Salisbury and Cotswolds Holiday Day 8–Cirencester–2nd Post–Art Exhibition

As I mentioned in my last post, at the side of the museum in Cirencester is a small art gallery which hosts temporary exhibitions of work by local artists. The current exhibition is on the theme of William Shakespeare, and I think you will agree with me that these pieces are exceptional, and depict the Bard very well, each in their own way. Many of the pieces have an ancient feel but using modern materials, and in a modern style – in exactly the same way as we interpret Shakespeare today!

A mixed-media scroll, decorated front and back.

“Birds on a Wire,” the wire being a quotation from Richard III: “True hope is swift, and flies with swallows’ wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.”

Coiled pot with printed paper, “Love Potion.”

A display of mini-books.

These were so intriguing and beautiful that I had to take a few detailed shots of them.

It is a shame there was so much reflection from the display case, but I did the best I could to capture them. These little books are so exquisite, and so along the lines that I want my own work to progress; I am very attracted to the idea of making art in books which themselves are little pieces of art, not something to be hung on the wall, but dynamic, to be handled, tactile, with texture to be enjoyed.

This beautiful installation displays a series of mini-books in a cabinet. Gorgeous distressed frame.

Again, my apologies for the reflections.

Ariel, the winged messenger.

Details about the exhibition.

Beautiful backgrounds.

A display of mini-books arranged between a pair of masked bookends.

Gorgeous grungey black and white mini-books.

One of my favourite pieces in the exhibition, a paper sculpture entitled “Will Writes.”

I love how the pages of words flow from the end of the giant quill pen and gradually become part of the structure in which he is sitting – just as his original ink-still-wet words have over the centuries become part of the edifice of our national culture. The words are for us all, but it is up to us to draw aside the curtain and dig more deeply to discover the beauty and meaning of the immortal words which transcend historical period and fashion.

There were many other pieces too, mostly paintings and a few more sculptures and ceramics, but I felt this selection best represented the theme to me. I hope you agree that they are beautiful and inspirational – a modern interpretation of the sublime works of our greatest wordsmith.

As with my previous post, this was composed on the following day, as I was too tired on our arrival home last night to tackle anything on the computer! As before, I have kept the date in sequence to make my holiday record complete.

Completion of Vintage Book-Style Birthday Card

I have now finished my mum’s 90th birthday card. On the card itself, all that remained to be done was to secure all the embellishments with glue, and I added some wire to hold down the pearly flower stem that I used for the swallows to perch on, and to make the swallow’s feet I cut a black plastic-covered wire tag that had come around a cable, and poked it through some holes I’d made in the top layer of the card.

I would have preferred to have made the swallows out of embossed metal, but I am still waiting for my Cricut embossing kit and metal to arrive, so I had to make them out of mirror card instead, and it didn’t emboss terribly well. You can see a slight impression for the eyes and wings, and I hope it’s sufficient. I used a “Happy Birthday” peel-off sentiment – I don’t use these very often these days, but I needed something small, and I thought it would do fine for this project.

After this, I assembled the whole card, attaching the pages to the back piece with double sided tape down the “spine” of the book, and squirting a series of good thick blobs of Pinflair glue under the pages to keep them curved upwards.

When the card was finished, I started on the box. I designed a background sheet from the vintage papers I used for the card itself, layering the manuscript photos over a nice distressed endpaper from one of the ancient books from our church. The lid was no problem; I simply cut down the printed sheet of A4 to 10 1/4 in x 6 1/2 in, adding an extra 3/4 in all round for the sides, and scored all four sides at this 3/4 in mark to make the sides of the lid. I selected the centre page of the book-style card template cut file, and cut this from the middle of the lid piece. I cut a piece of acetate slightly larger than this aperture, and stuck it to the inside of the lid with double-sided tape. I cut a small notch in each corner of the lid, and assembled it with hot glue. I then cut a piece of white card the size of the inside of the lid and again cut the page-shaped aperture in it, and attached it inside the lid, covering the edges of the acetate.

The bottom of the box was a different proposition altogether. Making a straightforward box out of two sheets of A4, one for the lid and one for the base, wasn’t going to work for this project, because the finished card was too thick, and I had to make a deeper base. This proved to be quite a lengthy process and at the end, it was a bit too big, so I had to fiddle around with it to make it fit, but I think it’s OK now.

I cut the base bottom 10 1/4 in x 6 1/2 in from my printed card, as for the lid, and then cut it down a very small amount so that the lid would fit over it. Unfortunately I didn’t cut it down quite enough – when I make this again, I shall make sure I cut a bit more off.

For the long sides, from the printed card I cut 2 strips measuring 11 1/4 in long by 1 3/4 in deep. I scored at 1/2 in from each end, and 1/2 in along one long side to provide tabs for gluing the sides to the bottom of the box.

I did the same for the short sides, which measured 6 1/2 in x 1 3/4 in – in this case I only scored along the long edge at 1/2 in for a gluing tab, because the ends didn’t need tabs.

Before assembling the bottom of the box, I cut a small amount off the side pieces, but again, not enough, and it involved a lot of fiddling around to get it small enough for the lid to fit. Grrrr.

I applied double sided tape to both sides of the tabs on the long edges of the side pieces, and stuck the outside of these tabs to the inside of the box base, so that the tabs were inside the box. The final step was to cut another piece of my printed card, the size of the inside of the box, to line it; this was stuck down with the double sided tape on the upper sides of the tabs holding the sides to the base.

Clear as mud? I hope so…

After completing the structure of the box, it just remained to attach some more roses on the corners, and a few leaf trails (also from a Penny Duncan cut file – thanks Penny!). I stuck the leaf trails down with spray on photo mount, and the roses with hot glue. Here is the card in the box:

As this isn’t a traditional card that opens and stands up on its own, I made a stand for it. The design for this was inspired by a Chinese plate stand which folds flat when not in use, and is decorative as well as functional. I drew this in Serif DrawPlus, adapting the size and proportions to fit my particular card size, and drew one half of it, which I then copied and pasted, flipped the copy, aligned the two, joined them into one piece, and exported as an svg cut file. I cut two of these from a piece of light brown 12 x 12 cardstock, at right angles to each other to take advantage of the strength of the grain of the card going both ways, and glued them together with Pinflair Photo Glue after scoring them down the vertical centre line. When the glue was dry, I folded this stand in half, so that it can be stowed underneath the card in the box, ready for use when my mum wants to put it up.

This is my first book-style card and it’s been a lot of fun to make (apart from the box which was a bit of a pain!) I have enjoyed creating my own digital backgrounds and printing them out – it’s an awful lot more fun than just using bought patterned paper, which you probably wouldn’t have in the right design anyway, and you can design it to fit the size and shape of the project too.

Here is a picture of the finished card on its stand, hopefully destined to grace my parents’ mantelpiece for a while!

I need to get going on Wonderwoman’s mum’s card, but we’ve got Mothering Sunday before that, so I have to make my mum another card! I haven’t yet quite decided what to do, but it will be a less elaborate affair, but still striking, I hope.

Book-Style Birthday Card–Vintage

Having revamped my book-style card template, I have started to create the cards. My mum’s card will have an aged, vintage feel. I have used some of the images from the ancient manuscript book which I posted about a few weeks ago, making a montage of images so that there was a distressed edge either side, and not exactly repeated, to give a more realistic look. I started with the distressed endpapers, and then added some of the manuscript text, using the mesh warp tool in Serif PhotoPlus to give the impression that the lines of text were following the curve of the page. I increased the contrast and blended it into the background using the Soft Light blending mode.

This is the centre (uppermost) page. There will be a ribbon bookmark down the centre fold, and it will be embellished with sentiments and some of the roses I have created.

The pages which lie behind this one were created in the same way, but to save time, I simply copied the completed image of the top page and flipped it vertically and/or horizontally and stretched it a bit so that the distressed edges did not look the same. It didn’t matter how the text looked (upside down and curving the wrong way) because it will all be covered by the top page. As it is being covered, there was no point in printing the whole of the centre and wasting ink, so I have erased the central part. This is the central page.

After I had created these two pages, I went into Serif CraftArtist Professional, my digital scrapbooking software, and created a mock-up of how the pages will look when printed, cut out and assembled.

I have now printed these pieces on a nice substantial white A4 cardstock, and I shall ink the edges with distress ink to cover up any bits of upside down text on the underlying pages, and also to darken it down a bit. The photos don’t really show the true colour; it was hard to get the colour balance just right because my first attempts at printing came out different from how they appeared on the screen, and the final result is a bit too pink, so I may be able to tone this down with some distress inks.

The pages will be gently curved using a rolling pin, and glued down the centre. I shall also add a little glue to the underside of the top page near the edges so that it will not lift. When I make Wonderwoman’s mother’s card, I will not do this, because the pages on hers will be designed to lift, revealing photos underneath.

So progress is being made, albeit slowly! I have been pretty busy this week with other things, and then too tired in between to do much, but we are already half way through the first week of March, and a lot to do before the beginning of April!

Vintage Backgrounds

I recently had access to some ancient parish records dating back to the 1600s, bound in a large vellum-bound book, and before the book had to be returned, I was able to scan a selection of the pages. Not only are they interesting from a historical point of view, but they are beautiful objects in themselves; the earlier generations thought that official documents should be beautiful as well as informative, and they went to great trouble to pen the most elegant copper-plate script, complete with flourishes and embellishments. What a shame that these days, such documents are written in often very poor handwriting, or typed; nobody has the time any more to take a pride in a mundane job and elevate it to the status of a work of art.
Leafing through the book, it was interesting to see how the style of handwriting changed over the years, and even the signature of a single individual would develop ever more elaborately as the years progressed.
These documents are great treasures – irreplaceable, beautiful, and fascinating as they trace the births, marriages and deaths of ordinary citizens throughout the centuries. Handling this book, I could imagine the clergymen who penned the lists of names, and the style of clothing they would have worn, and the sort of lives they and their parishioners would have led – a very far cry from our lives today.
These pages would make wonderful backgrounds and design elements in my art projects – I am just embarking on the whole new world of digital scrapbooking, and they have great potential!
Here are some samples of the pages.
This one is the first page in the book, and dates from 1678.

It is interesting how the black ink has gradually seeped through the paper over the centuries, so that a ghosting effect from the other side is visible.
This one is dated 1692.

In 1736 you can see a true copper-plate script developing.

1737:

1757:

1767:

Into the 19th century, here is one from 1813, the final entry in this volume, which is volume 3 – it is not known what has happened to the earlier volumes. Presumably subsequent volumes have been lodged in the county record office, which is where this book is destined.

I also scanned some of the endpapers, and the front and back covers of the book.

The marks on this page are the ink bleeding through from the writing on the reverse.

This is part of the front cover. The cover is made of vellum, and is wonderfully distressed.

This is the top part of the book, showing some of the binding:

and finally, this is part of the back cover.

I wish I could share with you the wonderful feel of this book; its weight, the stiffness of the paper, which crackles as you turn the pages, its textures – the paper is slightly striated as it would have been pressed probably between sheets of linen when it was made. The vellum cover is smooth, like silk, and the whole book has an aroma of antiquity. I really felt that I was holding history in my hands. What a privilege.

Vintage Backgrounds

I recently had access to some ancient parish records dating back to the 1600s, bound in a large vellum-bound book, and before the book had to be returned, I was able to scan a selection of the pages. Not only are they interesting from a historical point of view, but they are beautiful objects in themselves; the earlier generations thought that official documents should be beautiful as well as informative, and they went to great trouble to pen the most elegant copper-plate script, complete with flourishes and embellishments. What a shame that these days, such documents are written in often very poor handwriting, or typed; nobody has the time any more to take a pride in a mundane job and elevate it to the status of a work of art.

Leafing through the book, it was interesting to see how the style of handwriting changed over the years, and even the signature of a single individual would develop ever more elaborately as the years progressed.

These documents are great treasures – irreplaceable, beautiful, and fascinating as they trace the births, marriages and deaths of ordinary citizens throughout the centuries. Handling this book, I could imagine the clergymen who penned the lists of names, and the style of clothing they would have worn, and the sort of lives they and their parishioners would have led – a very far cry from our lives today.

These pages would make wonderful backgrounds and design elements in my art projects – I am just embarking on the whole new world of digital scrapbooking, and they have great potential! [Ed.: You can see that I have incorporated some of these into my blog background.]

Here are some samples of the pages.

This one is the first page in the book, and dates from 1678.

It is interesting how the black ink has gradually seeped through the paper over the centuries, so that a ghosting effect from the other side is visible.

This one is dated 1692.

In 1736 you can see a true copper-plate script developing.

1737:

1757:

1767:

Into the 19th century, here is one from 1813, the final entry in this volume, which is volume 3 – it is not known what has happened to the earlier volumes. Presumably subsequent volumes have been lodged in the county record office, which is where this book is destined.

I also scanned some of the endpapers, and the front and back covers of the book.

The marks on this page are the ink bleeding through from the writing on the reverse.

This is part of the front cover. The cover is made of vellum, and is wonderfully distressed.

This is the top part of the book, showing some of the binding:

and finally, this is part of the back cover.

I wish I could share with you the wonderful feel of this book; its weight, the stiffness of the paper, which crackles as you turn the pages, its textures – the paper is slightly striated as it would have been pressed probably between sheets of linen when it was made. The vellum cover is smooth, like silk, and the whole book has an aroma of antiquity. I really felt that I was holding history in my hands. What a privilege.