Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Deb - EFGH

Here are the next four letters of my alphabet made with paper from an Ikea catalogue.




Monday, August 27, 2012

next four

it was SO HOT the two last weeks I could'nt even paint ! but finally, here are the next four letters : G, L, H and A




what do you think of my little Scottish monkey ? I'm not really satisfied with the L and I think I'll do it again at the end (if time is on my side !)

All I've seen up to now from all your new alphabets is so original, this will be a great ALAW year !

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Elaine's finished book


I am way behind. I went overseas for 5 weeks from the end of June and had a wonderful time, but this is the first chance I have had to finish off the first alphabet. I haven’t even started the second, but I have planned it all in my head.

You may remember that I didn’t create the letters in alphabetical order. As I was putting the book together and trying to put the letters in the right order, my husband suggested that I should call this book, ‘alphabet disorder’, which I have. The title is displayed on the cover.

The colours of the pages in the book correspond to the main colour of the sequins on each letter. I based this book loosely on a Japanese binding, but with staggered pages. I used red mount board with a black core for the back cover and the binding strips. This means that the back of the book and all the edges are black.

The book is 21 cm high x 22cm wide. The letters are 7cm within the pencil drawn square, but the white paper backgrounds are in a variety of sizes. This seems to add to the quirky look of this dotty alphabet.
Front
The 'o' page'
 
 
The 't' page
 
 
Back
 

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

JGR-EFGH Second Alphabet

Hello Alaw friends, I hope everyone is doing fine. Things here have cooled off (low 80's F) the last few weeks and it seems Fall is in the air! Continuing with my second alphabet, I'm having FUN:
To recap-my approach came about when I was testing out some new color combinations with my watercolors . . . . 
 I found that if I let the paint and water mingle, I could gently nudge them into the shape of letters. . .
 . . . some of the shapes are so subtle, it's not immediately obvious. I do like the random overlaps of texture and color,
 on this one G, I 'helped' things along with a dry-brush ever so lightly when the paint was almost dry.
H is probably the most straight-forward so far, and I really like the bright splash of yellow-green on the left. I can't wait to start on the next four! Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post.
Have a good day.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

please explain!

I suppose I left out how I finished the piece, so here goes....
First I glued the letters onto a strip of  cotton the rubber backed curtain material to be exact.
In between the letters I have sown on  garden twigs from the back.
I made spirals from copper wire these are slipped over the twigs and to finish it of some beads from my collection.
Ersi, I explained the making of my letters in my first post.
Hope this answers all the questions if not, just ask.

Friday, August 10, 2012

mieke's finished dotty.

It took me a while to get it right, after 4 different attempts I'm happy with the result.
It makes it really hard to get it right wen you don't have a finished piece in mind wen one starts, at least that what I found out.
so finally here is my result.






terrie's next alphabet

An ongoing project is my ALAW (a letter a week) so at the end of the year I'll have two alphabets completed - I made the first alphabet into an accordion book (you can see it here).  This time I wanted to incorporate my photography as well as make a little more complicated book.

I decided on flowers as my theme since I have tons of flower pictures I've taken over the years.  My idea is to make a pocket featuring the letter of the alphabet (in the prescribed 3x3" format) and then tuck my photos of flowers starting with that letter inside the pocket.  The lettering in the background is computer generated and is a list of flowers beginning with the letter drawn.  I did a ton of research trying to find as many for each letter as I could.  (for example, the background text for the A is agapanthus, anthurium, aster, astilbe, acacia, alstromeria, acanthus, amaranthus, anemone, allium, amaryllis.  I won't have photos of all those, but of more than one!


lettering done with a parallel pen which I'm still learning to use evenly

Then came the hard part of selecting which flower starting with "D" I was going to use.  I decided not to limit myself so redesigned the pockets with gussets so they could hold multiple photos.  I found this bit of leftover paper that is perfect but I don't have a lot of it so if I mess up writing a letter I don't have room for many corrections so I think I'll wait til I draw them all then go back and redo my least favorites.  Or, maybe I'll just go look for another paper :)


agapanthus

bird of paradise

clematis

dahlia

Now that I've settled on a plan, I'm off and running - I've made a list of the letters I don't have a flower to go with and so now I'll be on the hunt as we go on vacation next week.  I need to fill in those holes!

They'll look something like this .....


Sunday, August 5, 2012

Eithna's Second Alphabet 2012

It took me so long to decide how I would go about this alphabet. I wanted to write the letters as the last time I used a stamp. I also wanted to use some paint. I tried various ideas some were even bold, big and colorful but in the end I returned to muted and small. I put watercolor paint in random blobs onto watercolor paper and then drew through the paint with black ink while still wet, I love the chance marks that occur in this process. I then wrote the letters in the same place on each card as I like the idea of the unruly paint with the disciplined calligraphy. I added a few "x" stitches over the colored marks. Sometimes I got a nice mark that was not in the right place (see the "f", it looks like a fly) so I sewed it on top!









Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Lyndell's Second Alphabet 2012

How nice it is to not be late posting my alphabet.  Hopefully this will continue. If you hadn't guessed this alphabet is all about cats!  I have used my own Rose as a model although she doesn't always maintain the pose for the required time.