Branding Everything

I love a good bit of branding. I'm slowly working my way around branding absolutely everything I can possibly brand. So far I have my branded boxes:

My branded stamp, for stamping everything in sight...

Branding also extends to the look and feel of your brand. I've tried to go for the minmal, trendy, simple feel. I created a brand that appeals to myself, a place I would want to buy from. Since I'm my target audience, this made sense.

This is an example of one of the stalls I did for the O3 gallery in the Oxford Castle Quarter. The event was called 'Just in Case' selling your goods from a vintage suitcase. I loved the concept of this theme and have now Incorporated this into the craft fairs I do. Event displays is still one of the things I struggle with just because there are so many possibilities I always want to do something different for each one (not a great idea for trying to embed an idea of a brand on people!) but hopefully with some more investment in time and money I'll find my style and be able to represent my brand in a layout that conveys that to potential customers.

I'm currently working on some branded jewellery which I'll be posting sometime next week.  mainly because I love my logo.

My logo is actually my signature (I don't use it for signing anything anymore!) I first came up with the logo for a university project where I designed a smart fridge, and thought 'that's a cool design I want to put my name on that' (you can see the project here)

I'd seen Calvin Klein's signature in a magazine and liked the way he did the C. My sister came up with the name 'Christina Made It' which took a surprisingly long time to come up with. Other options included; Shiny Things, Christina O, Ag, Made by Me, by Audrey (used to be my nickname from when I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn one time, long story). For the text I wanted to have a relaxed and handmade feel about it, so I chose a hand written font. The colour theme of black and white meant I could use the logo on any colour background and it would alway look great in black and white! 

Today I'm making myself a branded jumper mainly to wear for shows and events but also because I think the logo makes for an awesome fashion piece! So to do this I picked up a plain black jumper from Primark (a men's jumper, they didn't have any women's cotton ones. I like the slightly oversized look in an XS Mens anyway) This cost me £6 - branding really doesn't have to be expensive.

I had some left over dark t-shirt transfers from 100 years ago when I was back at school and we did this project called young enterprise, where you put together a team of people and create a business. We set up 'T-Promotions' making custom printed t-shirts and then custom key rings. Our business actually really sucessful, we made a profit and paid back a dividend to our share holders. I think this may have been where my business mind came from.

Anyway I digress. So I put the logo into illustrator fattened up the lines so they would be easier to cut out. I printed a test copy to check the size on the jumper and for placement.  I printed and cut out the logo.

Layed out some tea towels on a solid surface (I used the glass kitchen table) gave the jumper a quick iron. Then the iron then goes on the hottest setting. While I waited for it to heat up, I pealed off the backing paper. With the dark transfers the image is printed the correct way up, so you don't need to flip the image. If you have a home inkjet printer, make sure you put the paper in the printer with the grid face down so it prints on the correct side. 

Logo goes face up on the jumper, when I was wearing the jumper I marked on with chalk the position to make sure it was exactly right. Never put it in the middle of the jumper (the top to bottom, middle) as it always looks too low down, you want to aim for the top half. The paper in the pack goes over the image (you can also use grease proof paper if you have run out)

And then iron in a circular motion trying to staying on the paper  and using the hottest part of the iron, the middle. 

Do this for 60 seconds (longer if your image is bigger) then peel off the brown paper and voila, one very awesome designer jumper. Soon everyone will want one! 

Casting attempt

I've been putting off trying any type of casting for a while now, ever since I watched a demonstration and saw how scary it was. Silver melts at super high temperatures and there's no margin for error when you are working at these kind of temperatures. With some assistance I finally decided to give it a go. Here's what happened:  

To cast something first you need an item to cast. My Grandma over the past few months has been collecting up pieces of broken jewellery and old silver for me to either restore, melt or turn into something new. One piece stood out in a bag she picked up from a charity shop; a set of brass lion heads.

The brass lion head came as a pair, I have no idea what they are used for but it has two prongs at the back and as is was flat it was perfect for practicing casting.

To cast you also need something to cast into. There are many different ways to cast metal; sand casting, lost wax casting for example. Most are carried out at a casters by professionals with professional equipment, but some you can do yourself. I had chosen cuttlefish bone casting (the kind you pick up from the pet shop for bird feed). It works well because it is both hard and soft at the same; soft to make the impression and hard for holding its shape at high temperatures. Its also a very cheap way of doing it, this bone was about 50p so if it all goes wrong I can just buy another one and re-melt the silver which can be melted over and over again.

First I pressed the shape of the lion into the cuttlefish bone, adding air holes (using a scalpel) and a funnel at the top for the silver to channel down through. You can just abut make out the impression in the image below.

Next the cuttlefish half is joined to a heat proof block which also has a funnel cut in. Normally you would use two halves of a cuttlefish bone but since the other side of the piece I was casting was flat I saved the other half of the cuttlefish bone to use for another time. The whole thing is then wrapped tightly with binding wire to hold it all in place.

Into a crucible goes the silver to be melted with some borax powder. I used part of an old chain which one of my friends kindly donated.

Then the scary part... melting the silver! It needed to be heated up to over 900 degrees, which if you were wondering, is very, very hot. The bricks around it are used to keep the heat contained. Holding the blow torch over the silver, it took about five minutes to melt it (felt like a lifetime!) the area surrounding gets ridiculously hot and the heat also reflects back towards you. As soon as it is hot enough and the silver is red hot with a liquid consistency it's ready to be poured, making sure you keep it heated as you pour. I panicked a bit as I poured it and manged to spill a few drops, but these can be collected up and melted down for another time so nothing is wasted.

Once the molten silver has been poured into the mould and left to cool for a moment using heat prof gloves the cuttlefish bones a pulled part to reveal the cast. This is then put straight into the pickling solution to clean up. Much to my suprise it actually turned out quite well (original brass lion on the right for comparison.)

I used a brass brush to scrub off the charcoal left behind by the mould. 

This is how the cuttlefish bone looked afterwards, very charred and burnt (you can only use it once...)

To finish it the excess silver is cut off using a piercing saw and then files to smooth the edges. Once I had the shape ready it was just a case of polishing the piece until it was all nice and shiny.  

This is the final piece next to the original (original on the left, silver cast on the right) o

In the end I decided to turn it into a ring as I thought it looked a little bit like Cara Delevingnes lion tattoo (on her finger)