Project 6.3 and a few New Year res-oes

It’s DONE loves, DONE!  I can’t quite believe it.  I’ve been working towards this moment for a long time and now that it’s done and dusted (as well as my final residential project), to be honest I feel a smidgey overwhelmed.  [Cue soppy bit] My husband and my family and my best friends have been so supportive and wonderful and generally the bee’s knees, and I am very very veeeery grateful.  It’s been a lot of work but I’ve loved every moment of it.

I had a long break in the middle of the course (like err two years long), when I was doing a bunch of other things for the future biz: designing and planning our wedding, moving continents once and countries twice, and working on my first client in Honkers, among others.  But now that it’s done I am literally chomping at the bit to start working again.  There’s the small matter of waiting for my final grade (eeks) and professional qualification to come through, and then applying for permission to work in this ‘ere fine country, but I have a ton to keep me busy in the meantime.

Anyhoo so here it is, my final piece of coursework.  I got great grades for my last project so have set massively overly high expectations for myself for this one, but we shall see…  It’s the front of house scheme for a central riverside hotel in London – a mix of old and new, a traditional old-school English study vibe paired with the vibrancy of my incredible ‘home’ city.

So first up is the last concept board I ever have to do – these things are like torture for my brain (buggerama, didn’t spot that folded corner):

The samplies – I went slightly overboard with the tufted velvet upholstery (delish!) and check out all that yummy brass and leather:

The rendered technicals:

Including a pair of perspective drawings that for once I am not 100% ashamed of…only 30% ha:

And lastly the plain technicals and one blooming enormous lighting plan:

{credits: Elly MacDonald Design}

Donezo!  I also submitted three massive notebooks thingies but they’re kinda boring, no pretty pics for the blog.

And as for the new year resoes, well I’m a little late but I think they still need to be done. I only kept one out of three last year but what’s a new year without a little self-loathing and disappointment…?

1. Elly MacDonald Design

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Setting up the biz, and becoming established in SG is clearly the priority – I am very very excited about spreading some ikat, ethnic goodies and colour around this little country.  It’s going to be a lot of work, especially to begin with, but I can’t wait to create something for myself again.

2. Bloggy blog

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All of the opportunities I’ve had to date have come about through this little corner of the internet, and I’m very grateful for all it’s given me.  Thank you for joining and supporting me in this slightly crazy venture of mine.  But I’ve been letting le blog slide lately, with other higher priorities, and it’s not really cutting the mustard these days.

What would you lovelies like to see more of?  Less of?

3. Explore our new country

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We’re totally in love with this country.  Seriously.  People always bang on about how boring and sterile Singapore is, just full of shopping malls and clean chewing gum-free streets, but there is so so much more to the place than that.  If you walk in one direction from our house you get into a really Chinese-y area with stinky dried foodstuffs like in HK, little shrines everywhere full of incense and offerings of pineapples and packets of biscuits, tanks full of frogs on the street outside restaurants waiting to be eaten, and a million weird karaoke bars with middle aged Chinese men crooning along to Celine Dion inside (amazing!).  And in the other direction it’s a very Malaysian and Indonesian area where all the women wear these beautiful colourful headscarves, the air is always full of the calls to prayer and you can get a killer rendang curry.  We just love it.

So we’ve been doing some exploring but there’s still a lot more to see oh yes there is.

4. Focus on positivity

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I’ve recently (and very unfairly) been put in a pretty nasty situation by somebody, and suddenly feel like I’m about 13 years old again.  Not going to discuss it here obvs as I am not 13 years old, but it’s reminded me how important it is to surround yourself with positive and nice people.  The world would be a much better place if everybody increased their kindness output a smidgeroo.

5. More stretching

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I’ve also been letting my yoga practice slide, spending too much time drawing friggin’ lighting plans and not enough time working out.  Also I ate too many pies over Christmas.   Literally ha, in fact all of the pies in London.  I won’t go on about it as it sounds like such a cliché I know (oh daaarling, you must try some vinyasa it’s simply faaabulous) but it mentally and physically resets me and I am a much much better person with regular yoga classes in my life.

Whew long post!  So there we have it, what say you…?  What are your resolutions for 2014?