Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Fiona's First alphabet - finished!

I finally got around to finishing my final piece for the first alphabet.

Because I was doing an experimental alphabet - trying out new ideas, techniques and materials, there wasn't a really cohesive feel to the final alphabet (even tho each letter was a Roman Capital that wasn't quite unifying enough!).

I decided that to be true to their nature I wanted to do a sampler book - like embroidery samplers of old.  Barry and I thrashed around options and came up with this design.

I punched holes in the mat board pages and mat board spacers, wrote what I did with each letter on the boards, attached the finished letters, then attached them so they can turn.

8 comments:

Gemma Black said...

Hello F,

F is for fantastic! Great idea for the culmination of your good work! Thank you for the project and the inspiration.
x gb

Fiona Dempster said...

Thanks Gemma - I was happy with the resolution of the piece - it is what it is! And it's fun to play with!

Elaine said...

How fabulous Fiona! Not only a beautiful design, but also a great resource.
Elaine

Nola said...

Looks terrific! A really clever way to mount them with information.

What's the mechanism of the spine? I looks like a screw/nut fitting but wouldn't the nut come undone with the movement of the pages? (Maybe there's some amazing calligraphy gadget of which I know not?)

Fiona Dempster said...

Ah Nola - now I have to give away all my tricks! It is a nut on a thread. We countersunk the bottom ones so that the book could sit flat on the back cover if needed, and used superglue to hold them in place. The nut at the top is just screwed down finger tight - so far no need to call on the superglue.

Nola said...

Thanks, Fiona! The only thing I could think of was to glue the nut firm, too. But I thought there might be some other, cunning paper artist's method. I'd love to be able to buy those screw-together doo-dads that you used to get with photo albums, way back when, to make them fatter. Do you remember? You got hard covers and pages, two flat topped screws as ends and then tubes that screwed together, and every set of pages came with another tube.

Now, see, this is serendipity: while writing this, my engineer-husband asked me what I was writing about. He tells me there are two other methods. One is to use an interscrew, which is basically what I was talking about. It has a male and female end, and countersunk heads. So you screw the two parts into one another, with the threaded part in the middle of the book. He says you can get them at hardware stores (now we know what to ask for!). The second is to use threadlock, common brand name Loctite 222 , which is a special glue for holding nuts in place. He says it's better than superglue because superglue never comes off, while threadlock is designed to be able to be broken, with considerable force, if sometime down the track you decide to do something different with your samples, or add pages to your book.

So there you are. Your generosity in explaining things has, hopefully, been rewarded. I knew I kept him around the place for a reason!

chuckie said...

I LOVE the presentation of your letters!! it is just beautiful!!

callisueart said...

What a great way to hold it all together - very inspirational! xx Sue