✳︎✳︎✳︎ L E T T E R I N G ✳︎✳︎✳︎

After a whirlwind canter around last weeks blog hop I'm back with "What I did at the weekend". Do they still make you write up your weekend memoirs in junior school on a Monday? I used to make mine up to make them sound more interesting and guess what? 
I still do. 

The sun shone and glittered over London town this weekend, accompanied by the sound of footballs, shrill squeals of delighted children, along with the hiss of opening beer bottles and the odd glimpse of a flapping sheet hung out to dry. I decide to get busy with some paper and pens and practising my lettering skillz. I wanted to try something out for a friend's new business as well as hone up my general thoughts about lettering and how I want to approach it. I want to prepare for this.

I  bought these letter cards at Paperchase which I quite liked, I wanted to buy the whole set but then in my usual miserly fashion, I thought I could make some. I think this about almost everything I see which makes me actually brilliant to go shopping with as I discourage purchases with my refrain. I enjoy buying less and living more as I pile on the years. I recite this when I look at Things I Want. My anti consumer chant.

I cut a pile of watercolour card into 110 x 70 mm pieces and set about freehand painting some borders. At this point I was simply doodling with no plan of action. I find this works for me, you may work better after doing a few sketches. I would rather dive in and make mistakes, I have learned so much from doing just that. The only thing I am going to lose is a bit of paper and I repurpose my mistakes into cards and labels so Nothing Gets Wasted. (another miserly chant)

A good sharp scalpel, a steel ruler and a cutting mat are invaluable, if you want to make any paper based items, buy these now. They last forever and make all the difference. When I was teaching at The Make Lounge (which has sadly closed) everyone loved the tips and hints I gave them about measuring well and cutting cleanly. The way you hold the ruler and the scalpel are quite important but not very easy to explain without you watching what I do. You will have to come to one of my workshops. I will let you know when they will begin. (still got a chimney stack to come down and a floor to lay)

I love watercolours, if you buy really good ones they last forever and you only need a tiny dot of colour to make a lot of paint and best of all, you don't need to rinse your palettes as a little water refreshes them and they seem to live forever.

Here's me painting on borders and trying not to think about the end result except when I decided to use some masking fluid. Then you have to think about 2 steps ahead.

Here's some borders waiting to be filled.

And here are my letter cards when I had finished. I was so engrossed that I forgot to take during shots. But I jumped in with the watercolour on a big brush with a beautifully pointed tip and then doodled them over with a few scratchy pen and ink lines...Some of them are badly executed but they are the ones I learned the most from. I'm not hiding them away, this isn't that sort of blog. ;-)

And here's some single shots of my favourites.

Yeah, they need work but they fuel other things...

It was a really great play around with some good old fashioned doodling and I relished it. I find that doing something like this really gets my mind pinging ideas around and now I have a whole set of ideas to practise. I want to get the paints out again but I have to knuckle down to some 'proper' work this week. 

I did a project similar to this in a junior school and I encouraged every child to draw me a letter which I then scanned and turned into a jaw dropping font for the school magazine we were designing. 

Here's a glimpse.

The kids loved it. I spoke to them about letter design and typography including showing them Jessica Hische's Daily Drop Cap which they all loved. Then they designed their own letters, the image above is just a glimpse into the huge body of work we did around that project. Apologies for the gloomy pictures in low light on a dark winter's afternoon. Wish I had taken better ones.

I do love a nice lot of pictures on a blog post and I am sure you all do too. Hence the endless images....Thank you for reading today, come back again soon. 

❨❨ esprit de l' escalier ❩❩

Summer is racing through...I know I won't catch up with it now. Long days of snoozing and reading were de rigueur in India and now I am working hard and planning for my impending trip to China. I think it's going to be rainy season when I am there.

I really have no idea what to expect. 

I think I may love it. 

But first I am submerged in a great project in a wonderful school, spending my days with gorgeous bright sparky kids. Double gated securely in the middle of an Essex estate. I am having the time of my life. This is real. Real life. Real lives. Children with no precociousness and grubby shirts. I only see smiles and love, all day long. Kids and teachers. I could skip around the playground. And probably will at the end of term. I feel like the Pied Piper some days with straggles of little jumping Jacks and Jills following me to our studio.

I had such a strange moment this weekend, I came face to face with someone I really admire and completely lost all my speech faculties and felt such an idiot on reflection. The person in question was Jamie Oliver, a famous UK chef who has done so much work to change the way we eat here and made some very admirable efforts towards social change too. I got introduced to him at Feastival which was a great little festival set up by JO, lots of food and music on Clapham Common on a sunny day. If it is on next year, then please go if you are in the UK. Highly recommended. Friendly and interesting and 100% of the profits go to charity. I was there as a guest and very nice it was too. 

As the evening came to an end I found myself being introduced to J.O himself and having swigged a couple of cocktails I had been swaggering and bragging about what I would say to him if I got to meet him. 

After an introduction I warmly shook his hand and said Jamie, I'd like to thank you for three things, Red Thai Curry with Jasmine Rice in the 30 Minute Cookbook, School Dinners and your Ultimate Christmas Gravy. I also told him about the amazing project I am working on in schools and how I loved the School Dinners campaign and how it joins up to similar practises I share with my own students. Oh we had a proper tete a tete. 

In My Dreams.

REWIND<<

After being introduced I stood there racking my brains as to how to start a convo without sounding like an idiot, a simpering old woman or a crazy fan. My mouth opened and closed and Jamie, the gentleman that he is, smiled encouragingly and dear reader. I failed. So, on he moved without a backwards glance at what could have been the beginning of a lifelong collaboration in improving the lives of children and my culinary skills.

Can you hear that thwacking sound? That's me, kicking myself. 

Jamie, I came across as an idiot with a grin. I am sorry. Can we try again?