In December I decided after two years that I would not continue, however the dots and circles appealed so here I am for another year! I found some of my hand marbled paper that has a multitude of bubble type images that would be a nice background, went looking for an alphabet into which I could incorporate dots and circles. I have chosen a 15th century Italian style chunky Roman letter which suits my 'rising bubbles' very nicely.

Judith's first few letters

Here are my next letters.

I based them on the Neuland hand but with more movement and then they came alive :)

Judith

Valerie's Introduction

I am Valerie Keevers born in Kent, England…. yonks ago. My Grandfather introduced me to Heraldry and Calligraphy as a small child, taking me into old churches and museums, also telling me the tales of knights of old and their adventures. War broke out and all these adventures stopped, except for the books I could read about Dragons, Unicorns and The Crusaders etc. My heritage is Scottish and Welsh, so I also have a great love of the Tartans and the Gaelic arts which came to the fore many years later when I became a calligrapher.

My family moved to Australia where I finished my schooling and four years at East Sydney Tafe, becoming a two year bonded teacher of Fashion, which had been my passion since I could first thread a needle. Teaching in Tamworth, I met a carpenter Brian whom I married the following year. We travelled back to England on honeymoon so that I could introduce Brian to my extended family and we stayed and obtained work experience for the next two years, Brian in the building industry and myself in fashion, becoming the manager of an ‘off the peg clothing’ manufacturer Armon Gowns.

Back in Australia we settled in Sydney, bought a house and had three children so the next years passed in a blur of rearing children and running a part time private business from home. The next major leap was to take a Tafe Computing Course, becoming a part time I.T. teacher for the next 22 years. It was during these early I.T. years that I closed my dressmaking business and looking for something to fill that gap I took a calligraphy course with Fran McKirdy and became hooked! Calligraphy filled the need in me for colour, art, design and re-opened the door to my love of the written word. From here I did the Calligraphy Certificate at St. George Tafe with Olivia Roberts, The Certificate Course with Margaret Layson at Chatswood Evening College, finishing with The Diploma Course in Western Calligraphy and became an accredited Vetab Teacher of Calligraphy.

I have taught Calligraphy over the years for the Eastern Suburbs Evening College and the Sutherland and St. George Community College as well as The Australia Calligraphers and Calligraphy Southscribes. Southscribes came into being 20 years ago to serve the potential calligraphers south of the Harbour as travel to the northside meant a lot of extra time added to a workshop at Primrose Park.
I am still a serving committee member and tutor of Southscribes which has given me a lot of pleasure and has enabled the meeting of many interstate and intra-state calligraphers who all help to widen the knowledge and enjoyment of calligraphy and the related arts.

I was very wary when I started with ‘A Letter A Week’ back in 2010, however found it fascinating to see via the Internet what creative designs were being posted and also found renewed enthusiasm for creating individual letters. Continued into 2011 and now have just committed myself for 2012. A big thank you to Fiona Dempster for her dedication To ALAW as it is bringing the love of lettering to a very wide community.

Valerie Keevers - finished book for alaw 2011  "black and white and a touch of..."

The Next Four

And here they are.

I have painted over each one with a starch paste

This time the paste consists of

Soy  milk powder and plain white spelt flour

Next will be some painting

I am having to be a bit ahead of schedule

as I will be away for half of April and May

Plus prep time of course.

Introduction - Deb

Hello, my name is Deb. I only discovered ALaW recently and was so inspired by all the brilliant and fascinating work. I really enjoyed looking back over the last two years.
I live in South Australia and have been quilting and stitching for thirty years. I like to mix machine and hand work.
I haven't done a lot of work with the alphabet apart from appliqueing white towels with new baby's names for all my daughters friends. These have been extremely popular. I think after making the major decision of naming your baby, to see the name in print (in any form) is very exciting.
I don't even know a lot about alphabets so I am looking forward to doing some research. I know all you calligraphers would have a vast knowledge! 
For my first alphabet I have made little linen and lawn sachets, turned them inside out, stitched around the edge and then appliqued a spotty letter on the front. I am then stitching a simple circle using hand dyed (by a friend) crochet cotton. The alphabet fabric is a multi-coloured piece of batik, so all the letters will be a different colour. 
Not quite sure how I am going to put these together yet but I have a few ideas.
The font I am using is Bookman Old Style from Microsoft Word.

My Introduction to ALAW

Hello all, I'm Lorinda from Victoria, BC, Canada and I'm super excited to be a part of A Letter a Week.

I'm just returning to my artsy self after a 7-8 year hiatus. I took an art class at one of our local art stores and the rest, they say, is history. Next thing I knew I was taking part in Art Every Day Month in November which was a wonderful source of inspiration for my budding return—and a great kick in the pants! Since then I've been playing with acrylics, watercolors, pastels (oil, pencil, and charcoal), mixed-media collage, and photography—basically anything I can get my hands on!

I've started this project with my dot alphabet. I'm making all of my letters out of only circles (my dots) and triangles. I'm using colored paper (2 x 13 colors) and origami paper for a bit of pattern. I wanted to keep this first attempt clean-lined and simple. For my second alphabet the skies the limit and I'm hoping to play with some sort of new (to me) media. I've seen the amazing variety of alphabets here on ALAW and am blown away by the vast array of materials used and the level of skill and talent. Thank you for letting me play along!

Here are my first six letters:

Mixing It Up

"B" for Bandicoot

 

                                                          I was working away on my little

                                                           letter "b" bandicoot and thought to

                                                            myself, why not mix it all up  just 

                                                            a little bit?  Why not just put all of

                                                            the letters of the  alphabet in a hat

                                                            and pull out a different letter each

                                                            week.  That  way it will be a big,

                                                            random  surprise  as  to   which 

                                                            letter I will be doing each week

                                                            and I will not be slogged down in

                                                            knowing exactly what  is  planned

                                                            for  the  next  year.  Does  any  one

                                                            else work like this?  Or would  you

                                                            rather have each letter  waiting  for

                                                            you in an orderly fashion  through

                                                            out the year? I kinda  like the idea

                                                          of  having new  surprises  to look 

                                                        forward to.  What do you think?

circle alphabet - next ones

here are the two next ones. sorry for the scan quality, the background is completely white in real life !

it's snowing and freezing here, can you imagine, -15°C ! happy you who are in summer time !

Elaine's dotty alphaabet

I have gone full circle and am back to more legible letters again, but I didn’t feel that these should have traditional forms either. I wanted the letters to have lots of movement, so I distorted them slightly by changing the angle of the stamp when printing, playing with their proportions and placing them at various angles within the square. This is the first of my 5 alphabets that is in lowercase and I don’t know why ‘i’ was the first letter I tried!

I started with a small wooden stamp which is a square with a hole (dot) in the middle and used a black stamp pad on layout paper. I ended up using layout paper because, together with the texture of the stamp pad, it resulted in a more interesting effect.

 I added different coloured sequins, more dots, ‘sprinkled’ throughout the letters, sometimes covering the hole in the stamp, other times not, to create even more movement.

These letters have been hard to photograph as it was difficult to get the shine and colour of the sequins to show up, so some of the letters are distorted and the paper doesn’t look white either.

                                                                                i

                                                                                v

                                                                               c

                                                                               b

Jenny's January Jaunt

This is actually the second version of my "dotty" letters - I may decide to use the first version as my second alphabet.  This one came from a doodle i did in a boring meeting - i liked the idea and developed it! The circle is gold powder on gilding mix and the line and letter are white guache.  The images are not too good, i'm afraid since my scanner is not speaking to my computer and I am not very good at photographing my work with a camera!