I'd Like to Buy a Vowel

Truth is I'd rather just buy books about lettering arts. I have several favorites. Here are the ones I'm leafing through regularly.

    A standard in the pointed pen arena. A wealth of information and exemplars to follow. It's good to start with the basics and get good technique cemented before going off on a wild tangent.

          Then it's on to the more modern, fun, looser approach. I love Molly Thorpe's work.

 I suggest you take a look at The Postman's Knock by Lindsey Bugbee, who's blog I follow religiously, & sign up to follow her if you are interested in doing lettering. This post by Lindsey  goes into lots of detail on Molly's book & work. A great video is included with a fun project.

            Another great choice for everything from traditional to modern approaches to lettering. This book has a lot to offer. Unfortunately Lisa died at a very young age, but her work lives on. Seven years ago I took a class with Lisa. We did painting, stitching & lettering on fabric. I use a lot of the techniques I learned in that class in the current fiber arts I'm pursuing. A few pics from that class below.

I have had the pleasure to take a class with Annie Cicale in the past & she will be joining the instructors at Paper & Book Intensive this next spring. I may take her class there depending on the content & competition with other classes.  Just about every hand is represented with great instruction. Notice the large amount of sticky notes hanging off the edges. That's a sure sign of something I look back to often. My copy is signed. Smile!

Lastly is my treasured copy of the 1941 edition of the Speedball book. This belonged to my Dad. He & his older brother were sign painters way back when. They did window signs for grocery stores and businesses before all this could be done by any machine. There are so many cool things in this book for poster design and little figures.

Next up will be a few thoughts on practice, supplies, and fun additions to the lettering supply stash.

Following a Common Thread

As I was playing around in the studio with a new fabric technique (more on that below) I decided I needed to create more storage for my growing thread stash. I looked at various plastic boxes available then ran across this on Pinterest.

 My version is the first one pictured above. I had the cute yellow jar that was the vase for birthday flowers from work this year. Yea, we each get a bouquet of flowers on our birthday from the 3 bosses. Rough huh?
So I marched to the hardware store, bought $2 worth of dowels, lopped them off with the pruning shears int he garage, used my pencil sharpener to make the ends pointy, wrapped a piece of rubber band around the end so the spools would stay on. Voila. Decorative, colorful, visible storage for lots of thread.

After that little adventure I tried my hand at "fabric slashing".

The link takes you to Fay Maxwell's video that I watched a couple times. There are great images of the results of this technique if you do a Google search. 

I grabbed lots of scraps and had at it. I learned some things along the way. I would use larger scarps next time and layer colors at random. I layered similar colors in each layer and the result is not a "colorful" Also I would space the lines of stitching a bit wider. Although I have yet to get the piece wet and scrub it to see what happens next.  A trip to the scissor sharpening guy was in order s cutting through all those layers is tough.

              The four little corners I turned back & stitched down really caught my interest. I'll keep you posted and take more pictures as the finished project emerges.

Summer is Good

Where do I begin? I'm going to venture off into summer fun not exactly related to paper, fabric or books in the next few posts, but there is fodder for creativity in everything. So here goes.

Last week end El Galeon sailed into West in Bay in Traverse City. We took the opportunity to go take a tour on board. I did quite a bit of sailing a couple decades ago & seeing this replica of a 14th century ship was exhilarating to me. This was her first time in the Great Lakes. She's sailed 45,000 miles on the ocean so it's about time.

 

The details really got me. Hand stitched leather covers for the posts!

So much teak and line. Man's ability to come up with simple machines to help him do work is amazing to me. Something to ponder and appreciate in our world driven by technology.

 Volunteers shared lots of knowledge about life on board back in the day. The conditions were awful, so this is not to be romanticized. Bugs, rats, no fresh water, all food salted pickled or smoked. Wine was the beverage of choice always...wow.

They had one cabin made up like it would have been for an officer. Small and sparse, but better than carving out a space on the deck with the other common folk.

Back to my own home for dinner for 4 on a perfect summer evening.

The hydrangeas are spectacular this year!

Volunteering at the Crooked Tree Art Fair Saturday. Hopefully I can take some photos there of art work of interest.