Words & Letters - a smallish art book. No, really

I'm staring another art book, but this one is going to be a pretty small project. It's the one that lead to this piece as I was planning it out. It will be another star book, all the black and white.

I wanted to do something on old book pages, and really like the Roman alphabets with all the lines and circles around them showing to make the letters. However, I didn't want to just to an alphabet book. So I decided to but some quotes in with them. I was going to just do random quotes about words and writing, kind of like an old sketch I did way way back. I can't it, but here's an abstract (ish) painting based on it, which might give you the idea:

This time around I wanted the quotes to have a bit more coherence. So I tookt he quote I liked most, "Words, words, words" from Hamlet and expanded it to include a few of the lines around it as well.

Close-up of the pages. There is one letter and one quote per layout. This is the back layer, and the others will be cut-out so you can see into this one. It's based on a square, because the letters are. The quote is smooshed into the same shaped. I didn't really use calligraphy for the quote, what I did was trace the outline of the letters and scribble inside to (mostly) fill them in. I love it with a little 'sketch'-like quality to it, rather than a more polished finished product.

When the separate pages where done I threw them all on the floor and decided on the order they would go in (see the top photo). The quotes and alphabet to go in order, but I didn't want them to simply alternate (letter on the left, quote on the right) so I played with it a bit until I was happy.

Then they all got cut out and glued to nice stiff paper to finish it off. I ripped the 'H' when I was putting it on, but that turned out to be a good thing because it was a boring letter and I replaced it with a more intricate 'K' instead.

Work Smart Not Hard?

I'm working on a custom guestbook right now. It's going to be a really really neat book when it's done, but just right now I'm wondering what I've gotten myself into.

This is for a destination wedding, and instead of a traditional book the guest are going to be sending postcards back home. Cool, right? Well, I got a little carried away when I heard the idea and saw the photo this is based on, which simply used some string on a piece of paper. See every other post: making things a hundred times more complicated. So I said, ooooh, lets do photo corners instead, and a window so you can see both sides of the postcard! I wasn't thinking this quite all the way through, though, because that means handmaking photo corners, eight per postcard so they're on either side! argh!

I cut them out too big as well, first, so I had to recut all 352 when I was folding them. Yup... there must have been a better way of doing that. One thing did go very well, though. To get the window in the paper (I found a nice heavy printmaking paper that will support the postcards very well) I traced a template on the first page only, then used my awl and punched holes all the way through. Tranfered the pattern in minutes! Of course, I then realized it was too small because the photo corners had to sit outside the window, leaving a small mat around them so the postcard wasn't simply floating inside the opening. But that was minor. Still, next time I do one page start to finish so I know all the things I might encounter before I start the assembly line of all the little ingredients.

At the moment I'm at the stage of gluing all the photo corners on. I'm actually sewing binding thread through the outside corner as well because I find photo corners tend to lift, and since this book is supposed to last for a very long time I want them staying where I put them! The outside cover will be a lovely ivory bookcloth I have with a ribbon spine. I hope it looks as lovely and romantic as I think it will! And that it's finished in the next few days... stay tuned!

The Tell-Tale Heart - planning

Here's a quick glimpse into my sketchbook for the Tell-Tale Heart project. After figuring out the basic imagery and deciding what size my watercolour paper would neatly fold into, I started drawing out the book itself.


A page for fonts. Art Nouveau on the left, Gothic variations on the right. And then my scribbles as I try to figure out how to combine the two.


This is my first draft, so to speak, of what a finished page will look like. The background scribbles, drips, and colours I like, but the font was still very Art Nouveau and much too pretty to be appropriate.

So I tried it again in the font that I ended up deciding on. Imagine this, but with the red opening letter, and muted background. I've penciled in the cut out bottom corner as well.


I planned out the entire book on tracing paper. The page layout is the same on all of them, so it's on one sheet (so I don't have to draw and erase pencil lines on each sheet), and the text itself is all planned out on these sheets (because the spacing and layout is all odd and different) ahead of time. I'm going to be using a light table, and basically just trace all of this onto the proper sheets.

This is where it's advantageous that I work in a boring store no one ever come into. There's no way I would have this all done, or possibly ever finish, if I'd started it at home only a week ago.

Here's the layout so I know how many pages, signatures etc there will be total, and what pages go together. The paper will be 90lb cold press, so decently thick enough that there will only be 2 pages per signature. This is to help me keep track of everything, since the folding pages mean the consecutive pages will actually be on different sheets, and it's easy to get it all mixed up.


Not that I really needed anything, but I popped in The Paper Umbrella because it's fabulous, and ended up finding some paper I had to have. Surprise! But sarcasm aside, this is a terrific find. The dark red colour is close to that of blood and it has raised ridges that look like veins. It also has woven threads visible on the back side. So I can't use this two-sided but I may take advantage and 'unravel' or 'fray' the edges. It could look cool, not to mention work well with the entire 'narrator loses his sanity' theme.

Creative Confusion

Thanks to three epic fails in the art department, today's post is all about my studio. It's the largest room in my (admittedly very small) house and yet it is always always the most cluttered. God knows why, I arrange everything before I start working and have to have all my supplies in their place and colours all arranged in order before I start working, and yet, here it is. At least I have a fan now! That hasn't been attached to anything, but there it is. I love having things all over the walls, though. Experiments, old sketches, photos I'm going to paint someday, my postcards, random quotes, post-it notes. I love post-it notes. I'm terrible at throwing things away just in case I need it for inspiration someday. The rest of my house is practically spartan, but here... There's an accordion folder in there somewhere with my stash of little bits of paper. I got it once it a fevered rush to get organized. I don't think I labeled the different sections. I now prefer my computer folder called 'Things to Paint" full of photos I've taken off my friends on facebook.
Once upon a time, when it was new, it looked like this. You can see where I just broke my coffee mug. A taste of things to come, I suppose.