1211th
Jun

Hello internets, long time no see! I do actually have a large backlog of entries about gigs, jewellery and general goings on, but the backlog got even more backed up as time went on and I couldn’t be bothered to sort through it all. I’ll attempt to get up to speed over the next few weeks.

So, what’s new? The website design for one. I gave it a newer, more streamlined feel and also merged in my flickr feed as I felt it was stupid to upload my photo portfolio into two separate places. I also now have a real live home page, with flashy banners, scrolling photo tickers, social widgets and a little box that shows my weekly most played album from last.fm (which I hand coded myself, are you proud mum?). I still haven’t got a proper online shop back up yet, due to me battling to get Magento installed on my server and then trying to figure out how it works. But Folksy and Etsy are doing ok for the moment, and I have all my stock listed on them so nothing is missing.

Jewellery wise, there have been lots of new bits over the past few months, including a Supernatural themed Impala necklace which manages to sell out as soon as I receive a new batch. I also redesigned the TARDIS necklaces to match the canvas bags, and I’ve been pressing on with screen printing things.


(Woo, face and TARDIS)

Gigs; there have been plenty, and photography has temporarily ground to a halt as I’m not happy with how GigJunkie are operating these days. The only gigs I’ve managed to pro-shoot have been small ones or for friends. Fingers crossed I can get back into that soon.

So sit back, enjoy, and please keep checking in as the entries below should start to appear.

It’s been a busy past few days for me as I’ve had a friend over to stay and it feels like we have been over the whole of London! On Tuesday we went to the Olympia for the Doctor Who Experience and I’m glad we went during a weekday as it meant we had a lot of time and space (hah) to look over everything. It started off with an interactive adventure where you join the Doctor on a mission to find his TARDIS and stop the Daleks, and it really was so much fun. I am not ashamed to say I pushed a child out of the way so I could help pilot the TARDIS.. After it has finished you get to look around an exhibition filled with props and costumes from the old and new series, and we spent a very long time just enjoying it all. Once that was over it was the cursory trip to the gift shop where I delightedly bought an eleven doctor mini figure set to go with my larger figures at home, plus a few pencils and badges and the like. We took the overground to Shepherds Bush and spent some time wandering around Westfield where I got to indulge two of my shopping favourites: MAC and Lego. I picked up a nice MAC holiday gift set and a Lego Harry Potter set, plus some Lego keyrings for Christmas presents. Once we had exhausted all our money we went upstairs to the cinema and saw The Ides of March, which I enjoyed a lot despite the fact it was some kind of political thriller.

The next day we went on our customary trip of Camden and because I couldn’t find a pair of converse that I wanted to buy, I decided to get my tragus pierced instead. It seemed logical in my head. Not much pain anyway, and I’m very pleased with my new bit of metal. After that we headed to Oxford Circus where I tried on a lot of things that looked terrible in Primark, and bought some more toys and Lego in Forbidden Planet because I cannot help myself.

On Thursday we decided to be a bit cultured so we stopped by the Museum of Natural History. It was weird to walk around because I have bits and pieces of memories from childhood visits, and of course all the dinosaur skeletons seemed so much smaller. We had fun taking photos of the weirdest things we could find and sending them to another friend. We did try to visit the V&A museum afterwards, but got bored quite quickly so we went to Hyde Park instead for some hot chocolate by the lake. All too soon it was over, and there ended my touristy visits of London for another few months.


Trying on the sorting hat in a Harry Potter pop up shop in Harrods.


Massive lego portrait

113rd
Nov

I have a busy week next week as a friend is coming to stay, so we will be indulging in a lot of shopping, pubbing and museum-going. We’ve also booked tickets to the Doctor Who experience, which I am very excited about, and I’ve managed to get more tickets to see Never Mind The Buzzcocks being recorded! I’m hoping we’ll have a better guest host than last time, when we got the atrocious Tim Westwood.

I’m also very excited about tomorrow as not only am I going to see Patrick Wolf at the Roundhouse, I’ve also somehow won a meet and greet with him! I have no idea what I’ll say, but I’ll take my camera along and something to sign and hope for the best.

This week I have mostly been enjoying my new lovefilm subscription with lots of streaming films, and planning a redesign of my website. It’s looking good so far although there is still a lot of work to be done. We’ve also upgraded our broadband to 50Mb fibre optic so that’s something to be looking forward to as well.

I met David Tennant!

That is pretty much all me and Nikki said for the whole of Sunday. It was so exciting! I wasn’t originally going to get anything signed as I was having my photoshoot, but I decided to pay for an autograph and let Nikki go up and get it as a thank you for helping me out on the stall. I got my Season three dvd cover signed and it looks great.

The rest of the convention was the usual chatting to randomers, seeing odd costumes and confusing guests with our dancing, particularly our wonderful ‘Lovecats’ dance. We didn’t make a great profit as it was fairly quiet, but David Tennant! My new doctor necklaces also went down a treat and I should be putting them up in the shop this weekend. (Remember kids, they are Paul McGann approved!)


David was absolutely lovely. I was near his 1000th photo of the day and he was still lovely and smiley.


Arthur was sweet but I think he was a bit overwhelmed at being in a hall full of fangirls, so he was quite quiet.


Despite our serious faces, Paul was in a great mood and complimented me on my doctor necklace. I had this shoot right after my David Tennant one, so it was my two favourite doctors one after the other! I was quite a lot excited.


Nik got to fight Darth Maul


The fantastic view from our table..

I have invested in a screen printing kit as my old method of stencilling canvas bags took far too long. Hopefully this means I can churn out a lot more of the TARDIS bags and actually put some on sale online for once! I’ll be working on some new designs and maybe tshirts too.

This weekend was the London Film and Comic Con, and we had an absolute blast selling our jewellery there. Massive thanks to anyone who bought something from us, or just stopped by for a chat, you are all awesome! We sold loads of jewellery and made even more than at the MCM Expo, plus I got to meet some awesome celebrity guests.

On the Friday morning Mark Sheppard (Crowley from Supernatural) was wandering around and came over to look at the stall and say hi. I gave him a lollipop and squeed internally! Then on Saturday morning Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) was walking round and stopped to ask if the grenade necklaces were real and inquired if I made everything myself. On Sunday we got a very special guest in the form of the Doctor, who was kind enough to take some photos with our products!

Unfortunately I didn’t take any more photos because I’m lazy, but I do also have my photoshoots with Karen Gillan and Christopher Lloyd. I’ll scan them sometime this week so you can see my hilariously excited face.

This Sunday I’ll be selling at Kiki’s market at the Rag Factory just off Brick Lane. Come along if you are around!