Because I Needed A New Hobby Like I Need A Hole In My Head

So, a friend of mine has been charged with bringing some largesse items to Pennsic for a foreign royal house (who will be giving them out as largesse to their populace members), and she asked for my help.

We went to Café Monet, a paint-your-own-pottery place here in Austin, and IT WAS SO MUCH FUN OMG YOU GUYS.  I've never painted ceramics before - I've painted terra cotta planters to look like ceramic, with acrylic paints, but this was a whole new animal for me.  (It was totally weird to paint something and not really have any idea if it was going to look right after firing, but it was also kind of exciting!) Each of us painted two pieces.  Here are the two that I made:

They're cordial cups - about 8" tall, with a cup about 2", I think.  The one on the right is sort of a fish-scale thing, and the one on the left was meant to resemble an Egyptian lotus chalice (I've always loved them, and this color scheme is basically my favorite thing in the entire world).  My friend made a really lovely green-and-yellow one with a design on the stem meant to make it look fluted, and one in the colors of the kingdom where these cups will eventually live.  It's so neat to think that somebody in another kingdom - another whole country, even! - might be carrying around something I made! Squee!

I cannot WAIT to go back and do some more of this.  I LOVE painting things.  Pictures, yes, and furniture - but my favorite thing to paint is little boxes and containers. I have soooo many ideas of things at the studio that I'd LOVE to paint as gifts and as feast items for myself.

You know, because I have all this extra time on my hands....o_O  

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Ye Olde Bag

Ever write a text, email, blog post - and then realize later that you never hit the 'send' button?  Yeah.  I thought I posted this in November, my bad.

SO.

Ever see those nifty cross-body satchels people carry in period art?  Like this:

Even elephants carry purses. 

Well, a friend of mine had a sheet of painted burlap fabric, done in little rectangular scenes of chivalry, love, and warfare; she thought they'd be great on bag flaps.  And I just happened to have purchased a *ton* of cotton Ikea curtains from a dance studio that was closing down a few months ago.  And so this happened:

Hee.  These designs are so cute.

Each one is approximately 10x14" when closed, with the top flap covering the front of the bag completely when flat.

For the most part I just satin-stitched over the edge of each picture to applique it onto the bag flaps; one or two of them are stitched a bit differently because of the way they'd been cut from the whole cloth.

By the way?  Screw sewing burlap ever again.  That was gross.

The body of the bags are just flat - no boxing or other shaping to give them extra volume.  If they were pillows, they'd be knife-edge pillows, but idk what the equivalent term in bag making would be.

I kept thinking, while making these, how tribbles are basically born pregnant, and just multiply when you're not looking.

I also kept thinking, "Holy crap, am I done yet??"
EIGHT. BAGS.

I assembly-lined this project, though, which made it go a bit faster and more precisely.  I cut everything out, then prepped the burlap piece edges, then made the straps, then all the fronts, then did all the final assembly.  It took about eighteen hours to do the entire set.

They were all distributed amongst the household/company at BAM in November.  And I'd like extra credit for not making a special prank-bag for our Fearless Leader.  He's so fun to mess with, but I kept it reasonably professional.  ;)

~ FIN ~

Progress!

A

Remember the little painted black box?  I'm doing a much larger version - a 24" six-panel wooden chest.  The box itself is nearly finished, and painted; now I'm working on the box top:

(part of the upper right corner)  

B

I've also decided I need a Tudor corset.  I don't have a pattern, and I don't feel like drafting one from scratch, so I'm drafting one from an old renfest corset that still [mostly] fits me.  The first part was getting it on and laced up, and then marked with a chalk pencil where I'll be making shape and sizing adjustments:

C

And just for fun (because I'm still in the process of re-organizing my sewing and craft/art rooms, and because I had to re-organize my jewelry supplies into better containers and had the beads out anyway), I made a little necklace to wear with...whatever!  To me it says "rubies and pomegranate arils", even though it's just glass and tiny tumbled garnets.

More soon.

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The Little Black Box

Well, my phone ate the before picture.  :-/  

So, this is an 8x10" wooden box from the craft store, with a sliding top, about 6" deep.

This is kind of a "before" - it started out life with a sheer black stain on the wood, and the inside painted a deep wine color.

In re-doing it this time around, I painted a black border around each side, outlined with a thin gold line (extra-fine point gold paint pen), and accented it with plain ol' brass thumbtacks.  

 This is the sliding box top. Originally, it was just stained black, like the sides.  Recently I had painted the whole top blue, and stenciled a vine-y, botanical design all over it in gold paint...that I ended up hating.

So I sanded it smooth to get rid of the stencil lines, painted the whole thing black, and then painted this little scene, with the same gold paint pen outline, to match the sides.

It's not a copy of any extant scene, just inspired-by.  I absolutely adore forest scenes in medieval paintings.

This one, for example, which, unfortunately, I found via a google search and a "print vintage art for free" website which listed NO source. There were a series of these, with different animals in them. I loved the greens and blues - and the acanthus leaves in the sky!

Obviously my box top isn't nearly so detailed, but it's my first.  Give me time. :)

My pronouncement on the finished product:  doesn't suck.  

And as a rough draft/trial project for a much larger version of this, it went pretty well.

Yes, there's something much larger, and cooler, on the way.
Soon.






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They See Me Scrollin' (Part II)

o, 'm still absolutely in love with painting scrolls (as I believe I mentioned), and I've been enjoying the heck out of learning about the art of illumination.   I'm picking up some more blank charters next Tuesday from one of our scribes, to paint and turn back in.  Medieval coloring for grownups.  Love it.  :)

Meanwhile, the original scroll competition that I mentioned is...tomorrow!  Eek!  I've been done with mine for about a week; and the longer I wait and think about it, the more nervous I am.  I don't know why I should be - I'm a beginner, and it's not like people won't understand that.  

My calligraphy basically sucks - but I've only been doing this a month, so, I'll get better.  Theoretically. (Honestly, I had no idea calligraphy involved quite so much cussing and ripping up pages and throwing pencils).   But in the meantime, I really love drawing these designs - I've been sketching out a bunch this week for practice, and to get ideas flowing.  

Here's the actual contest entry, uncolored so that it can be copied if it's one of the ones chosen to be used, as requested.  (The line and weird smushing effect in the center is because the page was too large for my scanner, and I had to scan each half and then put them together on the computer; sorry about that).

Tada.

And here's a colored example - on which the calligraphy is out of alignment, misspelled in a couple of places, and outside the text box in places.  Fail!  But I'm including as an example of the coloring, which is suggested though not mandatory for the entry.  And because I think it's pretty all colored in. :)

Inspiration piece.  I heart this.  And I got to learn quite a bit about Uttrecht illumination in the process, which is, I think, probably the thing that interests me the most about all of this.  (Not this specific style, but the "art history" aspect).











I have no illusions about even placing in this contest - I know I won't - but I'm excited at the prospect of entering anyway, just for the fun of it, the experience, the travel opportunity (the event is 2.5 hours away), and the chance to see some folks from the area who I haven't seen in months.  And the fact that I'm travelling with a good friend of mine, who's also been working on a scroll for this competition - I've had so much fun talking with her about all of it (and, as usual, she has some books on the subject I envy so much!  Hee).

Anyway, I'm off to go make a couple corrections to my documentation page and get it printed up for the trip tomorrow.

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They See Me Scrollin'...

ey, guess what I did last night?  I painted a scroll!  I'd never done it before.  A friend of mine recently obtained a stack of pre-inked scrolls from a workshop, that just needed to be colored in with paints, so we sat down together this week and painted a couple. 


The scroll I painted was an Iris of Merit - so, no pressure or anything!  It's an Italian white-vine illumination design, which I'd never even heard of before (not being an actual scribe), but which I find absolutely gorgeous.  It was so fun, I took a second scroll home with me to paint over the weekend (a Rising Star, for up-and-coming minors of the kingdom).

design by Mistress Zenaida;
calligraphy by Thorbjorn Nordstrom of Bryn Gwlad

I'd always been sort of interested in doing scrolls, in a "Yeah, sure, sounds neat...if I ever get the time to learn a new hobby" kind of way.  I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THIS!  I'm very, very new at anything remotely scribal, but reading the "about" information on the bottom of the scroll sheets was fascinating.  This one says gives information about classic white vine coloration and suggested variation, and also says that the Gothic-style calligraphy, while contemporary to this style of illumination, was not normally used on actual white-vine scrolls.

The gold paint. I heart it so much. 

There was actually a scroll idea I had a couple of months ago that I'd put on the back burner while I tended to more immediate projects that is now floating around in my head again.  Rather violently.  (Yes, violent floating. Just go with it).  

And I just found out that there's an original scroll competition at Steppes' Twelfth Night in January!  I am SO entering that!

To the art supplies store!  *WHOOSH* 

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