Well Versed In 1 John

You know what? I'm still in Europe (just like I was the last time a post was published) but I've written this in advance so you can get your Hilary fix even when I'm far away.

And it's another one of my church/calligraphy projects! Yay! About a month ago I had the privilege of doing three repetitive calligraphy projects in a row. It's fine. There's nothing like having a Red Sox game to keep me and my nibs company (especially when their offense is so impressive and deep). Lest I digress into my favorite topic of all, I'll get back to the point. One project was for money (no pictures taken because I forgot), one was because church ladies asked and the final was a gift. I already showed you the project that I was asked to do (the rose tags) and this is the project I did as a gift.

I loved the way it turned out. And so did the 30 women for whom the verse cards were made. A few Christmases ago, I sent out cards with glittered Holy Cards of St. Nicholas on the front. Perhaps you recall. Well, the company that I bought that cardstock from was having a buy one get one free sale so in addition to the red paper that I bought for those Christmas cards, I got a stack of pale green paper that had a shimmery look to it. It's nice and thick, too. I always figured I'd think of a purpose for it, but two years of looking at it and I'm no closer to having a use for it than I was when I got it for free. I thought it would be the perfect cardstock to use for these Bible verse cards. So I cut the folding cards into two flat cards each (which, by the way, means I only made a dent into the huge stack of green cardstock I've still got) so that I had 30 flat cards. Then I took some thick vellum paper and cut it to fit using my mini paper cutter. I cut 30 little snippets of ribbon, each sized to hang off the edges a bit of the cardstock. Next, because I like to make things difficult, I jumped into my mom's hand-me-down button collection and found 30 buttons that I thought would match the ribbon and paper colors (trying to keep a Spring pallet in mind). And then, I used my favorite craft tool ever, my drimmel with its diamond-edge drill bit, to cut the "button" part off of these buttons so they'd glue on flat.

And to the sounds (and sights thanks to MLB online) of Red Sox baseball -- an afternoon game I believe -- I wrote the same verse 30 times in a row. Without stopping. As the scripting went along (and the innings breezed past), I noticed that a few styles of scripting seemed to emerge. I tried to capture some of them here. The top picture features a script that is airy than the next picture, which seems dense. And some versions were more cursive than others. As a note, the first "r" of this verse comes in the 20th word, which is odd. I thought I'd throw that out there because I always antagonize over the letter "r" and I was pleasantly surprised to get so many words without having to write that one.

Of course, I can't mention the letter "r" without thinking of my mom's favorite riddle: Railroad crossing, watch out for cars, can you spell that without any r's?

Rose tags, And you'll see this verse a lot

Some lovely ladies at my church asked me to do a calligraphy project for them, so I scripted 36 copies of the same verse (1 John 1:7) on white tags using super-thick charcoaly India ink. What's fun about writing the same sentence 36 times is that I played around with the treatment. As the project went on, the "J" of Jesus got more and more exaggerated because I found that no matter how big I made it, it looked good. Some are in print and others are in cursive. I like to think that as these tags are given away to women who participate in the church retreat weekend, that the Spirit guides the right font to the right person.

In the Beginning

So this is a painting of the first book of the Bible. Genesis 1, the creation story.

4	And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5	And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6	And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Those are the verses that inspired this. On one side you've got the light and on the other, the waters. I've never actually painted "something" before. My paintings are usually like Seinfeld, all about nothing. But this one is about something. It depicts the very creation of the Earth. At first I didn't think I'd like the way my painting of "something" would turn out. I assumed that it would look corny, but when I was done I really liked it.
I guess even in its depiction of something, it is still pretty abstract. You probably wouldn't believe how long I worked on it since it looks rather like all the other paintings I have done before. Yet, for some reason, I took hours and hours painting this, making sure that each layer of paint was just so.

Sacred House of Blues?

With a West Coast baseball trip for my beloved if not beleaguered boys of summer and a bit of a bout of insomnia (must stop with the drinking of the diet dr pepper so late at night!), I find myself glued to the MLB HDTV (my favorite kind of acronym soup, honestly) with nothing to do but watch the Sox fail miserably and, well, present some new crafts to my loyal readers.
Here is a new painting. It's the first time I've ever left the majority of the canvas (a 12x12 square of glass) even partially unpainted. In fact, I had every intention of making a giant picture with all kinds of zigzag layers, but when I got to this point, I knew that I needed to stop and relish the simplicity. And I feel like the result looks like a cross between Mexican-inspired renditions of Catholic symbolism like the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the somewhat corporate, irreverent House of Blues logo. Anyways, I'm pleased with punch by it and I like how I've arranged trinkets around it, especially the fact that I can actually place things behind it and still see them, like the antique Maine postcard. When I started the drawing for this painting, I had intended to channel Indian patterns (as in subcontinental Asia, not Native American ones, though they are quite nice, too). The paisleys were supposed to set that spicy, exotic tone. It would have been fine and Indian looking had I not decided to paint with a bright, Latin pallet. As soon as the pink was layered atop the yellow, I knew that it was headed in a different direction than my original intention, not that I mind.

What's that I hear, did Don Orsillo say "ballgame over?" Long yawn and I think I'm ready to hit the hay. Amazing how awake I am when there's a live game, even if it was a bit of slaughterfest in the yuck direction for this little fan.

Church Logo

Can I come out from my hiding place now? I feel like I've been carrying around the weight of this "craft" project for a really long time now. And few of you will even know what this thing could possibly be. Oh well, this gives me a chance to explain!
I was not chosen to be the team artist for my church retreat group. However, when the woman who was chosen had to leave the job half way through, I took over. And thus, you see the results. This is the logo for the upcoming church retreat. The original artist, Kathleen, did the bird and hand part and I added the leaves and branches. And I did a lot of the computer technical parts.

It's not really a craft project I realize. But it is an art project that has been snagging a lot of my time that I usually reserve for crafting. As the retreat date draws closer, I'm sure I'll be showing off some more retreat crafting projects! Get excited!

I did most of the art for this logo on Gimp, which I believe a blogged about a while ago, but is a freeware photo manipulation software that I have downloaded for my laptop. I have nothing but good things to say about Gimp considering that it does all the stuff that I normally do using Photoshop, but is completely free. It's also quite easy to use, though I really ought to get a mouse for my laptop for these kinds of projects. The touch pad thing for your fingers is really tough to use for selecting specific regions. That's a personal problem, not a software one. I did have to shout out for help from my coworker and complete computer graphics guru Eric. He helped with the feathering on the outside of the blue circle.

I'm so glad to be emerging from this project! I get kinda stressed out about digital art projects. I feel like you can always find more ways to enhance the digital files, so the toughest part of a digital project is saying "done!" I am apt to "gild the lily" as it were and keep messing with things until it looks overdone. I hope that this one is simple and dignified yet technically decent. That's all I'm shooting for here folks.

Welcome to the Church Wreath

What are you supposed to give a friend when that friend decides to become Catholic? My mom pretty much nabbed the "large book collection" gift category, and I'd already given him a rosary... And well, Catholic gifts are pretty much aimed at the blue-haired grannies set or 6-year-olds who are receiving first Holy Communion. And since my friend who became Catholic last Saturday was a 33-year-old guy's guy, the options were limited indeed.

So I crafted him a wreath of holy cards covered in glitter. Yeah, that's right. It's a pretty ridiculous item and will likely not be hung on a wall anytime soon, but I'd been itching to use the gluegun and I haven't played with glitter since Christmas. So here it is, wrapped in tissue paper and in a cardboard box, ready to be shipped up to Tennessee where Jason lives.