Another finished project - a Fabric Book in a Box

As I mentioned weeks ago, I have been consolidating some of my life drawings into books. The first one to be finished is a fabric book, ready for the 'challenge' at the ATASDA meeting in Brisbane on Saturday.

For the challenge, we were given a cardboard box to do anything with - I chose to merely cover it and use it to store my book.

The fabric is teadyed cotton. The feature on the top is beach driftwood with beach weathered glass. I made it up as I went along [can't you tell?].

I've used the same fabric to cover the book and simple 'Japanese stab' binding for the spine. The brass booby bit in the top right corner is a cufflink I found at a local 'car boot' sale.

The pages are scraps from life drawings I did on calico many years ago. Some of the calico has been deliberately stained with mould [easy to do here in the rainy Maleny summer].

I have also used shellac, acrylic paints and a variety of marking pens.

Some of the pages are randomly stiffened with glue.

..and here I've played with T shirt transferring film ironed onto calico.

First 5 letters for ALaW

The ALaW project is growing still. I think there are about 15 members now from about 4 or 5 countries. Well done to our lovely Fiona!!

As I have already indicated, I am using photos taken of an old painted hand made box to source my alphabet letters. For some unknown reason, my initial letters were vowels, thus I am a week ahead!! I am using mainly ACDSee [a simple version of Photoshop] to achieve these results. I will note when I use another programme.

Here are the original photos, the final letters, and some pointers on how I got to that stage.

a. Mirror image, flipping, cloning.

e. Flip, clone.

i. Flip, clone, colour changes.

o. Flip, clone, add contrast.

u. Change perspective [with 'Paintshop Pro 7'], clone.

There are some challenges ahead. I will need lots of artistic licence with some letters.

I am teaching these techniques at an ATASDA workshop in Brisbane on April 24th and 25th.