Little Lego Christmas Tree ★

so... dudes and dudettes, the time has come at last for me to reveal just what it is that i've been working on for the past few weeks...

are you ready?!

Tah- dah...

that's right folks... i've spent the past 3 weeks designing and building a Lego Christmas Tree!

you see, THIS is why i couldn't tell you what i was building and what colour the Lego was!

so shall i explain it all..

i shall indeed!

about 3 weeks ago i got a message on Twitter asking if i'd be willing to help on a project for Isle of Man Advertising (you can find out all about them HERE - IOM Advertising)

so i gave them my email address then a message came through asking if i knew anyone that would be interested in helping to build a Lego Christmas Tree...

so i volunteered!

i worked with Carroll and Martin to come up with a design and a build plan so big thanks to them for all their help throughout the project (and for putting up with my tantrums)

so after a few meetings at their offices they got the lovely Katie to cart a big box of Lego (1900 bricks) up to me at college and i got to work...

so thank you to Katie as well for delivering it to me

so after a good few hours playing and messing around with the Lego, this was the first EVER design i came up with

the problem was, they all liked my design but they didn't think i'd be able to build it with the bricks supplied!

i got really upset but at the end of the day it was up to them so i had a go at building the one from the designs they'd sent with the Lego

it was impossible to build!!!! 

those are the plans in the background behind the mini model tree, it was just crazy! i could not build it!

and i used to have to do things like this all the time during the IB at my last school!

it made no difference, i couldn't build it

so...

i was allowed to have another go at MY design

so after many emails and photos going back and forth we finally settled on THIS design

so last Friday, before i went away to Coventry, Carroll from IOM Advertising came up to college to collect me + the lego and i re-built it all at their offices in Douglas

then obviously i went to Coventry and Birmingham for a few days (SUPER DUPER trip by the way!)

and on Thursday morning i got up at 3:30am (yikes) to travel to Birmingham airport for my flight back to the IoM.

i landed at 9:25am, Carroll arrived at 9:30am with the Lego and that was that

she helped me unpack it all and we tried to work out how the plinths would work but then she had to go back to the offices

it was her birthday as well! so Carroll, Happy Birthday again for Thursday xX

then it was down to me to get it all built in time (no pressure!!!)

it was SUCH a long day! i literally spent the whole day sat on the floor by my plinths (big thanks to Bill at College for supplying them) building up the tree and moving bits about

this is how it looked early on in the day... a lot like a Pagoda with 7 tiers

eventually (at around 5:30pm) it was FINALLY finished! and we ended up with one big 5 tier tree and two mini ones

also, big thanks to the little boy and his mother that stopped to help me build the 'fence' around the bottom of the tree at about 4pm x

and big thanks to Rosemary Walters from Save the Children who kept popping by to make sure i was still awake and to see if i needed anything, thank you x

and that's it, my little tree is finished at last!

it's been a hectic few weeks i can tell you, 

i've had to keep it all on the hush hush for the past few weeks but the grand opening of the Festival was last night so... now i'm allowed to tell you all!

i took my friend Charlotte (check out her blog here - Loretta Jane's Vintage Boutique) along last night to look at all the trees

every year at Ronaldsway Airport at the Isle of Man, they hold this 'Festival of Trees' to help raise money for 'Save the Children'

local schools and businesses take part and enter trees into the festival and members of the public can vote for their favourite trees and post donations to the charity

it's a great event and always draws a lot of people to the airport to see all the trees.

there are 23 trees in all this year and i have to say, there are some really fun trees dotted about the place.

like the 'Manx Farmers Union' one, entirely made of Manx produce, totally genius

and the Manx Museum's 'i-museum' tree, covered in CD's, vintage film slides, photos and cameras

you can see the King William's College (my old school) entry as well in the background. the one with the little green and silver trees.

the KWC Chapel Choir were also at the Festival opening singing lots of lovely Carols. i couldn't get a photo but they all looked fab in their Choir robes + it was lovely to hear the Choir again after so long

the Lieutenant Governor's wife, Lady Haddacks was there as well to help open the festival.

it was a really festive atmosphere with lots of mince pies, Manx fudge and wine on hand to make people feel merry.

there were some unusual 'trees' there as well, like the Manx Landscapes 'Pottering around' entry

and the Victoria House Nursery entry, it was so beautiful though, and such a clever idea

it was a great evening and all the trees looked great

i'm proud to have been involved in the Festival this year and to have worked on the Lego Tree for 'Alliance and Leicester' (our tag line for the Lego Tree was 'Building for the Future' how AWESOME is that! love it)

it was a lot of work but it was nice to do something different for a change and i'm glad i got the opportunity to do so. 

so all that's left for me to do is ask all you fellow Manxies out there to pop down to the airport and get donating (and to VOTE for my Tree if you'd be so kind...) 

and if you're flying in or out of the IoM anytime soon, don't forget to go and have a skeet at all the trees

thanks x

* * *

in other news...

well there isn't really any other news actually!

i'm so tired from all the Lego times i haven't really been up to much else!

i've a few new Pin-up Girl illustrations to finish so hopefully they'll be ready for my next post

until then

that's all folks...

◕‿◕ ★ xX

Grazie molto e arrivederci

(that's thank you and goodbye in Italian, L'italia è un paese meraviglioso, grazie, mia amico x)

Curves Glorious Curves ♥

Well hello there dudes and dudettes, it's been a while I know but I DO have a good excuse. Promise.

So I was due to fly out of Dubrovnik, Croatia on the 7th at approximately 13:55 local time (aka Madrid, Paris, time) however... the delightful people known as 'the French' decided to crap on my dream of getting home and so, after pretty much closing French air space and having a strike (again... seriously, enough with the striking already) my flight didn't even set off from Liverpool in time. It eventually landed... 4 hours later at 18:00ish. Now normally I would have just been relieved that it had landed full stop, however... my flight out from Liverpool to the Isle of Man was due to leave at 19:30 (London, Lisbon, Dublin time) so you see the dilemma here!

Suffice to say, we missed the flight to the IOM, we eventually landed in Liverpool at 21:40 UK time so... I wasn't the happiest of chaps let's leave it at that. I guess being stranded overnight in Liverpool with no guarantee we'd make it onto a flight the next day was what you could call an adventure. I'd much rather call it a nightmare though! But, since my boat back from Dublin was cancelled a couple of weeks ago and I ended up stranded in Dun Laoghaire overnight I pretty much took this all in my stride.

It's not just the travelling mishaps that have been keeping me busy though! What with all the travelling i've also been working on a logo design commission, a character editing/colouring job for a local web designer, a character design job for another web design duo, writing an interview type thing for a fashion/lifestyle website (should be up soon... I hope EDIT is up, see end of post) as well as an article for an Illustration website.

So yes... it's been a very busy past couple of days! Busy busy busy!

So today, seeing as I was stranded at Liverpool airport for so long I decided to treat myself to a few fashion mags. I've been a bit blasé with my fashion updates lately, in fact the last fashion mags I bought were in Ireland where I got the national mags 'U' and 'Image' which are kind of like 'Look' and 'Vogue' only specifically Irish and very super duper. Anyway, in the airport I got the latest issues of Elle and Vogue (yes I know they're both pretty similar despite one being published by Hachette Filipacchi and the other by Condé Nast, but they really do both offer different views so I like to get them both. Deal with it!) as well as the latest Grazia which I mainly bought because the utterly gorgeous and fabulously curvy Christina Hendricks was on the cover. Seriously now... how amazing did she look at the Emmy's?! And just look at her husbands hair, I ADORE curls, clearly she does too. This is a genius woman!

Geez louise that woman is so curvy it should be criminal! She looked absoflippinglutely amazing and gorgeous! I couldn't believe it when I read that different designers refused to send out gowns to her because she won't fit into sample sizes! What the hell!!!!

I understand that her figure is quite tricky to dress (big boobs, tiny waist, wide hips etc etc) but come on... she looks fabulous in pretty much anything that clings to those curves you'd think they'd want to help show off that perfect hourglass shape not refuse to dress it! For the record that custom made Zac Posen gown really did show off her curves to full effect, it's no wonder everyone at the Emmy's was talking about her (and her enviable figure) hell, even i'm talking about it all now!

Ok ok, back to the blog! So I stocked up on fashion mags and settled down with a bottle of water for a nice long fashion binge. It was divine and the airport times literally flew by. I also grabbed a copy of the complementary fashion mag 'Stylist' from the airport display. It was actually really, really awesome considering the fact that it didn't cost me a penny. A gorgeous Louis Vuitton shoot inside. Oh that reminds me, best thing about the latest issue of Elle? (apart from the fact it's the 25th anniversary edition and is chock full of awesomeness) the front 3 page pull out advertisement feature is dedicated to the latest Louis Vuitton collection. Yes THOSE ads.

The ones with that delectable trio of buxom lovelies, Karen Elson, Natalia Vodianova and Christy Turlington proving once and for all that beauty has a bust, hips and waist, AND a ladylike handbag + circle skirt combo. God bless you Marc Jacobs, for giving women everywhere a collection made for... women!

Those ads are wonderful though. I watched the LV collection (online... obviously) when it first came out and was literally squealing and clapping by the end of it. I think it was the sight of Laetitia Casta in that balcony corset with eye popping cleavage that did it, it's been far too long since we saw such... womanliness on the catwalk.

And yet this sort of figure is more common than the straight-up-straight-down look of many of the most popular supermodels of recent years (excluding the fabulous Lara Stone and drop-dead-gorgeous Crystal Renn). I guess it was just relievingly refreshing for such a prestigious fashion house to fill their catwalk (and their latest collection pieces) with delicious women whose physical attributes have acted as a disqualification for fashion show participation for so long! These women clearly don't starve themselves to fit into clothes and if sample sizes don't fit them it doesn't seem to faze them in the slightest. It's the fashion houses loss... not theirs.

Speaking of starving yourself, because i've been so ill over the past couple of days it's now been about three or four days since I last ate anything more substantial than a handful of cornflakes and a couple of pretzel sticks. Well I say that, when we eventually got home today I think i'd been in the house about three minutes before I was stuffing my face with kinder and milka chocolate, fresh crusty bread and a can of vimto. Oh it's good to be home...

by the way, I'm writing this at about 00:37 time so I guess I should bugger off and try and go to bed soon. You see I accidentally fell asleep at about 5:45pm and only woke up about 30 mins ago! Not the smartest move I know but it's too late now. I lay in bed trying to drop back off and suddenly started writing this post in my head, so as not to lose the creative flow (ahahahaha I couldn't even type that with a straight face!) I leapt up and grabbed my laptop for some typing times.

EDIT: present time... Eeeerrrgh! I feel bad that haven’t posted anything in ages! I know this is a pretty long post so why stop now! Just to make it even better... here’s my latest desktop wallpaper courtesy of the fabulous Joseph Kloepfer who started following me on twitter yesterday and in doing so, has now made me a huuuuge fan of his super duper adorabubble vector illustrations

check out his site here - JOKLO

OOOOOOH ALSO

today my 'Luscious' interview thing was put up. they wrote such a nice statement about me + my work as well,

'We think this talented young illustrator from the Isle of Man exudes lusciousness. Check out the new story on our "Five minutes of fabulous". Well done Jade!'

isn't that lovely! they also posted 20 of my illustrations in a facebook photo gallery along with a snap of me. here's the LUSCIOUS page on facebook

but... HERE is the actual 'Five Minutes of Fabulous' post - Fabulous newcomer: Jade Boylan

words cannot begin to decribe how excited i was when this appeared in my facebook news feed! Natasha Wood (Director of the site, total super duper genius superstar) sent me an email letting me know it was all up and running. i couldn't help but tell her that i actually squealed when i spotted the link! she said,'Remember us when you are famous!'

well if i'm ever famous it'll be partly down to her for posting such a fabulous piece about me. i can't thank her enough, and the rest of the team at 'mylusciouslife.com', they are all superstars and if i ever do 'make it big' i will personally visit their offices with a huge cupcake basket from the Magnolia Bakery and enough pink lemonade to last for months and months of girly lusciousness!

and as i always say, that's all for now (geez i'm like an old looney tunes cartoon, 'er that's all folks') well it is anyway, i'm off to try and work on some of these web design commission doo-daas now, oh and to get my etsy shop up and running at last! because... very soon i may actually have something to sell on it! shock horror and wow! here's the SHOP keep checking it over the next few days and hopefully it'll be fully operational soon enough,

oh, i also go back to College on Monday which isn't so marvy and terrific, but i'll try to make the best of it just like i always do.

peace out dudes and dudettes and don't forget... keep smiling

◕‿◕ xX