October 27, 2009
· Filed under Computers, Miniatures, Quilting · Tagged dollhouse quilt, dollhouse sewing, Electric Quilt software, miniature quilt, miniature sewing, printing miniatures on fabric, using software to print miniatures
In an effort to kick-start myself and get some old miniature projects done I joined a couple of lists, so bit by bit I hope to finish some of this stuff. I haven’t really worked much on my dollhouses since the shop I went to closed ten years ago.
I spent months catching up on old quilting projects during the spring and summer and that worked fine, so I hope I can do the same with my four dollhouses.
I found an online tutorial for printing your own tiny prints for dollhouse dresses so I thought I’d take a pattern from my Electric Quilt 4 software (that I am currently working on in real life) and attempt to print a quilt for my main dollhouse. I changed the shading somewhat and got rid of the border as I wanted this to look like an old scrap quilt. It measures 5 x 6.875 in 1:12 scale, which translates to 60 x 82.5 inches full size, so it’s a lap quilt or topper size.
The fabric was pre-treated with Bubble Jet Set 2000, dried, ironed to freezer paper, and I also tape it down to a piece of cardstock around the perimeter, otherwise it won’t go through my HP printer. Those stupid rollers of theirs catch everything but when I tape the fabric to cardstock it will at least run through.
I’m going to back it with a pale small-scale print and it should be quite drapable. The pink and green tones should go nicely with a crocheted throw I had someone make me years ago that is cream with tiny pink and green flowers on the border.
I’ll post a picture of them together when I’m done sewing this together.
October 24, 2009
· Filed under Card Collection · Tagged rune cards, runes
I was messing around with my card collection and decided to do up a montage of the rune cards I own. I always find card comparisons interesting because of the fascinating size variations.
Click to enlarge.
October 24, 2009
· Filed under Card Collection, Computers, Creativity · Tagged Card Collection, card decks, clip art, Dead Hand Chaos Poker deck, Lenormand cards, Making a card deck in Photoshop, making your own decks, playing cards
I have been designing my own Lenormand deck for the past two weeks. I am using public domain vector clip art from various disks I have here. Several of them are composites or ones that I painted or applied gradients to in an effort to make them more natural. Tons of layers in some of these and a few of them were tweaked in Adobe Illustrator first before exporting into Photoshop.
I like decks with borders so I put a lovely border on it and filled it with a gradient to give it some zip. The nice thing about creating a deck for yourself is that you don’t have to worry about other people’s taste, and you can create as you wish.
Here is a sample of four cards:
I finished designing them and then spent many hours tweaking the scale and colour here and there. I am doing them in Photoshop and printing them from there on premium matte photo paper, but I was a bit disappointed in the print quality because of a generic ink cartridge I am using, so I’ve halted until I can get hold of a better ink cartridge.
Today was rainy and cold and my husband had to go to work early so I was feeling a bit aimless and browsing online for some playing card decks. I have wanted the Bicycle Ghost Deck for some time but I couldn’t find it anywhere with decent shipping costs, so I ended up buying another odd deck called the Dead Hand Chaos Poker Deck. I like the border they’ve used on the pips. The face cards are a bit gruesome but fun at the same time, and I am keen to start using these for daily draws once they arrive in the mail.
I found some interesting free paper printables that looked like they might go with this deck. I was thinking I could do up a small diorama to use as a background when I draw these on my daily card blog. The one with the hearse looked like it might be suitable.
So I am generally messing around with paper and cards this week. I’ve been trying out a few different things on my card blog, and I have a fuller explanation of the Lenormand deck I am designing there. Put the term “Lenormand” in the Search box and they will come up.
September 24, 2009
· Filed under Books, Creativity · Tagged Books, Creativity, Curiosity, learning, Richard Feynman, Rumi Tarot
During a lull in reading material I picked up and re-read the book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by physicist, teacher, and Nobel winner Richard P. Feynman. Feynman was known for his enthusiasm and high spirits and endless curiosity. Unlike most academics and scientists, he liked to speak plainly, without all the gobbledygook. If he got interested in a subject, he took it up with passion, not because he wanted to swan around and say he could do things, but because he enjoyed learning and found other people fascinating.
I long for such people in my life as I am endlessly curious too and find most people say to me when I enthuse about subjects or books: “I haven’t got time.” Imagine not having time to be curious and learn new things or be delighted by a quirky subject? Feynman really was a curious character, and as the saying goes “character matters!”
I’m about to read the other book about Feynman I bought called Tuva or Bust: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey by his friend Ralph Leighton, and I expect to enjoy once more Mr. Feynman’s lucid ability to laugh and pare things down to vital essentials. Even though he died in 1988 his spirit lives on.
So, I got to fooling around with my camera and decided Richard Feynman would like the Rumi Tarot, because he would be curious about the artwork and then go on and learn about Persian manuscripts and Sufism. Just because it was interesting. Just because it was there to know about, and he didn’t know about it yet.
I love people like this because I’m like that: curious, independent thinkers who want to learn, simply because they don’t know about something yet.
I pulled the 5 of Coins from the Rumi Tarot for pondering this.
“In poverty is the light of the Lord of Glory”
Which I take to mean that you don’t need to be rich to enjoy the riches of heaven. Strip away the ego and acquisitive demands and leave them for the simplicity and purity of spiritual essence.
This card is often about impoverished beggars walking unheeded by the closed doors of a church, banished and lost. In Richard Feynman’s world, no one is lost or poor because their curiosity is like a cache of gold. Restrictions are only in your mind and clarity surrounds you.
Plus you can collect stamps from weird countries.
September 23, 2009
· Filed under Card Collection · Tagged antiques, art cards, art decks, artists, Card Collection, card decks, decorative arts, Neil Lovell, Tyldwick Tarot
I have put in my name for a pre-order of the Tyldwick Tarot. It appealed to me because I love wall niches, architecture, furniture design, decorative objects, and old houses, but I also thought it would make a great story deck and pal for my Antique Engravings Playing Cards.
The artist is Neil Lovell and he is hopefully publishing these himself. He says he needs a minimum pre-order of 600 decks before he can do a print run of 2000. I wish him luck in getting that many pre-orders as it’s unusual for self-published decks to sell that well.
There’s always a first time for someone with vision to break the mold. Help him out by scooting over to pre-order this unusual and refreshing deck. If this deck ever hits a press it will be very interesting to work with. I soooo like it when people do different things for card decks.
He’s got a puppet theatre on The Magician card. Pamela Colman Smith used to do paper figures for theatres, much like this. Come on, didn’t we all watch the movie Being John Malcovich? Wouldn’t you like a puppet theatre in a tarot deck?
Sure you would.
Look at this, don’t they go well together?
I just realized why I like this deck so much. It reminds me of two excellent books published by the Victoria and Albert Museum that I have in my collection at home. There are actually three books in the series but I haven’t been able to find the last one as it’s out of print now. The Georgian one in particular reminds me of some of the furniture and architectural elements in the Tyldwick deck.
August 21, 2009
· Filed under Books · Tagged A Rage to Live, A.S. Byatt, After the Flood, Bataan Death March, Books, Elizabeth Norman, Isabel Burton, Margaret Atwood, Michael Norman, reading, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Tears in the Darkness, The Children's Book, World War II history
I just got a call from the library that a book I had recommended they order is in. It’s called Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael and Elizabeth Norman. My library has a couple of books on the Pacific theatre during World War II and this book gets such great reviews that I thought they should buy it. I haven’t worked in a library for over four years but I continually do collection development anyway! This book has very detailed information on the lives of ordinary soldiers rather than their commanders, including the Japanese who carried out the horrendous torture and brutality. It’s easy to stereotype the Japanese culture that produced such things, but more interesting to read of the human side in this dreadful episode, which the authors have apparently done here.
I also noticed that A.S. Byatt’s novel The Children’s Book is longlisted for the Booker prize so I got that out of the library. I am on page 245 and find it’s a real page-turner so far. I love Byatt’s short stories and have several collections. Years ago some guy I used to talk to sent me a copy of her book Possession which I really liked, but I never took to her series of novels about the character Frederica and her friends.
The Children’s Book is a lyrical look at the golden period of late Victorian and early Edwardian England with lots of references to the Fabian Society (which I am familiar with from recently reading a biography of G.B. Shaw.) Art Nouveau abounds for those of us mad for the artwork and crafts of the period, and Byatt manages her usual dreamy sexual tension and oddly erotic bits and pieces. At some point she covers World War I and its aftermath which is a period I’ve been interested in since I was a teenager. At 600-plus pages, I thought this was going to be a convoluted slog but she’s really captured something with this book. She won the Booker for Possession back in 1990, and so far this is panning out for me as another winner. It should definitely make the short list.
Although it’s not coming out until September, I have already put a hold on a library copy of Margaret Atwood’s new book After the Flood which is a pre and post-apocalyptic look at a pandemic. Very topical and I’ve always liked Atwood’s ability to follow characters and society and post-apocalyptic science fiction has forever been a favourite genre of mine. This looks very promising, and that’s saying a lot since I stopped reading Margaret Atwood books after Alias Grace back in 1996.
I am on the last 200 pages of the biography of Sir Richard Burton that I have been reading for several months called A Rage To Live by Mary S. Lovell. I found the book quite a page-turner after I got past the unpleasantness of his dealings with Speke. I have taken to calling our hero “Richard The B.” I like that the biographer tries to give us a more accurate picture of Burton’s wife Isabel and their relationship and interaction with others. The British Foreign Office in Victorian times was pretty frightful as one can see in some of Rudyard Kipling’s writing, and poor old Burton is often dealing with the inept authority and employees of the F.O. in this book. He was a very bright and capable person who was sidelined by gossip, jealousy, and his own intellect and lack of tact. But for that, he would have changed the world in the Middle East, and our current problems there, I am convinced.
August 5, 2009
· Filed under Bookbinding · Tagged bookbinding, pinao hinge book
This is a model I made of a piano hinge book with a varied collection of stationery letterhead and scrapbooking paper with a beautiful cardstock in purple for the covers. I dyed silk twist thread for the wrapping on the skewers and added a few beads. I’ve seen these made with huge hunks of beads on a dozen or more threads and fuzzy wool and such for decoration but, I prefer to see the book and paper without too much distracting decoration.
The collage on the front uses a playing card from my collection, scanned in and then printed and folded, along with some papers from the signatures of the book. I am now making a slightly bigger one in a blue and yellow colourway and nautical theme with some maps from an atlas.
August 2, 2009
· Filed under Bookbinding, Creativity · Tagged Creativity, prototypes, sketchbooks
Last night I glued four of the facsimile antique Japanese postcards from a postcard book into two book covers. My idea was to put some loose paper in there and make a sketchbook.
Today when the glue was dry I punched holes in them for binding, and decided I’d finish the holes off with eyelets. It looked messy but I persevered and punched some holes in loose Rives BFK paper that I had precut to 4 x 6 inches about three years ago for a project that never came together.
I didn’t have metal loops so I trimmed some larger split rings to make them into plain jump rings. They were only 12 mm and too small and I ripped one of the covers. Oh boy, the trials of prototypes. I could only fit eight pages of Rives BFK in there and it seemed pretty useless with only that amount. I tried making my own jump rings, which worked much better, but I only have 18 gauge wire and this would need something heavier. At some point I might tie this with thread and try to redeem it, but as of now it was a total waste of time and money.
It seemed like a good idea, but now I’ve apparently wasted 4 beautiful postcards. It is not a day to make things, as I’m completely frazzled now, so I might try printing the titles in for Tower cards that I pasted on the endpapers of my Towers Art Journal with the gold gel pen I bought yesterday. Oh great, when I bought my art paper, the clerk forgot to put the gel pen in the bag.
Grrrr. I am in such a snit.
Update: Aha! One thing I have learned to do with art projects is to set them aside for a time instead of destroying them when I’m in a snit. I have since trimmed these up to get rid of the damaged spots and I’ll use them for a Coptic stitch booklet with proper folded signatures. I want a decent paper to use for sketching so I’m still thinking about what to use.
July 20, 2009
· Filed under Books, Card Collection, History · Tagged Books, card decks, History, history books, Middle Ages, The Flowering of the Middle Ages, The Nigel Jackson Tarot
For a few brief weeks earlier this year I had an account at a place for books and discussion. One of the people there recommended a book on the Middle Ages to me so I bought a used book of it: The Flowering of the Middle Ages, edited by Joan Evans.
I had a look at it and read a bit of the section on pilgrimages and the Crusades, but was busy reading Ulysses at the time and then got really sick so it sat on the spinnet desk in my bedroom and looked at poetry books for a bit. It seemed to be favouring Plutarch’s poetry, although I caught it flipping through De Rerum Natura one evening in the dark.
Upon receiving the new Rumi Tarot I hauled out The Nigel Jackson Tarot and since it deals with the Middle Ages and Pythagoras and Gnosticism and such things, I am pairing it with The Flowering of the Middle Ages in card draws. I call these Random Passages as I pick the passages randomly and pair them with a random card just to see what comes up.
I’ve only done two so far but they were quite interesting. I learned about armillary spheres, Nicole Oresme, Pythagorean music tunings, irrational exponents, Cictercian abbeys, monks, monasteries, dragons, illuminated manuscripts, monads, and Trappist monks and cheese.
July 20, 2009
· Filed under Books · Tagged biography, Books, The Lives of the Muses
Am I ever going to finish Ulysses? The Universe coughs and says “Try and be diligent Judith, try and focus.” Focus, what’s that? Hey the James Joyce Jumping Jack took a trip down to Toronto, what more could you ask for?
I have had to put Joycey on the back burner yet again to read two inter-library loans I received.
As well as the Man Ray biography, I got this fantastic book on inter-library loan which I mention on my Books I Am Reading page, but it’s so good I wanted to put a larger notice here.
I was browsing for information on Lee Miller (a Man Ray friend and lover) and came across this book: The Lives of the Muses : Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose. Could you have a better name as an author?
Very interesting people and some I hadn’t heard about. I found it fascinating to learn about Samuel Johnson and his muse Hester Thrale; Alice Liddell I knew about from a biography I read of Lewis Carroll but interesting to see another biographer look at her.
That’s as far as I have made it but it’s a page-turner so I expect to finish this quickly.
