Alphabet 2 - Fiona's finished piece

I have decided that the best way for this project to work for me is to have the finished product in mind before I begin; and to try to build it up gradually as I go along. With the first alphabet I had no idea how to present the letters in a finished piece and took weeks after completion to come up with a solution.

This time I had a purpose - I planned to use the book as an exemplar when teaching my heartbeat script. I knew I wanted to use a concertina form and then set off, gradually adding letters to the book as they were finished.

Once I had attached all the letters, I then pondered for a while how I would complete the book. In the end I chose to maintain the concertina; but to contain the exuberance of the book by creating covers and 'tapes' that could be threaded thru some stitching to hold it together for most of the time. I also thought it needed a slip case, so covered one in nice rusted paper.

The book can be held in the hand and the pages turned; or it can be fanned out as a concertina. I like the flexibility.

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

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

Fiona's letters for October

My how time flies!  Here is my next instalment of embroidered letters on rusted braille paper. I continue to alternate the outlined letters with the filled in ones, and try to add a a slight embellishment in the background without detracting from the paper or the letter.

M: I worked a few french knots into the background.

 N: I outlined some of the braille dots in pencil. Amazing how different light affects the colour of the shot.

O: With such a lovely tide/watermark, I just did tiny silver dot lines around some of the fainter tidemarks

 P: A couple of lines of running stitch in pencil

Enjoy!

Fiona's four for September

Here are the next four in my alphabet.  Still enjoying stitching on paper and the lovely marks and texture of the rusted braille paper.

I have just been down to the studio to double check my mistake and yep - the 'j' was supposed to be an outline letter, not a filled in one. So the sequence is now busted and the book shall forever have that sense of unique handmade-ness!

In each of these I have just used pencil in the background to add some interest or build on the beautiful marks already there.

PS The 'i' is not as pale as the photo would suggest.

Fiona's e f g h

I have continued to stitch into my rusted braille paper and I am so happy that I discovered embroidering paper - who'd have thought? Each week I add a bit of decoration in the background to make the letters slightly individual. Despite the photos - they are all stitched in a beautiful soft grey thread.

E - I made a series of small spiral swirls with a lead pencil in one corner of the square

F- A few bits of silver leaf were attached - I like how they echo some of the shapes in the rusted paper

G- I chose some interestingly marked paper and didn't embellish it as there is quite a bit of letter going on

H- Once again, burnt incense holes and charring appear...

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.

Alphabet 2 begins...

After a few false starts, I have worked out what I am doing for the second alphabet.

I have chosen to create an exemplar/sample book of my personal heartbeat script.  I have also found myself in a happy place of recent times stitching into paper, so am stitching the letters; sometimes filling them in, sometimes simply outlining them

I am also working on rusted braille paper - I love the texture and the variations.  Each week I am also adding a design element of sorts to the background to help make each letter unique.  This alphabet feels like me!

Fiona's June letters - first alphabet done!

Here are the last of my experimental alphabet letters. It's been great fun trying different techniques and discovering new mediums.

W - is a small attempt at collage. It includes a small square of rusted paper, a fragment of rusted fabric, a red dot and the letter written in k.

X - was experimenting writing with bleach on black cotton - I like how it came out kind of blotchy.

Y- was an episode and a half! After many highways and byways it is gesso on wood, painted then lightly gilded and written on in ink.

Z - was my first attempt at writing on leather. It is ink on leather with some little background doodles.

All of them were written with a broken finger (which is now on the way to recovery - yay) so the writing is wobbly in places.

I am pretty excited by the thought of the next alphabet - but still haven't actually, finally and definitively decided what I'm doing!

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!

Fiona's Letters for May

This month hasn't been my best performance with keeping up to date with my letters. Almost every week has seen me rushing and trying to do "a quick letter".  Interestingly this has meant two metal letters and two paper-based letters. The metal letters used similar techniques to each other as did the paper letters. Weird.

R - I cut the letter out of a masking tape and then overwrote with smaller Rs so the letter appears to be on top of the background.
S - I punched the letter S into copper (through tracing paper which moved a bit) and left the patina on the background
T - I wrote the letter onto paper then overwrote with smaller silver Ts, so the letter is in the background
U - I punched the outline of U into galvanised iron and then stitched it with a maroon copper wire.

More details on each letter can be found here.

Fiona's April Letters

Here are my four for the past month. The experimentation continues and there have been LOTS of learnings!

'N' is etched aluminium. Even after leaving it in the acid bath overnight at 1:1 ratio only the faintest surface metal was removed.

'O' I used freezer paper for a stencil and used the negative space to create the letter - done with gold paint on rusted fabric







'P' I bled ink along the bottom edge of the paper, drew the letter with ink; then adhered metal foil to squares of double sided tape. Thanks Noela!




'Q' I experimented with a Speedy-Cut carving block and carved out the letter, rolled ink onto the block and ended up usingthe block like a stamp. Not the most elegant of letters sorry.

Fiona's March letters

I have continued my plan to explore different approaches and challenge myself and am still enjoying all the experimentation.  Here are my 5 for March:
I - a mono print (a good letter to write back to front so it prints the right way!)
J - a calligraphic pattern in the background, 'O' written over and over
K - Gold foil on dried PVA, ironed on
L - black acrylic, gold acrylic on top with the letter and other 'swishes' pulled out
M - etched copper. The letter was stopped out and the background etched, leaving the green patina on the letter.

Reminder about joining A Letter a Week

A quick reminder to those who are following and watching and enjoying all the letters that are appearing here as part of A Letter a Week that we are accepting new players and participants until the end of March.

If you would like to join in and share your letter a week, then please let me know and we can arrange for you to particiapte.

The main reason for closing off in March is that the real puprose of the project was to do a letter a week, and to create two alphabets by the end of the year. We felt that you could probably catch up 12 weeks worth of letters; but that after that we had lost the spirit of the original project. The original post here outlines the idea behind what we are trying to do.

So please get in touch if you would like to participate. We have folk from across Australia, the USA and Venezuela participating; other countries are more than welcome to join in!

Fiona

Fiona's Four for February

It has been a busy month; but also one filled with this little project.  I have really enjoyed working with these different materials - my challenge for the year being to experiment with materials and methods I don't usually play with.

My "E" uses aluminium shim. I then used a ballpoint embossing tool to draw the letter and decorate it.
My "F"  looks like leopard skin! I wanted to use a cut-out approach and ended up writing lots of little "Fs" on black paper then cutting out the letter "F" from the lovely top paper  and having the little "Fs" show thru.
My "G" was another experiment - working with silk organza that I had rusted, then stitching the outline of the "G" in metallic gold thread and securing it to card which had gold thread wrapped around it.
My "H" was a rush job when all other thoughts had proven fruitless.  In the end, I used oil pastels on metal, covered it with copper leaf and then pulled the "H" out using a sharp pointy tool. I wanted it it to look free and easy without pulling all the copper off.

More details of the adventures with each letter are over on my paperponderings blog