My finished piece

Well the day has finally arrived and I can share with you my completed piece.

As I said with my last months letters that I didn't want a flat presentation and was working on a 3 dimensional look and am very pleased with the result.

I used picture mounting board for the actual box as I knew this would give me a good solid cube. I had made a small sample to make sure the colours were in their correct order as this was so important. I have anchored fishing line to the base on the inside and then through a floor 1 cm below the top of the box. This enable it to hang slightly off skew to make it more interesting .

I had to have 28 letters to complete my piece hence the addition of the Question and Exclamation marks.

Hope you like it ?

Regards Ann

Elaine's final letters...&

Elaine sent these thru a week or so ago so I apologise for the late posting (Fiona).

I am off overseas tomorrow, until the end of July, so I am sending my June letters in a early. The July letters will be a little late.
This has been a wonderful experience, I have enjoyed the challenge so much. When I first planned the alphabets I thought I would do a similar exercise for the 2nd alphabet using lower-case letters. Now I have other ideas, more colour that’s for sure.

Week 22. L
Monoprint, printed from a paper stencil of the letter ‘L’, using red and silver printing inks. I tried to create a dark and slightly mysterious atmosphere with the combination of the printing inks on the textured side of the Canson Mi-teintes paper.

Week 23. T
The background is a black and white photograph using a ‘tone dropout’ technique. I couldn’t resist adding the letter T to the ghostly image of the tree. Written with silver acrylic gouache in a double ruling pen, the red gouache highlight added later.

Week 24. M
I covered the background paper with red and silver oil pastel crayons, then painted black gouache over the top. While the gouache was still slightly wet I ‘drew’ into it with the end of a paint brush handle allowing the colours to reappear.

Week 25. U
With two metal knitting needles tied together I wrote the letter on the textured side of Canson Mi-teintes paper. The needles made slight indentations into the paper which showed up when shaded lightly with the red and silver coloured pencils. (The silver pencil outline is actually parallel to edge of the square, my photo is not shot square on).

Week 26. F
Multi printing of my hand-cut rubber stamp using a silver stamp pad. Red gouache in the ruling pen for the line (this line is parallel to edge of the square, my photo again not shot square on).

And &
I needed an extra letter whch will fill a space in the finished layout of the alphabet.
I used a reed pen and Dr. Martins silver Spectralite ink to write the &. I added some red foil as a decoration

Alphabet out of the bag: the next chapter

What's in the bag? Which bag?

Alphabet in the bag ...

Alphabet out of the bag!

I found these metal and wooden blocks at an antique shop in New Norfolk and my heart leaped for joy! Now they are out of the bag I am really looking forward to what I am going to do with them ... watch this space!

Sometime in the next six months I plan to go back to the shop to buy up a few more ... if the wallet holds out.

Kim Schoenberger - ALaW 2010 - Part Two

Time to start thinking about the second alphabet!

A sneak peek at what I have in mind...

Recycled Teabags and my trusty ole' Singer Treadle Sewing Machine, given to me by my mother on my 16th Birthday. (The second alphabet definitely inspired by my Expressions of Love Exhibition in May at Main Street Gallery).

To get a head start last month I explored my options and had a play with some teabags to see if they fell into the 'chance happening' scenario, and to my delight they did!

Two teabags emptied, flattened, cut in half, placed together and sewn .....yipee 7 x 7 cm square, that was my answer. That was the easy bit, now to decide....what to, how to etc, etc...hmmmmmmmm!

Kim Schoenberger - ALaW 2010 - WXYZ

Well we've come to the last four letters in the ALaW 2010 'First' alphabet challenge, it's a rather sad moment it's been such an enjoyable process as I reflect, especially my trips to the local tips and sheetmetal skip bins to fossik....

W - two small triangle cut off steel bits found in the sheetmetal skip bin, one rusted the other still reasonably clean, they do have a slight over hang but as I was extremely happy with the end result I overlooked it.

X - an old tap handle, not rusted but definitely loving the perfect X it makes.

Y - a tiny spanner found in the bottom of my tool box when I was having a clean, drilled a couple of holes to attach,

Z - portion form a chain saw blade.

Kim Schoenberger's... ALaW 2010 - First Alphabet

THE END!

The end of Mariella's alphabet

These are my June letters and the end of this Festival of Colors. My husband is helping
doing the computer work with Photoshop to finish the whole piece that I will send as soon as it is ready. I don't know how to use the graphic programs, but I am going to learn soon!!

The L is for all the love you gave us with this wonderful idea; the Y is because you are special; the Z is for the zeal you have keeping our blog and last, but not least, the M is for Mariella that is very happy to participate and send lots of hugs to all the followers and one special for Gemma.

Cheers,

Mariella.

Christine: Final duo

It is sad to add the last two but it also marks exciting new beginnings for the next series. I had some images in mind to work with... but after an exciting week with the art cultural exchange from Japan and Calligraphy artist Saruta san sharing her calligraphy expertise my visualisations have changed. So now I am floundering around with so many new alternatives and am not not sure in what direction I want to take. Time will tell.

Noela's last 2 letters

These are my last two for this first alphabet - I'm still not sure what I'll be doing next week, but I know I am ready for a new challenge.

'Y'...select, distort, mirror image and clone,

'Z'...select, flip and clone.

ALL DONE

Jeanette's chocolate letters (sepia really!)

Sepia ink and gold leaf.

Lovely letters - if only!

In our travels we came across this chocolate shop. It sold chocolate letters. I figured it would be fabulous to make my next alphabet all about chocolate letters...but decided I should probably go for something more traditional.

Anyhow some lovely chocolate letters to share anyway!

Jeanette's latest letters

These letters are all created using masking fluid applied with a ruling pen, turquoise ink and water and then gold leaf onto gilding fluid applied with a mapping pen.

JGR June letters

Hi everyone, I had such a blast working on these! I started off just trying this n that and along the way I stumbled upon this technique: If you have a moment I'd like to share it. Step 1) Hand-dyed tissue wrapping paper using orange/brown shades. 2) Bleach stamp with hand carved swirl shape using a random approach. 3) Scan into PhotoShop 4) Text in black, keeping it simple then add the secondary lighter shade in script for an accent. 5) Added grundge (sp) frame on two sides only. 

I didn't like the X in font so I substituted a thicker font.
For the 'Z' inverted the background color, highlighted the script z and then did a 'screen-grab' because I liked the contrast. I started to 'erase' the bounding box but I decided it looked interesting so I left it. That's the great thing about Art-lovely surprises happen sometimes. 
Thanks for viewing!

Bernd letters in advance.

Here are two "Bernd" letters in advance. The top picture is how I am displaying these letters at the moment. Not sure what I'll do with the whole alphabet but for now it is fun...kind of a bouquet of letters sitting on my work table. Back in a month.

Working ahead!

I am off to Canada for four weeks so did some letters ahead of time. Here are the Copperplate ones.

Meg's June offerings

I think it is time to post a few more letters - nothing new in style, of course. I have basically worked both my alphabets out, so I might have to think of another one as I am suffering withdrawal!

So here is K, L, M, and N.

Gemma's late letters

Herewith are my remaining letters for the first half of the ALaW project. Apologies to all, especially Fiona, for the delay in getting these to the blog. I won't take up space with the lot in detail, just the "O".

The letters have been written with a ruling pen using Instacol as a size upon which I laid 23ct transfer gold leaf. The support is left over in-class tan demonstration paper. I have used Winsor & Newton's bleedproof white with a pointed nib for the doodling.

I have had a good six months to ponder my ALaW second half and (as of last weekend ... I will reveal later) I am all ready to go with them.

Thank you to all of you who have contributed the wonderfully inspiring ALaW works we see here on the blog. Let's see where the second half takes us and the final outcome for presentation and exhibition. I am excited by this prospect.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have enjoyed the project.

Noela's 'X'

Something a little bit different. I exaggerated the red paint mark on the lid of the box.

...select, clone and add contrast.

Mariella - May plus some more!

These ones are for May plus two....This same week,
I'll mail June and the whole thing assembled, so all
can read the word behind the letters.

The I, K and X are the hostesses for the Carnival
Party; J,V and W are very special guests for the
celebration.

Big hug,

Mariella.

Euan sees only red - the third set

Is it possible that there are so many red classic cars out there! This selection of American motors was captured at a car and parts swap meeting in Caboolture, Queensland. Again the brilliant chrome stands out against the polished red paintwork. Of more interest are the conversations had while taking these photos, and the need to reassure the owners their paintwork was safe with me! Euan

more catching up

I started my second alphabet but then found I want to finish up the Copperplate letters before continuing. :-) I am putting the Copperplate alphabet up on a wall , in alphabetical order and I found the gaps bothersome, so plan to finish it off before continuing on with the second alphabet.