Gemma Correll started the “What I Wore Today” flickr group for people who love drawing and don’t really like posting photos of themselves to the internet. I think it’s such an awesome idea, even though you know I’m not shy about posting photos of myself!! Today’s Fanciful Friday is all about illustration, and how people interpret themselves through drawing. I think it’s fascinating! Gemma also created a blog to show off her favourite drawings from the group.

⇒ KatieGreenBean‘s cello is a beautiful, but heavy accessory!!

⇒ stevesubg does the most incredible illustrations of his outfits, combining his lovely technique with typography.

⇒ I love emma_brown‘s shirt!

⇒ The border around mennajenkins is so lovingly made, it makes me happy!

⇒ neithlocay‘s outfit is deliciously fancy. It reminds me of Nana Mouskouri!

⇒ Andddd we have me. This was my first attempt at drawing my outfit with my cheap graphics tablet, and it was nothing special… just your typical freelancin’ couture!

Surprise! It’s Friday! I really have no idea where my week went, but I suspect you’ll find it under a pile of eraser leavings and pencil shavings. I keep a tin full of them, I’m not even kidding. As for the picture, I wanted to share just how fancy I am. Even when brushing one’s teeth one must maintain a semblance of fanciness. Mine can be found in the spittle of toothpaste on my upper lip. D: If you’re on dailybooth you should add me!

Enough of that, how about this:

• Esther Coombs does amazing doodling on tea cups. If you know me, you already know that I’m so hot for teacups AND doodling, so I was rather struck with the vapours when I came across Esther’s work. You can buy her doodly crockery on etsy but this lovely specimen is long sold :(

• I love most of Steven Meisel‘s photographs, and this one is tres fancy. Neat hedges? Check. Black gown? Check? Incredible headwear? Check? Secateurs? Check. Rightio, let’s go bask in our fabulousness.

• This is my type of coffee table book. You can call me an ironic jerk, I don’t care.

• My lovely friend Kathleen, who is a fellow fancy lady, took this photo with her iPhone. I was shocked. What kind of world do we live in where most of us can have access to such amazing technology? A PRETTY AWESOME ONE. Who’d want to live in the past? Certainly not me. Of course, that’s my whimsyfscking type over the top, I couldn’t resist!

• These are my feet, totally reeking of fancitude. Sorry about the blurry picture old chaps, but I don’t have a snazzy iPhone :( I went to the shops and people stared at me. This is just how I roll. I can’t decide whether to call this look “Nana Chic” or “Nana Glam” – how about you decide?

You know those gorgeous images you find of vintaged flowers, betraying some kind of longing on the part of not just the creator, but whoever posted it? Well, I took some photos in my friend’s garden, and after having a fiddle in Photoshop they reminded me so much of this sort of image, as well as the image below, that I decided to apply my sardonic wit to the photos I took. The only problem was, that I had wanted to use an uppercase sans serif vs script like the creator of the image below had done, but I couldn’t remember who had done it, let alone where on the internet I’d seen it!

field by f-letter

I decided to forge ahead and have a play, regardless. It wasn’t until just half an hour ago, many hours after I posted the finished images on flickr and tumblr, that I finally struck upon the images that f-letter created, and I was stunned at how similarly I had picked the typefaces. I think I have a great memory for lines and shapes, but not much else :P

This month has been crazy busy: I’m setting up a business with a friend as well as trying to keep on top of all my commissions and personal art work. It’s definitely wonderful being wanted!

I have been absolutely OVERWHELMED with responses to “How to love yourself in 8 really hard steps“, so I want to maintain some of the body image vibe in my blog from now on. In this post, I want to share one of my secrets to feeling confident and loving myself – and it’s just a simple matter of taking a photo of myself! I have been following flickr groups like wardrobe_remix, Fatshionista and No More Mumus for a while, and on the odd occasion (when I’ve remembered) I submit a photo. I really love to put my outfits together, and even though I don’t have any kind of budget for designer stuff, I still feel great about myself when I wear things I feel comfortable and awesome in. My main failing has been consistency – often I’m running late enough as it is to be bothered with pulling out my tripod, or trying to get Nick to take a photo of me where my head isn’t cut off!

I think photographing and documenting our outfits has so many benefits. I’m slowly learning to pose myself – something I’ve always had difficulty with. Usually I’m the girl who pulls a face in a photo! I think photographing your outfit can also help you to find peace with your body shape and how you look to everyone else. I take inspiration from other flickr outfit posters, especially from the plus size groups, and find myself becoming bolder because of the influence I take from people like tootsicle, 52 stations, Girlchile and pining for the moon. I’m also an avid reader of The Musings of a Fatshionista and Young, Fat and Fabulous – Christina and Gabi are amazing fashion role models for me, who take HUGE risks. I bought wet look tights the other day just because I heard Chris chanting “DO IT DO IT DO IT” in the back of my head.

So from now on, I’m going to make a concerted effort. My friend Sonya, of the No More Mumus blog, really inspires me because she consistently takes photos of her amazing outfits and posts them to flickr. I don’t go out a whole heap, but I’m pledging to myself that when I do dress up – I’m going to take a photo. Hell, if I’m going to the shops and I’ve pulled something together that makes me feel great, I’m going to take a photo of that too!

Some tips for taking photos of your outfits:

• Use a tripod if you have access to one.
• If you don’t have access to a tripod, use a human being who can take directions well.
• If you don’t have a tripod or a human being, find somewhere you can prop your camera at about eye height.
• If you have a remote, use it! Disguise it by putting it up your sleeve, or putting your hands on your hips.
• If you don’t have a remote (my new camera doesn’t!) use the 10 second timer.
• Turn your camera around so it’s of portrait orientation. We want to see your head and your feet!
• Try to put yourself in a place where the light is behind the camera, not you.
• If you take photos during the day, and you’re in a well lit area, don’t use the flash. If you can’t avoid the flash, that’s ok! Just ensure we can see the details, colours and textures in your outfit.
• Try not to have distracting things in the shot. I’m pretty guilty of this, so I’ll forgive you quicker than others :P
• Take photos from a few angles – front, side and back! And include detail shots of brooches or your shoes. I love outfit posters who do this!

I have been so busy lately, but I want to tell you about a few purchases I’ve made in the last few weeks – from We Love Colors, Yours Clothing and Evans. But I need to create a few outfits first to fully illustrate them – so hold tight, they’ll be coming soon!

Ms Annarchy posted one of Kate Doodles‘ drawings on tumblr just before, and I was struck by the fabulous line work and shading so of course I followed the link and found an amazing collection of work on her flickr account!

Bird bath by Kate Doodles

A bird in a tea cup! I’m dead from cute!

House of Holland, London Fashion Week by Kate Doodles

Her fashion illustration is equally compelling… I dream of being able to manipulate watercolour like this!

Want more?
Her etsy shop – kwilson544
Her blog – little doodles

Here are my favourite picks of the bunch over on the Drawing Day group on Flickr!

by Michelle Mia Araujo

This is my favourite drawing of this set. I wish I could favourite it 100 times over! More Drawing Day/ Flickr contributions are behind the cut.

Stay tuned for the Drawing Day/ Red Bubble post!

by troyparke

by pixohammer

by kuzucomedia

by Samisio

by Métissage

by oteteph

by m!tzi

by Dotmund

by Zari ( justZHM)

by Asja B.

by rabbit_portal

Recently I haven’t felt very cheery – too much introspection coupled with an RSI flare up make for an unhappy Natalie. I do love flowers though, and I really wish I lived in a place with a garden full of my favourite flowers (or next to a flower market) so I could have fresh flowers every day.

I found these flowers on flickr and they’ve provided me not only with a bit of cheer, but also with some inspiration too. I hope they can do the same for you!

The best thing about these flowers is they never die! Perfect for a black thumb like me… I am cursed when it comes to tending flora.

This strangely moves me… and by the way, how amazing is it that you can now post videos on Flickr?

I found it on TwitBuzz, after rediscovering my own neglected Twitter account. Join me! It’s (reportedly) the cool thing to do. Maybe one day I’ll Twitter about something incredibly embarrassing and instantly regret ever signing up for an account. And then I’ll Twitter about that regret.

I have heard rumours that Twitter is addictive, but I’m still not convinced. Maybe because I don’t have my sms messages enabled. Maybe because I’m not following enough people. I’m not sure what the magic formula for Twitter addiction is. Perhaps if I give it a chance, and let it invade my life, I will have no choice but to succumb?

In a Billy Connelly way of doing things, this brings me back to the above video. There’s absolutely no way that there can ever be a “no news day” in this era, not when people can bug you with their micro-blog posts on your mobile phone!

My mum has an awesome collection of all the cards she has ever been given. From her birth til now – including her 21st birthday cards and wedding and engagement cards. She got them all out for me yesterday and I snapped some pictures with my phone camera. I grew up being influenced by illustrations like these!!! I just wanted to be able to share these pretty cards with everyone, because I’ve always loved them.

This is one of the most special things in there. It’s a card, hand screen printed, by one of mum and dad’s friends Sieg.

He also made this mulberry paper himself! It was used to wrap their engagement present. I nearly wet my pants when I saw it yesterday, it’s in such nice condition!

Unfortunately, mum has stuck all these cards in the scrap book, which means they aren’t in mint condition, which is sad :(

If you want to see more, head on over to the set on flickr.

My co-worker and I joke about Web 2.0, threatening to rebrand one of our major clients with the current Web 2.0 flavour of super slick sans serifs, bubbles and aqua patinas. But it remains in the cosmos of nerdy design “in jokes” – we’d never present it as a viable branding or identity solution because it is too faddish and ephemeral for any kind of product with all the hallmarks of consistency, tradition and relevance.

Unfortunately, the impression the Photoshop family brand presents is that the product is faddish and dismissive of all the other really awesome and cool things you can do with Photoshop’s tools. Of course, this isn’t the logo for Photoshop CS3, but Photoshop’s whole family – CS3, Elements, Photo Album and Lightroom.

I think this will be cause for even more whinging from Adobe users, since many hated the concept for CS3′s “periodic table of elements” icons. I actually think the icons are successful, and that the theory behind them is solid.

The most important thing for all the discerning designers to remember is that Adobe are not marketing and branding experts – they’re programmers, and they continue to set the benchmark for graphic design, desktop publishing and illustration software. We’re all still going to use their products, and people are going to be creating and following fads with this very software for years to come!!

The Good Design Salve!

I love flickr‘s identity, and I love that they’ve given the brand’s mark scope for including it in community – for example in yesterday’s flickr logo for Talk Like a Pirate Day. I even love that all throughout their alpha, beta, delta etc phases they let people know what the status was in the logo. It’s Web 2.0 – but relevant and human.

Props, snaps and well played guys.