand, maar ik maak er geen tijd meer voor
• Gezonder eten
• Aan mijn Russisch Reisdagboek werken (er in schrijven, mijn foto's sorteren en laten printen en een paar mooie pagina's in mijn reisboek afwerken. En ook een paar blogposts over onze Ruslandreis schrijven natuurlijk

Happy Feet

When we go on a citytrip we walk. A. Lot. With all that walking around I tend to get sore feet. Not something I particularly enjoy, but because of the soreness of my feet I looked down a lot whilst walking around beautiful palaces and old museums. As you can see, it's not always a bad idea to look down (or up! Russian palaces have amazing ceilings) once in a while.

City-trippen dat is belachelijk veel stappen. Belachelijk veel stappen resulteert bij mij dan weer in pijnlijke voeten. Niet zo tof, maar door af en toe naar mijn pijnlijke voeten te kijken, ontdekte ik dat er daar ook wat te zien viel (tip voor kasteel- en paleisbezoekers: kijk altijd naar omhoog en naar beneden tijdens een bezoek aan paleiskamers, so much to see!)

Moscow in posters

After a week spent in Saint Petersburg we took the train to Moscow. I always had the feeling, whilst talking to other people, that Moscow wasn't really liked. Someone even went as far to call Moscow "the black pit of Russia". Our experience luckily didn't confirm these preconceptions. I also didn't expect the posters to be less typical Russian than in St Petersurg. Apart from the poster designs I also found some really pretty and really strange packaging design (is it fish food or is it dried goldfish you buy?).

Na een weekje Sint Petersburg trokken we ook nog drie dagen naar Moskou. De stad heeft bij bij vele mensen niet zo een positieve bijklank, ook de Russen die we in Sint Petersburg spraken beaamden dit. Moskou zou grijs zijn en volgens één van onze mede-hostel bewoners "the black pit of Russia". Onze ervaring met Moskou strookt gelukkig niet met de verwachtingen. Ook de posters in het straatbeeld voldeden niet aan mijn verwachtingen. Heel wat minder typisch Russisch dan Sint Petersburg vond ik. Naast de posters fotografeerde ik ook nog hele mooie en hele vreemde verpakkingen (is het visseneten of koop je gedroogde goudvis?).