Thursday, November 3, 2011

... all but there ...









It’s not too often am I faced with a calligraphic drama but I had a disaster with this one. Hopefully I have salvaged it to a degree where I don’t mind showing it! That was showing it … not sewing it!  J

It is a long and drawn out drama but I won’t bore you with the detail.  Poor Fiona got it though ... sorry Fi.  The only thing I will say is my concertina, having been born of craft and on it's way to art, started its life as a mobile! No … not a phone but one of those dangly things that takes your mind off other things!

The concertina is all but finished.  I am biding my time, looking at it and deciding what, if anything to do next.  The black paper was treated with gesso & sgraffito. I lettered in graphite enjoying my time with these lovely little compound capitals. The concertina pages are held together (I hope) with a long strip of the original paper woven through and a couple of stitches in silver thread every now and then.

Ah, I am glad it is done now.  Congratulations everyone I am enjoying your work, frustrated by my own but as Lily Serna says, "I got there in the end"!

9 comments:

  1. Not only are the letter beautiful... the background is gorgeous... and the finished book WOW.

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  2. Letter elegance made visual - this is another one I would like to see in the flesh. The background looks so intriguing - geological, sculptural and floral all at the same time.

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  3. Oh Jo, thanks for your heartening words. You know I all but threw it across the room when the stitching failed for the third time ... I now quite like the texture of the cotton-less stitching. The hardest thing to come to terms with was that I had already spent ages creating the piercings on the squares and the sewn line overpowers them ... looks good up agains a window though.

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  4. It is a feast for the eyes. Hope I can see the original some time. Valerie

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  5. These are SO gorgeous! The background is amazing. Your perseverance has paid off!

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  6. NEVER any doubt you would persevere, Gemma!! PLEASE bring this with you to conference next June. I would love to see both this and your puffy first alphabet in person! Julie

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  7. Thank you everyone. "Puffy" first alphabet Julie? Is that the one with the raised gold letters??? Three-up in a book?

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  8. Hi G - the work looks lovely even tho it is along way from what you envisaged...I think the puffy alphabet might be your little finger-flipper things! (technical term of course...)

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