a love affair - part one

Danika + Drex from Matt Wiebe on Vimeo.
This page, my little corner of the internet, has been a lot of things.

It started out years ago as an upgrade to myspace blogs and facebook notes, paragraphs of musings brought to life across the ocean - in Australian internet cafes, Indonesian travel journals, and various New Zealand hostels - and back home in Winnipeg while laying in a borrowed bed on McMillan Avenue. Only some of these remain, leaving me an awkward glimpse at my former self.

Suddenly it became a mash up of a few quite different things, with posts shorter and more visual in nature than they had been. I was settling into a new home, a new routine of school, and a new lover (who would eventually become my husband). The blog became a tiny glimpse into my experiencing those beginnings.

It's latest purpose has been to act as a pseudo-portfolio, a place to share my arts+crafts and design school projects. However sporadic those posts have been, they depict a small aspect of the progression of my life over the last couple years.

Today this page takes a small time out to become a Wedding Blog.

I share with you the start to a new chapter - one that may end up looking a whole lot like the older ones, except that now it's all going to be happening with the best partner by my side.

Danika + Drex | July 29, 2011
a wedding video by Matt Wiebe

a nutshell

I've recently compiled the last two years of my education into a nutshell, and you can visit it by clicking here.

In the coming months, I'm hoping to get in the habit of more regular blog posts- filling this space with some of my work, life and inspiration. However, first on my list of priorities for the summer is to become a wife - the word still sounds funny...but good! :) With school (for me) and work (for him) having been pretty hectic all winter and spring, we have yet to chip away at the majority of our wedding 'to do' list. We've got a lot of shopping, planning and printing to do! Thankfully, we make a good team.

my man, two dorks (us), and how super-cool our future child will be:

time to update, then nap

As reading week begins, I thought I'd take the time to update this page with some of my newest work. Low on text and pretty skimpy on the images, but something nonetheless. If I am making little sense, I apologize, but my brain is mostly filled with head cold congestion and Tylenol as my immune system- after holding out fairly well for most of winter- has decided to take a break this week, too. I imagine the comfort-food-diet of chips, ice cream and pizza isn't helping much with that either. oops.

Here is a piece that I did for an Art Show and Fundraiser my class did last weekend. We spent all of Saturday making original art, and it was auctioned off on Sunday. Although this ate up everyone's weekends, I think most of us were happy to get off our computers for a couple days (I know I was). I did a paper cut, and really enjoyed the process. I find a repetitive task like this to be quite rhythmic and therapeutic. I waited around at the end of the auction to thank the woman who purchased the piece, but in the end didn't get to meet her. I hope it went to a good home.

a post to make me feel cool(er)

Though I felt like a bit of a dork (and poser) coming up with skateboard designs, my fiance- who is a lot more familiar with both skateboarding and skate graphics- thinks they turned out pretty good. He's biased, I know, but I like them too.

year of the hare (belated)

Happy Chinese New Year!
(better late than never?)
below is a proposed design for
Chinatown's New Year banners.

a (fake) wedding!

To go along with the my recent (real) engagement - :) - I decided to design and print some wedding invitations for a (fake) couple for my latest school assignment. The invites are hand silk-screened on to a collection of vintage handkerchiefs, the RSVP cards are on wooden postcards. That's my man and me stepping in for Amelia & Oliver in the photo booth on the front of the directions. I'm really happy the way these turned out and this has been one of my favourite projects so far this term in school. I've got a couple wedding invites to design and print in the next few months and this was the perfect practice.

learnin' stuff (or, pretending to)

back to school!! it's taking some getting used to, but the good days are good... and let's not talk about the bad ones right now? we've taken a few baby steps towards web design and while the coding still scares me - DREAMweaver?! more like nightmare! (ha ha huh...) - the design has been fun for me. here are my first forays into designing for the web: a website for espresso junction and an etsy newsletter: