Happy Easter 2023

Watercolor with hand lettering.

 

Combining my 100 Days of Hand Lettering project with watercolor flowers.

Pink tulips in the backyard.

Pink tulips colored by Mother Nature... who needs no classes nor practice.

Day 33 of The 100 Day Project

 Time flies with The 100 Day Project. It's already a third of the way to the 100th day.

Textile Collage #1, The 100 Day Project 2023.

Project 1: 100 Days of Textile Collage and Stitch

I've just about finished six pages of textile collages for a stitch book. So, I'm averaging about 5 days for each page. With each composition, the basic stitches at the commencement give way to more complexity and depth in a collage as each day passes.

First day (left) and Fifth day (right) of a textile and stitch collage.

Depending on the time available each day (or how tired I am after work), a few or several stitches are added to a composition. As one would expect, I tend to make more progress on weekends.

These are close-up photos of the collages so far.

Textile Collage #2, The 100 Day Project 2023.

Textile Collage #3, The 100 Day Project 2023.

The collages definitely got more dimensional after pulling and using bits from old knitting swatches and novelty yarn leftovers.

Textile Collage #4, The 100 Day Project 2023.

Textile Collage #5, The 100 Day Project 2023.

Textile Collage #6, The 100 Day Project 2023.

Project 2: 100 Days of Hand Lettering

My second project is 100 Days of Hand Lettering. I'm working through the exercises in "Love your [imperfect] Letters" with Willa Wanders.

Sometimes pages are filled with drills of strokes, letters, or alphabets. Finding pangrams made practicing more interesting.

Practicing hand lettering using pangrams.

Then I started lettering excerpts from travel brochures and magazines. Quotes and phrases give the lettering more meaning. 

Phrases from a Threads magazine article.

This exercise explores "faux calligraphy" by adding extra weight to the down strokes of a letter.

Hand lettering practice.

On occasion, I'll hand letter a quote in my new Junk Journal.

Hand lettering in my Junk Journal.

The hand lettering workshop has been very thorough and insightful. We've covered roman letterforms, creating a signature alphabet, serifs, faux calligraphy, script lettering and other lettering concepts.

I am enjoying both of my 100 Days Projects for 2023. The 100 Day Project is a good motivator to learn something new through a daily practice. 

This quote that sums it up.

Motivation gets you started...
Habit keeps you going.

Prepping for The 100 Day Project 2023

The 100 Day Project kicks off this week—February 22, 2023. I'm prepping supplies for my third year participating in this free global art project.

Base fabrics for 100 Days of Textile Collage and Stitch and two reference books.

For the past two years, I did two 100 Day Projects each year. This year, again, I'm planning and prepping for two different 100 Day Projects: 

• one involving fabric, threads and stitch,
• the other is going to be hand lettering.

100 Days of Textile Collage and Stitch

For the textile project, the plan is to create textile and stitch collages on fabric "pages" that will ultimately be assembled into a fabric stitch book/journal. The journal will be assembled using the "slot and tab" bookbinding method. This allows me to stitch individual pages without having to worry about page spreads or page order. 

Auditioning fabrics for the stitch collage journal.

I've pulled and cut different yarn-dyed fabrics [from Diamond Textiles] into 9" squares (with allowances for squaring up after stitching and seams). I envision the finished page size to be approximately 8" square. Now that backgrounds are cut, I want to serge the edges to prevent raveling during the process.

Trimming yarn-dyed fabrics for fabric collages and journal pages.

Threads, fabric scraps, and various stitch collage fodder will be gathered and packed into small baggies and zippered pouches along with tools such as needles, pins, scissors and perhaps an embroidery hoop.

My two reference books for ideas and inspiration are: 

• Inspiration for Embroidery by Constance Howard, 1967 (and the pages have that lovely nostalgic scent of an old book), and
• The Collage Ideas Book by Alannah Moore, 2018

I'm amused that these references were written over 50 years apart and I'll be using them in a 2023 project. 

100 Days of Hand Lettering

This past Christmas, I received a cool calligraphy set of nibs and inks. As with any hand skill, in order to get comfortable and proficient, it requires practice. The 100 Day Project is the perfect platform and motivation for doing this! I also enrolled in an online hand lettering class for art journaling—"Love your [imperfect] Letters" with Willa Wanders—and I'll be using it as a guide through the 100 days of practice.

Calligraphy set and tablet for 100 Days of Hand Lettering practice.

What do you get out of The 100 Day Project?

I'm Doing The 100 Project

Here is a video documentary from the Marquette Arts and Culture Center that hosted a community 100 Day Project and an exhibit of the body of work created by participants. Several of the participants talk about their project and what they discovered from the process. Have a listen...

Then find a simple idea,
make a promise to yourself,
show up every day,
and trust the process.