Two Ways

Didache 1:1, folded book

I got this idea a while back and today I decided to see if it would actually work. The answer is yes...and no. It folds up to about a 2.5 inch square. The folding is not the easiest thing and the join in the middle is rather fagile-I backed it with a skinny little piece of fabric hoping it would hold. Also as I used relatively thick watercolour paper (unlike the plain bond paper of the mockup) I found that I had to cut the top right open and add a piece behind to make it actually close.

And of course the lettering is not as exact as I might like, it never is. I lettered partly with the parallels and partly with traditional dip pens (the white side). The gradation was overpainted once I had the letters in place. That turned out kind of meh. All in all it could have been better and I am tempted to try a second rendition as this one didn't take so long (it did eat up the best part of my day and much swearing was heard over the small size of the art room when things kept getting tipped over...)

I do like the way the background painted, I used Sennelier inks (they are very nice) and Caran D'Ashe Neocolour crayons (also very nice). I hit it with the blowdryer to get some patterning also.

These pictures are from my camera phone because when I went to take a picture with mama's camera it crapped out with the lens half exposed. This is the third time this has happened with the powershots, twice with mine and now with mama's. I thought maybe they had gotten banged or something, but I didn't do anything to this one. This is very irritating.

Anyway teeny cell phone pics:


This is the way it is supposed to lie when open, I had this opposing folds idea very much in my mind, but am now wondering if a flag book style would not suit the idea better (simply because it is fragile)? How would I add the words right though. Hmm.

And this is just what the cover looks like (this one's rather yellow-the cover is actually covered in silver/blue duppioni)

Spring

It's turning spring which generally means mud and seeding and shaving the cat. It's really unusually warm for Saskatchewan at this time of year, but I'm not going to complain-especially since we are due for snow on the weekend. Nothing gold can stay blah blah. I got to get some of my dye stuff out and muck with that, so I'm relatively happy. I would be more happy if I could find my thiourea dioxide. Ah It'll turn up eventually, my misplaced chemicals usually do (and not always in the ground water).

Someone found crocuses and brought them to work so I went to look for some today without success. I did manage to find the first crawly bug of the season on my neck however and take some pictures while out wandering. I like the mud pool in this one:


I admit I am ambivalent to my home. Sometimes I think I would like to live elsewhere, but I don't know if I could ever get too far away from the prairie sky. At least I'm not sure I could do this and guarantee that everyone would survive it.

Hey look, it's also time for the grader to throw all the gravel in the ditch.