Twinkle Badge Story, Work In Progress

Twinkle ©  D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd

This is one of the 3 or 4 books I am working on.  Its based on a piece of art I made for my MA below. It is a very short story about the Twinkle badge I took from my older sister. I want to make a very small book and I want the cover to look like an old Twinkle annual I have.  I have been experimenting with lots of glossy photo papers and brochure papers to try to get the same affect as the Twinkle Annual.

The best result so far is from Kodak Premium Photo Paper. Some print beautifully and give great colours but when you start to glue them to the book board you get all sorts of problems. Lots of screechy moments! With some paper the minute you start to touch it with the bonefolder it rubs the image off.  I know I am not using the paper for the purpose it was designed for so I shouldn't really complain. One of the best looking papers was Brilliant Supreme Glossy Photo Paper but it was just too thick and does not come in a lighter weight. It was a nightmare to glue and fold. Its the one at the back middle with the tear - I got a bit vigorous with the Teflon folder!

Twinkle Story, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol

I've also included the original photo of me wearing the 'stolen' badge :-) plus the complete story and the Twinkle Annual below.

© Tom Callanan

My older sister used to get a comic called Twinkle. A free badge was promised in the next issue, she waited and waited and was so excited about it, but when it arrived I cried until I got it. She talked about it for years…how I took the Twinkle badge. A few years ago I found an old Twinkle badge at home, I put it in a presentation case and gave it to her as part of her Christmas present. After thirty years she got her badge back. 

Twinkle ©  D.C.Thomson & Co., Ltd

When I Am An Old Lady - Work In Progress

I suppose I have posted in the wrong order. I have shown the completed book before the Work In Progress. I just wanted to a little of my stamping process.

All the signatures for the book were done on my typwriter first. Lots of fun - typying 15 books by hand :-) I then did the stamping. The top image is the typed signature ready to stamp.

For the old lady stamp the main image outline is done in grey - below. I had a separate stamp to do her jumper and I stamped this in grey also.

 Then I had another separate stamp to do the blue rinse for her hair.



The blue ink I was using was too strong. So I inked the stamp first and stamped on a scrap piece of paper and then stamped the image. This gave the more faded blue I was looking for. If you look at the top image you can see where I have stamped the hair (right hand side of the image).

As you can see it is all very low tech. Just 2 rulers to line up the paper, but I like the simplicity of this print process. 

With some stamps I thought it might be easier to do the main stamp and hand colour the other bits, but although its a bit fiddly to cut a separate stamp e.g. for the hair - it is much quicker just to stamp the hair than to faff around with a brush :-)

When I Am An Old Lady

Here are some photos of latest book When I Am An Old Lady made for Book Art Object. All the text was done on my Typewriter - not easy - there were plenty of screechy bits!  All images are hand stamped.

The idea for this book came from things I said I was going to do when I am an old lady - starting with - When I am an old lady I will have a blue rinse and a 1950's Hairdo like the Queen...and the rest just followed from there.

I hand stamped the cover also. The first time I've managed to do this sucessfully. I made a slip cover and matching endpapers with a feather image. The feather image was created by putting a pile of found feathers on my scanner and scanning them at a high resolution.

I would never have chosen these light colours (book cloth and endpapers) but I was on a bookbinding course at UWE last year and used a similar colour book cloth and really liked it. I also thought that this was good 'old lady' palette ;-)

Book in Slip Cover

Hand Stamped Cover

 

Herring Gull, Cardiff

Herring Gull, Cardiff, originally uploaded by whelkmagic.

New Website - iWeb

I have just re-designed my website in iWeb. For a while I had it redirected to my blog. I had fun and games with Blogger so had to do web forwarding in the end.

I decided just to have it as a landing page with links. I found there never seemed to be the time to update it and I update my Blog, Flickr and Shops regularly so it would be better just to have links to these than an out of date website.

I find iWeb very easy to use. It is very basic but enough for my needs :-) Unfortunately it is no longer supported in OS 10.8 but this hasn't given me any huge headaches - yet!

There's No Such Thing As Seagulls

Herring Gull, Tenby

I wrote this in April (typed on my Silverette Silver-Reed Typewriter) and I suppose I should explain it and confess (!) I used to hate seagulls, the just seemed to be everywhere making a racket all the time. In my previous flat they used to wake me at 6am most mornings. When I used to go to the park there were loads of them everywhere. What are gulls doing in the park? Why aren't they by the sea?

Then I moved to another flat and for the last 8 years Lesser Black-Backed Gulls have nested on our roof. We have had various 'adventures' with chicks falling out of the nest, but the most memorable one was in 2005 when a chick fell down and the parents abandoned it. I rang a local bird rescue centre and the lady said she was inundated with gull chicks, she asked if I she gave me instructions was I willing to look after it? I did and we named the chick Jasper. It is hard to talk about Jasper without sounding over sentimental and over the top. Suffice it to say that the little gull chick had a profound effect on me and changed my life in many ways.

They say you have to be careful that you don't 'imprint' on wild animals when you care for them. Jasper did get very fond of me and used to follow me around the garden - the lady at the rescue centre advised me to shoo him away but I could never bring myself to do it. I am not sure if I imprinted on Jasper, I think it is more likely that he imprinted on me and left traces of his little webbed feet all over my heart (warned you about the sentimentality!)

I started to read about gulls and discovered why they seemed to be everywhere in Cardiff. The first thing I discovered was they are here because of us - meaning because of they we dispose of our rubbish.  It all started in the UK with the Clean Air Act of 1956 and the use of landfill to dispose of waste. I also discovered that although they seem to be everywhere their numbers are actually in decline. The Herring Gull is Red on the RSPBs Conservation Importance List and the Lesser Black-Backed Gull is Amber. There is not much left for them out at sea but there is plenty landfill and rubbish on the streets inland. They are intelligent, opportunistic scavengers and they are trying to survive.

And finally I discovered that there is no such thing as seagulls. What is a seagull? There are 11 species of gull listed on the RSPB Website which one of these is a seagull? The answer is none of them.  It is a pity that gulls are not as 'glamourous' as birds of prey or cute and fluffy. Maybe I am mistaken but there doesn't seem to be any real concern about their decline, at least there's no obvious campaign to make people aware that this UK Bird species has Red List conservation status.  They say there is nothing worse than a reformed smoker I wonder if the same is true of a reformed gull hater? ;-)

Jasper Having A Bath

Brain Soap, Work In Progress

 

I am currently working on about 4 books (!) One of them is called Brain Soap. This is the first image I have been working on. I experimented with stamping/embossing the text on to several bars of soap - not easy! And this is the final result. This book explores ideas that have been floating around my head about mental wounds/hurts expressed as the physical and also how you could 'heal' mental scars by physical means. This is expressed as a series of wishes - one of them being how I wished I had some brain soap to wash all the gunk off my brain. I was just thinking how wonderful it could be if you clean all the accumulated crud off your brain and clear your head. I am not sure how I feel about this image at the moment. I have spoken before about having an exact image in your head and getting it to come out exactly as you imagined - here. This image is not as I imagined. I think I've looked at so much I can't see it anymore.