Sharper Pencil

phantasia rationem creat


Welcome to my site! My name's Rachel Drake, and I'm a Leeds-based Umbraco certified developer, who also happens to draw occasionally.

While I'm working on fleshing this site out a bit more, below are some blog posts I've written previously for you to check out. You can also try some prototype work I've done from the nav at the top of the page.


If you want to get an idea of what I've worked on previously, here's some examples:

Umbraco CMS

From static forms to Umbraco Forms, and from Examine to Elasticsearch: I've done a lot of varied and intricate work with Umbraco. I've recently helped out on a project for a paint manufacturer, where I completed an "Inspiration" section listing decorating ideas and themes. This required the use of Umbraco's built-in indexing solution, as well as some custom filtering code. The site also uses multiple plugins and APIs to provide the company's branded colours and products consistently and beautifully.

Sitecore CMS

I've worked on a wide variety of Sitecore projects, including both customer- and business-facing websites. One example is a major UK supermarket, for which I helped make a retailer-facing site allowing them to check their store's status, update stock orders and order sales materials. This involved integrating with various external APIs, as well as writing our own, in addition to the standard Sitecore build and WFFM integration.

If you're interested in hiring me for a contract role, please email me at contact@sharper-pencil.co.uk and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.