Buckets & Spades on Cool Material

The top bunch at Cool Material invited me to take part in their regular "Wear This" feature. A simple idea - each week ask a different style insider or friend of the website to pick a selection of products to make up an outfit + gift selection. Here's what we choose:

• Longside Casual Leather Belt Brass
• Teva Original Universal Lux Sandals
• Shine Wander And Rumble Growler
• Harry Stedman Classic Grey T-Shirt
• Fairends Evergreen Flannel Cap
• Paulin C200E Chronograph
• Albam Slim Leg Jeans
• Owen & Fred You Earned It Bottle Opener 

 Click through each link to see the product + click here to view the full post on Cool Material.

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Demolition Man

What once was a popular alternative club where I spent quite a few nights in my teens is now a demolition site. It's good, we all have to move on, good times were had there but I never really much liked the place. One evening on my way home from work the whole place had been taken out, which made the commute slightly more interesting than usual. The sun was intense but I managed to get a couple of shots, shame I didn't get the digger's in action.

On a side note, has anyone got any tried and tested Soda bread(or other nice bread) recipes? I've got a taste for the stuff.

The blog is still under construction, I've got a lot of gears to grind but hopefully it will be all set for next week. I've also got a very exciting competition coming up!

Thinking About Colour

 I was somewhat inspired by Carl Kleiner's work this morning and decided to mess around with some colour combinations. Nothing ground breaking of course but I thought it was quite a nice idea, it makes it easier to see good (and bad) colour combos. I'm think about painting the outside of our house you see, not that I'm going to go crazy but I wouldn't mind trying two different colours.

The warm weather screws up my wardrobe, I'm more of a cool weather kind of guy. I usually end up wearing a plain coloured t-shirt or shirt and jeans/trousers but I guess that's what works for me. It does leave my feeling pretty frustrated though.

How do you guys still manage to feel good about summery outfits? I'm probably thinking too much about it.

Messing With Dali

Well that's another famous painting defaced, and boy did it take a while. For the people who have been following my blog for a while you may remember me doing similar to the Mona Lisa. But for all that haven't, this is something I've been working on and off with for a few months. As Salvador Dali is my favourite artist I decided to have a go at illustrating his infamous 1931 jobby, "The Persistence of Memory". I did my version using Illustrator.

So that's another one down, what do you think? I'm sure some people will think, meh and not original  ect but at least I enjoyed doing it. Any feedback is more than welcome.

Week In Detail #2

1) Topman jeans, Uniqlo socks, Ask The Missus Brogues

2) Gap jacket, H&M elbow patch jumper and t-shirt

3) Hollie baked some more cookies

4) Colourful vegetables from trend magazine Bloom

5) Final Campaign photoshoot

This week has been another one of those, I'm up to my eyeballs with work but I'm not stressing out too much as I think I'm on top of it all. So here is my Week In Detail once again. The above outfit is what I wore on Thursday when I had to do a short interview at uni. Me and Clare were chosen from our class to represent the Fashion Promotion course, which was really flattering. To be honest though, I totally ballsed it up and apparently so did Clare. Turns out we may be a bit camera shy when I comes to taking. Oh well, another day another dollar.

I've been design a magazine this week for my project and I'm coming to the end of it today, the photoshoot we did a couple of weeks back features inside. It's a simple idea, shooting products on brightly coloured card, but it's really effective. So when I'm all handed in I can share with you my work but you will just have to wait.

Let me guess, BBQs this weekend if the weather holds out?

Week In Detail #1

1) Worry Me What by Andrew Kuo

2) Superga trainers

3) Topman jumper

4) Velour shirt

5) Gap chinos

6) Marks and Sparks watch

I actually had this post planned for Friday but stupid me deleted all the photos whilst I was clearing out some space on my laptop. I don't always have time to do a proper outfit post, it's a lengthy process to get it right if you're not mega photogenic so I thought I'd try out something different for a chance. Details of things that I've been into this week, hopefully I'll be doing this each week.

If you're into text/colour/charts and just amazing graphical skills I strong recommend Worry Me What, it's by designer Andrew Kuo and is pretty much my favourite thing right now. I may actually do a post on his work next week. The rest are things I've been wearing this week, nothing too flash just comfy stuff with nice details. Saying this, it's way too warm for a jumper now.

How are you spending your weekend? I wish I was out in the sun but I'm currently working on a magazine layout.

If you haven't entered the Gene Meyer sock comp you have till 12th April.

Need To Get Moving

My Final Major Project is in full swing but I'm moving slowly. I have ideas going around in my head and I can see it working but I'm still in the major early researching stage. I'm thinking of doing something on interiors/homeware/furniture. We have to launch a brand extension for an existing brand. 

So instead of bogging the blog down with too much stuff about boring uni stuff I decided to do an illustration on how I feel. 

Really Busy This week

....I'm swamped with uni work. Currently doing a project where you have to launch a fashion item for a non-fashion based tv programme. So I chose to do a range of weekend bags for QI and my retailer is Paul Smith. The bag with have many compartments for your Quite Interesting things. He is my 60& complete window display that I've been designing. Basically, half of my life at the mo is spent on Illustrator.

So if there is a lack of posts, this is the reason. Thanks for everyones recent comments, they really do cheer my gloomy days up.

Painting Is Finished Part 2

Hello all. I've been a bit slow this week but onwards and upwards. Cast you minds back to a few weeks ago when I posted about my first completed painting, I had to change it half way through because I mess up. So this time I decided to do the same again I try to not mess up this time, sticking to the original plan.

The only differences are that is the colour combo and i ripped the masking tape in half on random sides to create a raw edge;

Quite similar to last time but the outcome is fairly different.

Close up of the raw edges.

What do you think, which do you prefer? I do like this one but I think I much prefer my first attempt, somehow I find the other one much more exciting. Feedback is welcome, be honest please!


Not loads of outfit posts at the mo, but I can tell you know I've been wearing a lot of mustard, beige, khaki, brown, grey and navy. Some shots soon to follow hopefully. In other news, I'm hoping to sort out the 2nd Buckets & Spades competition, I'll keep you posted.


Any enquiries about my work please contact bucketsandspadesblog@googlemail.com