Showtime

I wasn’t the only one to visit a show today.  Whilst I was at Winchcombe, my friend Helen was at Glendale.  Only 300 miles away!

There were one or two black clouds when I arrived though and I feared the worst.  But somehow, it stayed dry whilst I was there, even if it was a bit chilly in that marquee!

I was there to judge the crafts and a fine selection there was, too.  Everything from a driftwood tree to a knitted mermaid, with a few beautiful patchwork quilts, knitted cardigans and embroidered cushions in the mix.  The picture above shows the “Over 80” class – I wondered if those were the grandchildren entered in the show?!

After I’d finished my work, I enjoyed taking a walk around the other entries, including the superb flowers.

But my favourite entry of all must be this dear little panda, with bag, towel and goggles, ready for her swim.  Looks like she won third prize in the “dress your teddy” class!

Sunday afternoon

I spotted a link to this nifty way of adding a spiral binding on another blog last week and it left me thinking that it was a neater, more together take on the ordinary spiral bind.  I thought I’d give it a go.

I’ve had this huge pad of 12 x 12 double sided paper for ages, having bought it very cheaply in Michaels or somewhere last year.  I very seldom use such large sized paper and though I know it’s silly not to dive in and use it, each time I’ve made a book recently, I’ve pulled it out and put it back unused.  That’s partly because it is rather bright and would dominate whatever else was going on

but also, cutting into a large piece of posh paper takes courage!  I resolved that one yesterday but making the pages of my usual, small format book a quarter of the page – no waste = happy girl.

I actually made two books at the same time – they have soft card rather than stiff board covers and have the same bright pages inside, a mixture of pattern and plain.

They each measure 6 x 6 inches (because it was 12 x 12 paper, I put away my usual metric rulers and got out my quilting tools) and have the spiral binding in the centre of the spine, done using my Bind-it-all and following the tutorial in the first link of this post to the letter.  It worked well.

Except…(isn’t there always an except?) I neglected to take into account the size of the binding ring when measuring the card for the covers and as a result, the pages showed beyond the cover edge.

I quickly trimmed off about a quarter of an inch and resolved that one easily.

But of course, my worktable looked like a game of pick-up-sticks afterwards!  So, this afternoon I’ve been playing about with them, because we can’t be wasting paper, can we?

I’ve woven some into a loose pattern which will look great on the cover of one book, and am now contemplating what to do with the rest.

This?   This?  or possibly something different.  We’ll see!

If at first you don’t succeed…

Inspired by an afternoon with a friend yesterday and with a morning to myself ahead of me, I decided to revisit one of the techniques from my New York workshop. I thought I’d begin with the simplest, the hand sanitiser gel transfer.

Though I’ve seen “purell” brand sanitising gel here in the UK (it appears to be the brand of choice in the office where I work), I had only the “Cuticura” gel, so before I began, I did a test transfer of one of the prints I brought home with me.  My scientist training has taught me to alter just one variable at a time if I am to reach a satisfactory outcome!

As you can see, the Newport Transporter Bridge is clear in all detail, the black areas have transferred well and apart from the fact that I was printing a portrait image into my landscape sketchbook and didn’t think to rotate the image before I posted it, all is well.  Happy girl.

Next, I printed out some images on to a transparency film we had at home.  Mary had warned us that some pre-prepared inkjet transparencies don’t work well since the whole point of the preparation is to ensure the ink doesn’t smudge or transfer to other surfaces.  I thought I’d work around that one then and print to the “wrong”, shiny side.  Though the image stayed put and didn’t run, the clarity wasn’t good and the ink didn’t dry.

So I printed another sheet on the matt, treated side this time.  The print was sharper and the images dried.

Transferring them to my sketchbook however resulted in poor results.  the print from the still sticky, untreated side is marginally better than that from the treated transparency, but neither is very good when compared with the transporter bridge.

And though the daisy image (wrong side) would be acceptable on a birthday card or something, the fine detail of the Thai wall painting is lost in a blur.

Time to rethink.  A conversation with Maggie gave me the idea of reusing the transparent film we’d used in class.  Having transferred the image, the film was clear and inkfree so this morning I retrieved the film from which I’d transferred the transporter bridge from the bin and ran it under the tap to get rid of any remaining ink bits.

I prepared an A4 carrier sheet of heavy lutradur, just like we had done in class and marked accurate margins for printing, because the piece of film wasn’t a standard size.  Using double sided tape, I stuck the film onto the carrier sheet and thinking economically, thought about printing a word doc rather than a full colour image.  I even remembered to mirror the text!

As I fed the film into the printer, I noticed that the edges were different from the centre of the film.  The transporter bridge image didn’t fill the whole piece of film and there had been a narrow margin all around – now I could see that the edges were still coated with something or other, whereas the centre of the film was shiny and clean.  When the print came out, it was clear to see that the coated areas were crisp and sharp, the centre, shiny and used area was blotchy and heavily coated with ink.

Setting the printer to an economy setting might have helped here – clearly there is a lot of ink sitting on the surface – but I doubt whether that would have affected the crispness of the image.  Anyway, before I tried again, I needed to transfer the ink off this film and see what’s what.

The transferred image makes it clear to see the difference.  The edge closest to the margin is crisp and could almost be a straightforward print, whereas just a short way in, where the film has been used already, the print is blurry.

So, back to the drawing board.

At this point, I did ask myself why I’m so keen to transfer print from a film to a piece of paper when I might simply put the piece of paper through the printer and cut out the middleman, so to speak?  Well, I have ideas to transfer these images onto things which won’t go through my printer…things like a piece of wood, the page of a book or a piece of heavy card.

Of course, I could have taken the easy route and read one of several books I have on the subject, could have gone to the DASS site and bought the proper, recommended film and read there that it can’t be reused, thereby saving myself the energy, effort and ink.  But you know, sometimes getting there is part of the fun!

Isn’t it?

Gadget Girl

I taught one of my favourite classes this morning.  Being of the firm opinion that contrary to all evidence, techie gadgets are not purely the domain of the under 30s and that they work equally well with a female hand on the controls, I very much enjoy the chance to prove my point.  What better way to spend a morning than encouraging eleven wise and very capable women to spend time finding out a bit about these small gadgets and what fun they might have with them?

In no time at all, photos were being bluetoothed to the Pogo printer, videos were being shot and there was a little tussle over who was going to get hold of the voice recorder next.  Imaginations were running over with ideas for recording the family history during a daily walk and there was a squeal of delight as someone completed a puzzle on my iphone.  The benefits of Kindles and ebooks were discussed to the sound of Abba coming from an ipod attached to a lego block speaker and one by one, everyone found something to amuse and delight them.

Without doubt, the favourite thing of the morning was the voice recorder, which was about to be added to several birthday lists – until I revealed to them the likelihood that their mobile phone would have one included.

Cue the sound of eleven wise and very capable women quickly switching on their phone and discovering something they’ve had all the time but never knew.

I love my work!

Learn something new

I had an email from Shimelle yesterday, alerting me to the fact that her  daily “Learn Something New Every Day” prompts will be dropping into my email box very soon as her class begins again.  I’ve followed this class for a couple of years now and though I remembered the first year very well and could bring the book I made immediately to mind, I couldn’t for the life of me recall the one I made lat year.

That’s because I didn’t finish it.

I remember thinking that I was pushed for time last September and deliberately chose a simple format.  Without too much bother, I soon laid my hands on the half made thing, lurking in a ziploc bag by my desk.

Fortunately, also in the bag were the remaining photographs I’d already printed out ready to include, so I quickly got the glue out, printed the captions and in no time at all I’d completed the book. There it is in the basket of other small books, looking a bit like a carrier bag, because I’d chosen to make the cover from a bunting-design bag I received when I bought slippers last September.  The slipper story is just one of those inside.

But also inside was a completed page, reminding me of the pair of shoes I bought and quickly returned to Russell and Bromley.  Because this time last week I happened to be passing R & B in Oxford Street when it was pouring with rain and like any other sensible (!) person might do, I dived into the shop to see what was what. (I was sheltering form the rain, really, honest!)

What should I find on the stand of reduced price shoes but those very same shoes I’d returned, marked half price and with the anchoring rings for the crystal still in place.  When I looked closely at them, I felt almost certain that these were the very same (slightly worn) pair of shoes I had returned this time last year – though of course, I am only 99% sure…  As one of the assistants came over to ask if they could help me, I pointed out that although these shoes were a very attractive style and colour, there were two curious rings attached to the chain on the front and if I wasn’t mistaken, I had returned an identical pair which had a crystal hanging there which broke.  To give the chap his due, he looked suitably sheepish and said that yes, he seemed to think that was the case and if so, these shoes should be marked as “substandard”.

And second hand?