Lundy Island

A lovely little commission for a gorgeous wee lass.  The covers are made using an old ordnance survey map of the Barnstaple area – with Lundy Island given pride of place, as that’s where the couple got engaged.

It was a really nice book to work on, but one thing I did discover was that my desk is not really big enough for some things…

…yeah, I did struggle a bit there, but got there in the end and the finished result was well worth the swearing!

 

The names of the bride and groom, together with the wedding date, were added to the front of the book by hand (imitating the fonts which were used on the invitations).  The book measures approximately 21cm x 15cm, and contains 36 pages (72 sides) of 220gsm cartridge paper; the coptic binding has been done using 100% linen thread.

I still have quite a lot of the map left over, so there may yet be a second installment to this post!

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Project 365 – Day 181

29th June 2012 – “Map in macro”

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Clocking off

I’ve had a hankering to make clocks for a while.  I have a very specific type of clock in mind, and I’m not yet ready to attempt it, but in the meantime I thought I’d have a bash at a simple one.

It really is a simple construction, made with two boards, some paper, and a clock movement.  The front board is covered with a page from an old atlas, and the back board is covered with pink wove paper.

You might wonder why I covered the  two boards separately… well, I needed to use two to get the thickness I wanted, but it turned out that the page from the atlas wasn’t quite big enough to wrap completely around the double thickness of board.  So I ended up sandwiching the two boards together after they’d been covered, but I do think it works well.

Simple, but very effective.  I hope this finds a good home at The New Vintage fair next month – I’d love to put it on Etsy, but I’m afraid that the arms will get bent or something if I packaged it up for posting!

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Take an old A-Z (part 2…)

Last week I made a start on making some stationery from an old A-Z.  I’ve since made a few more bits to go with the previous items.

A set of six postcard-style notecards

A set of six regular notecards

and a set of six postcards.

The previous set of notecards had matching envelopes, also hand crafted from A-Z pages.  This proved very time-consuming though, so I dug out some regular cream coloured envelopes from my stash to use with these.

These will be added to my Etsy shop today.

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Hot town, summer in the city…

The promised heatwave hit London yesterday and persisted into today – by 10am it was 28 degrees in the shade and still rising, finally topping out at about 32 degrees at lunchtime.

I love living in the city, but in the summer it’s a mixed blessing.  The mass of hard surfaces – tarmac, concrete, brick, slate, stone – both absorbs the heat and reflects it back, and on a clear day when the temperature is high you can see the heat haze.  On a day like today it makes the city seem, from a distance, blurry and out of focus.

Which was the perfect inspiration for the books I made today.  I used a fabric which is printed with a slightly blurry map of London:

It’s a lovely fabric, and I actually like that you can’t see the fine detail – it gives the books a Monet-like effect: they look fabulous from a distance, but a little messy close up.  I’ve got enough of the fabric left to make a third book, which I may well do tomorrow if the heatwave continues.

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A vortex of creativity

Well, it’s been a very busy week for me.  Sometimes the creativity just strikes and I’m at the mercy of it until it subsides.  It hasn’t quite finished yet, but here are the pieces I’ve finished so far this week… (for full details on each piece please click the links to view the Etsy listings)

Map of Middle Earth

Lines on a Map

Allium

Cherry Blossom

Berberis

The Lament of Galadriel

Waterlily

Seeing Stars

Silver Birch

Peony

Escholzia

Echinops

 

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Summer Holiday 2010

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