wonderful wenlock

i seemed to have gone from not being too keen at all on the chosen olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, to developing a slight obsession with them!!

it started last weekend when walking around London visiting Tower Bridge to see the paralympic 'rings' - we passed 5 on our way:

'arty' wenlock and 'cycling' mandeville

'rainbow' wenlock and 'southwark' wenlock

friend lauren, our new friend 'pirate' wenlock, and me!

so imagine my delight when i walked into the Olympics merchandise store and saw all these happy faces looking up at me!

the one in the middle looks like he's either staring me out or pleading 'pick me, pick me!'...!

he's my favourite :)

but now, even after these amazing sporting events are almost over i will still have my own little wenlock to cheer me on when designing!!

paralympics special!

so the olympics are sadly over :( but now we have the paralympics :) yay!  i have been lucky enough to attend 2 events - track cycling at the velodrome and athletics at the olympic stadium. i know i have already posted pictures of the olympic park but it's so great i'm going to take you on another little tour...

so firstly - welcome to the olympic park!

and then off to the velodrome! (am i allowed to name drop and say i know one of the dudes that designed this?! ;) ) i had tickets to the cycling track event on friday featuring the women's time trial finals and the mens pursuit qualifiers...

 

and inside was no less spectacular...

friend alice, friend Caroline, and me in front of Camp Team GB!

new world record set by Team GBs Mark Colbourne

gold for aussies, silver for Team GB, bronze for NZ

this is 'the beat box'. it is actually an instrument (so they say). there are special panels inside that when touched plays parts of the official coca cola olympics song. he song was produced by mark ronson and the sounds all come from different olympic events e.g. the heavy breathing of an athlete, the clicking of a ping-pong ball, the wooshing of an arrow  from the archery events and so on. so one panel plays the individual elements and then you get to hear it all out together at the end and get a free bottle of coca cola. great!

inside 'the beat box'

the best bit was these amazing lights - as they open and close they also change colour...want!

i was told this is where the bbc studio was during the olympics (personally, i was more taken by the colours!):

basketball arena

aquatics centre

and then on sunday i was off to the park again to watch the athletics! welcome to the olympic stadium!

the orbit and the olympic stadium

an amazing venue, such a great atmosphere

Tracey Hinton for Team GB

women's 5000m event - Shelley Woods for Team GB in 6th place, finishing in 8th

new paralympic record set by Stef Reid from Team GB, long jump. she got a silver medal

a new personal best and gold medal for Aled Davies of Team GB for the discus event

that was my weekend - hope you all enjoyed the tour around the olympic park!

the paralympic symbol at tower bridge

windows dressed to impress!

so i went on a little trip around town this week to look at some of the current window displays that have been inspired by the London 2012 Olympic games. I was interested to see the different directions some of the big department stores had taken...

JOHN LEWIS went for a fairly subtle effect, using only red, white and blue strings stretched across plain backdrops:

'Britain get ready to look your best'

'Britain get together to catch every moment'

One window was rather more inspiring an that was showing off all of the goodies available from the Olympic shop. some cut outs of the London tourist hotspots livened it up a bit:

the cool britannia theme was carried through onto their website home page:

BENTALLS went for a cycling theme with all displays featuring wheels and facts:

 'support Team GB'

who'd've thought it...

vibrant main displays were brought to life with brightly coloured circular containers displaying items and moving wheels:

FAT FACE also favoured wheels, with a bit bunting (because we haven't had enough of bunting recently!) in a surf shack set up:

this design was followed through onto their website:

CRABTREE & EVELYN went for 2 different looks:

a more cutesy girlie look...

...a far more graphic, bold approach (my favourite!)

pattern at the park

i also took a little trip to the olympic village - free tickets to the BUCS athletics tournament! the park was amazing, still a little way to go to finish everything off but the majority of it was in place...landscaped beautifully and with what looked like giant crayons in the river it was actually rather peaceful...i'm sure that will all change when the real olympics reach us!

and obviously i had a nose around at the architecture...the stadium, the velodrome, and the aquatics centre all looked amazing - plus there's a little snap here of the recently completed shard, taken on the way home...an absolutely stunning building, i was quite in awe...