Monthly Archives: June 2010

Something Old, Something New To Play With

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Back when I used to be a freelance illustrator, I joined the Illustrators Association of Australia. They produced a promotional book each year which you could, for a pretty high cost, have a page in. It was sent out to all the publishing companies and ad agencies, so it was worth it for the targeted advertising.

You also, for a fee, order a bundle of copies of your page to hand out to customers:

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I haven’t worked as an illustrator for some years now. While I’ve now tossed the books in the recycling, I couldn’t bring myself to part with the sample pages. They’re good quality card – a little lighter than postcard thickness – with a smooth, shiny finish. Surely there’s something I could do with them?

So recently I took them to the local printer, who kindly chopped them up for a small fee:

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(I love how he put each stack into it’s own perfectly-sized plastic bag. He must have a machine that does it, and by golly he’s gonna use it!)

I figure the ones in the front can become postcards or greeting cards. The three strip ones above and to the right are a good shape for bookmarks, and the small rectangular ones to the left of them could be small gift tags or cards, or fridge magnets, since two have a food theme. I have no idea what to do with the ones at the back. They have maps on them, which aren’t as suited to cards and such.

Half of the images can’t be used to make anything to sell, because the copyright resides with the publisher I did the illustration or map for. But I probably wouldn’t be looking to sell anything I make out of these anyway.

Any suggestions for other uses for these little pictures and maps?

Russian Book Bag – Finished!

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The last few stages of my book to bag conversion involved attaching the magnetic clasp, hand sewing the base to the sides, removing the tape from the handle (there was tape sewn onto the braid so it could be sewn to cushions, etc.) and sewing it to some cotton tape. Then the gluing began: first the cotton tape to the spine and then covering it with lining:

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Then finally gluing the bag body to the cover. To my relief, the magnetic clasp lines up perfectly. Here is the finished bag:

Front view, closed:
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Front view, open:
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Back view, closed:
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Overall I’m very happy with it. The process was rather fiddly, but I’ll happily go through it all again because I have to make a bag for myself out of the cover with the chain-mail bikini-clad warrior woman. As for the other two… we’ll see. I need to streamline the process a bit more. I reckon I could eliminate some of the sewing.

Sketch Sunday 31

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On Friday we headed into Melbourne CBD, and I took the opportunity to visit Seniors Art Supplies and hunt for some sketching tools. Afterwards we had lunch in a cafe outside, and I drew this ironwork street lamp across the road from our table.

The tools I bought were…

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Two pens are waterproof, which turns out to be the not-so-secret secret of avoiding the ink bleeding when you paint over them. The pen on the left produces a thin line, while the other has a soft paintbrush-like tip that produces a wider line with pressure. The street lamp was drawn with the latter.

The plastic-handled brushes hold water, and stand in for the brush, water bottle and/or reservoir I’d have to carry around and hold if I was to add colour to my sketches. You squeeze the handle to apply water to the bristles, and squeeze and wipe to clean them.

I tested all of these today, doing a sketch each for the pens and applying gouache paint on top. The pen lines didn’t bleed, even though the brushes tend to put a lot of water on the page. The excess water made the paper warp and buckle a little, however, but not so much that I would switch to a different sketch pad. Still, I’ll be keeping this in mind when deciding on the kind of paper I have in future sketch books.

I’ll post pics of the sketches in the coming weeks. Suddenly I have a backlog of sketches!

Russian Book Bag WIP

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Before I even saw Playing With Books, I’d come up with the idea of turning some of my excess foreign edition books into bags. In particular, these Russian editions, which have wonderfully cheesy covers:

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(BTW, there are no chain-mail-bikini wearing women or Nordic-looking warriors in my books.)

I found a few tutorials on the net. All, as well as the instructions in Playing With Books, have you use a hardcover book cover as the body of the bag. This means the width of the book defines the size of the bag and how much you can fit into it. I had other ideas:

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I pictured the cover becoming the back and flap of the bag. This meant that the the bag could be wider than the spine at the base, and I’d gain a bit more space inside. It also meant the bag would be a bit more secure. I’ve always referred to bags that are open at the top as ‘pick-pocket’s delights’.

I found some fabric for the lining and exterior – both which I’d conveniently already made some book cloth out of. And card to stiffen the bag and elastic for the sides:

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Cutting the pages out was easy:

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I cut two cardboard panels the size of the book and a base that looked ‘about right’:

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Then I cut out fabric and lining, adding some pockets:

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A bit of glueing and sewing later, and I’d got to this point:

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When I had to stop, because I needed to buy a closure and a handle before I could continue. These I now have:

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I’m just waiting until I have the time to put everything together. Then I have the perfect event to wear it to, this coming September.

Knitting/Bernardathon Update

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The first of my Bernardathon projects is growing fast:

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I have only one more row on the frill/collar/band to get to the cast off the pattern specifies, but I have plenty of yarn so I might make it even wider. I’ll try it on first and see how it looks.

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Yep – I frogged the socks to the toe and reknit them plain. While I liked the slip stitch pattern, by the time I got past the first heel I realised I was over it. And I really liked the way the colour was striping on the sole. These are knitting up quickly now, too.

Interesting how the way the yarn is wound into the ball makes it look like there are long colour sections, suggesting that the stripes would come out wider. But the colour sections are quite short. It’s just that the way the ball is wound puts the colours next to each other.

Sketch Sunday 30

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When I was a child my mother took up cane basketry as a hobby for a while. She made these little garlic baskets, and I forget how it came about but she ended up making hundreds of them to sell to people at my Dad’s work. I remember cracked skin and something that was fun turning into something that wasn’t. It was an early lesson for me on why it’s not always good to try to make money from a hobby.

Even so, I love these little garlic baskets. I have bay leaves stuffed into one, and the one I drew is pristine, Mum having saved it until recently, when she gave it to me.

Smaller is Better

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Though my book pear looked fine in photos, in person it was much too bigger-than-life-sized. So I cut the template into two smaller fruit shapes, then carved up the big pear.

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I like these even more!

Funny thing about representing objects at a different size to reality. Smaller than life size is fine, possibly cute. But if the representation is going to be bigger than life size, it kinda needs to be a LOT bigger. Just a little bigger looks odd and unsettling.

Bernardathon

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On Monday night I decided to cast on something new that wasn’t another mobius scarf, so I looked at my Rav queue. I don’t usually like to have more than two items on the go. Usually that’s a garment and a pair of socks. I’ll sometimes throw in an accessory on top if I’m getting a bit bored, or if the garment and socks are both too complicated for tv or portable knitting.

However, the Ivy League Vest is getting tedious. Mainly this is because I can only knit on it when my back is okay, and as work gets more demanding that happens less and less. I need steady progress to keep my enthusiasm up, and I’m not getting that with the vest.

So on Monday night I grabbed yarn for three projects and started swatching.

I started with a free top-down jumper pattern, but the needle size was waaay too small for the bulky yarn weight specified, and I was going to end up with a jumper that could stand up on its own. The other two patterns were from Wendy Bernard‘s Custom Knits. I wound up looking at the only garment pattern in that book for bulky yarn, the Lion Neck Cardigan:

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The yarn I’m using (Paton’s Inca) is more robust than the one specified, and will make this more of a jacket than a drapey cardigan, but that’s fine with me. I’m just loving that I got 3/4 of the way through the yoke in one evening. The perfect antedote for fair isle in 4ply.

The other two patterns I want to make from this book are Pink:

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And Slinky Ribs:

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Both which I have yarn for, assuming the tension swatch comes out okay. I love top-down patterns. I prefer ones that have good, flattering shaping in mostly stocking stitch or rib over boxy, frumpy ones with fussy stitch patterns. I can see myself enjoying these AND looking good in them.

Looks like this winter I’m going to have a Bernardathon.

Possum Mobius Scarf

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I think I may have formed an attachment to this pattern. Even though I’ve knit it three times (and despite frogging one of them) I still want to knit it again.

The long of it:
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The short of it:
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Perhaps the appeal is that it’s great mindless tv knitting. Yet I love wearing these scarves, too. As a friend pointed out, with a loop scarf you never have those annoying ends falling into stuff you’re doing. If it’s cold you loop it twice, and when you enter a warm place you take it back to one loop.

This one was knit from possum merino yarn I bought in New Zealand back in ’08. I’ve been eyeing some yarn friends gave me on my birthday – a collection of plain grey commercial yarn and grey and white handspun that I could knit in stripes…