Whew, Ugh, Sigh, Mrrrh

Yesterday was yet another disappointing day in that I presented my last project to a rather lukewarm response from my tutors.

This project was supposed to be a fun, no-stress project. But any project is stressful when you're supposed to "try a bunch of different things" and you have very little money to do so. It's funny how much experimentation costs, really. Let's say you are going to try a screen print on 10 different types of fabric. Unless you have stores of fabric laying around in your house, you have to go out and purchase those 10 fabrics, and enough to try your print a few different times on each one.

Generally you would want to try several different kinds of chemical processes on each of those fabrics, so you buy certain binders, chemicals, and fun things like foil, flocking, etc etc. By the time this fun little project is over, you look back and realize you've managed to spend 75 GBP without even trying. Seeing as how I have 1pound in my bank account, experimenting of this nature wasn't really in the cards for me this time around, and I think I am going to get a low grade because of it. But I mooched off of friends and tried really hard to do the best I could.

In an annoyed and defeated moment, I threw all my work into my locker and left it there, so I have no photos to show you. But I will grab the stupid thing next week and share some of my work. For now, here's the cranky burnout velvet scarf I did. It was supposed to be far more complicated, but I had a lot of trouble with the burnout. it didn't quite burn correctly and so I spent hours scrubbing it, and it still looks rough in places. It has a vintage look to it in person though, so that's alright. I wanted to try a bunch of other things on top of the velvet burnout, but frankly I ran out of time and energy near the end. I also found that almost everything I did to it really made it look grandmotherly, instead of simple and austere. So I opted for minimalism this time around:



In other news, I was informed that some of my work was being poorly imitated by some others. Which is flattering, and doesn't really bother me. But it was cute to see some of my friends get up in arms about it on my behalf. :)

I am just glad that this term is more or less over. I am so in need of a break.

My friend and I were discussing what CSM really stands for, if not Central St Martins. I've decided that it is either Catering to Sleep-deprived Masochists, or Confusing Students More.

The strange thing is that although I am physically exhausted, I am dying to get back into the print room and play with techniques more. I want to make things. Despite my anger at the school and Evil Tutor Man, I am still dying to make things. I think that's a good sign.