Just Made It ....

Phew ....
Looks like I might be the last one through the door ....
This is my second lot of letters for the year ....
Small shallow square bowls - made from paperclay and decorated with Cobalt and glazed with a clear crawling glaze .... will think of some way to mount them for display ... but here thay are at last .





































and finally - congratulations to all you bloggers for being so creative witth your letters - and to Fiona for coordinating the blog - and putting up with us late-comers !!!!
Looking forward to the 2011 posts ...
Happy New Year everybody ...
cheers - Ken

Jane's final piece - alphabet 2

I have been slack and forgot to post these photos - apologies Jane!


I wanted to go ahead and send these, along with my thanks for a wonderful challenge! I enjoyed it so much and I'm very excited for the next one!
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and all the best to you and yours in 2011.

Jane

Fiona's December letters

Well I figure that it still counts if you get your December letters in on the last day of December - phew, that was close!

I finished my last letter for alphabet 2 yesterday and am happy to show you where I've gotten to.

W with silver pen running stitches in three curves.

X has pencil dots outlining the white parts

Y has a couple of silver Xs to mark the beginning and ending of the journey

Z highlights the beautiful swirls in the background paper.

My finished piece is progressing - not finished yet - but this is how it currently looks. Still a fair bit of work to go, thinking through how to present (and contain!) it. The plan is for it to be an exemplar when I teach my heartbeat script.

THANKS, FIONA

Hi to all ALAW participants. It's Noela here.
I hope the festive season has left everyone happy and contented and ready for new challenges.
Before the year officially ends, I'd like to say a great big sincere and loving THANK YOU to Fiona for organising, motivating, posting, and even publishing to 'hard copy' our efforts and attempts at such a wide range of letters throughout the year.

Here she is, stitching and drawing into her beautiful rust dyed braille paper. I hope we can do her proud and continue this fabulous journey next year.     

Love to all, Noela

Sue's second alphabet

Seasons Greetings to you and all who belong to ALAW. I won't even try to explain why I am SOOO late with this alphabet BUT wish to apologise to you and the others in the Group. At least I finished before the 31 December 2010!!

 For these letters I used a Pilot Parallel Pen 3.8mm and black Acrylic Ink and slick thick paper or light-wight card. They are based on the Batarde Capitals with my own variations. Any comments would be welcome. I hope I will be allowed to do the 2011 letters. Warm regards, Sue in South Africa

Last 9 letters for 2010

Over the last week I have had to do some catch up with ALAW. Today I managed to finish the last five letters. However I did not post my letters for last month so I am posting 9 letters today.

Today I have also managed to bend all the letters into their bird shape so hopefully over the next couple of days I will be able to construct my flight of letters piece. It has been good to see so many people getting their letters in and amazing to see the colours, shapes and variety of approaches to the second alphabet.

Step 1 of my Second Alphabet

As all my letters are of the same style I will share with you my procedure. I embossed the letter three times then giving the back ground a very pale wash of pink before painting in the flowers. On completion these were then adhered to picture mounting board which I had made into a rectangular prism. "A" on the lid through to "Z" to the base. Do hope you enjoy the finished piece. Ann.

a letter a week 2011

Well folks we seem to have enough people interested in participating again or in joining in so we have set up another blog for  a letter a week 2011.

If you are interested in joining, please let me know and we'll get you started!

There's really only one major rule change for next year...you can do what you like for one alphabet, but ONE alphabet has to meet the criterion "black and white and a touch of..."

Looking forward to seeing what happens next...

last 2 letters

Well that makes 26. Now to see how they all go together as a whole piece - this is the big challenge!
Have a lovely christmas break and I'll be back for the ALAW 2011!
Cheers
Linda

ALaW - journal publication!

I recently wrote an article about ALaW for the Australian Society of Calligraphers' journal "Colophon": which they published this month.

Thanks to everybody who sent me thru high quality and high resolution images of their completed, first alphabets, we have received a fabulous four page, colour spread and story about A Letter a Week 2010. We even go the back cover shot as well (congratulations Ken)!!

I was so thrilled when I opened up my copy - the images look so great and there is a real sense of joy in the photos.

Here are some images of the spread and cover shot. A big thank you to Linda and Meg who did a fabulous job produced the article and the journal.

JGR Final Letters

Ta-Da! Here are my last two letters of alphabet #2. It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone! This one began with a hand painted background which I drew squiggles on, then scanned into PhotoShop and played with the letters, it's a somewhat modern abstract approach.

Believe it or not this one is the same background using the mode settings to give a different look, I overlapped it to get a 'colorful chaos' vibe. I've had a blast and learned so much with this challenge. Many thanks to Fiona and all the other talented calligraphers for your inspiration! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and the best to each of you in 2011.

Final three +Melbourne Cup creation as Grand Finale

The last three are more subtle so you need to search the final creation to find them.
There are more photos of the hat being worn on my blog. The image of this hat was born after the first few letters were made. I want to thank alaw for stretching me this way and that and taking this visual artist on the alphabet journey.

JGR-December

Here are my letters for December . . .
well four of the six,
I have the last two left to finish but I will use a different technique for those.
The these were done by bleach painting in a 'dry brush' manner on a dyed and rubber stamped background.
Happy December everyone!

Fiona's November letters plus

I have generally been posting 4 letters for each month and merrily continuing along my way. What I realised last night of course is that 4 letters for every month means only 48 letters; so I need to catch up and post a few where there were 5 weeks in a month or something, so that I can complete my 52 for the year.

I am continuing to stitch my 'heartbeat' script onto rusted braille paper - in readiness for  a sampler book that I can use to teach my heartbeat script next year.

So here are my latest 6 letters, leaving me only December's 4 to post at the end of the year. Phew. I still have to 'do' December's letters as well, but one thing at a time I reckon! And then of course, the book to make!

Q: an outline letter, with circles referencing the braille punched out

R: a lovely letter, with groupings of braille dots and general background shapes outlined in pencil

S: such a light and flight letter, I felt it needed grounding with horizontal bars at the bottom

T: a strong letter, with woodburning tool square 'branding' in the background

U: some tiny cut-out triangles folded back as embellishment

V: this is a lovely letter, with off set square and rectangle running stitch in lead pencil as a backdrop

Heather's alphabet complete!

Heather's Spencerian alphabet in a box...

Elaine's kimono letters continue

I think I was a few letters behind and now I am a few letters ahead!

Searching through my bag of ‘bits and pieces’, to find embellishments, has been fun too. This time I have added a silk flower, a beads and some fine cord.

Out of the woods!

The final Woodland letters. Now to put them together nicely.

More characters found in the woods

Here's P through T. It was challenging to find the letters naturally. A few had to be created. I did not think of photographing the end of a log for "O", but I am happy with the "O" wreath from my earlier post.