Skipping Ropes

Stitching the ropes together! I used a silk thread for the handles of the ropes as it was shiny and replicated polished wood nicely and a cream, pale pink and blue cotton thread for the ropes.

Digital Embroidery

For one of the spreads in my book i decided to Illustrate skipping and found an old skipping rhyme to use. Using the image of the skipping rope i drew out the words and then using some insane embroidery program, trace over my scanned images with stitching before sending them to the machine to be stitched. It was very time consuming, and had to be done in sections because my images were too big. Typical! I stitched them onto dissolvable fabric so that once dissolved they were actual solid ropes. I remembered to take a photo of them while they were dissolving in the bath!

documentation

Unfortunately i was so wrapped up in creating the work and making my book that i didn't take many images to show the process. However, i did put my iPhone to good use here (before i broke it) with two images from my session playing around with the letterpress. This little episode is where the titles for my duck duck goose imagery came to being!

crest

Every school has one! The latin translates to, "Aspire to have grazed knees".

blind mans buff embossing spread

As a spread in my book I have had this image and text put on a plate so that I can emboss them on paper. This means that the effect will mimic that of brail which is the method the blind use to communicate.

spreads from my book

My current project has moved from the school playground to the general topic of 'school' and these are some of the finished spreads for the book. The book will be landscape and measure 40x30 cm. The fourth spread is a milk carton that is perforated so it can be popped out and made, as are the sacks on the sixth spread so they can be stood up on the page to create your own potato sack race. The eighth spread has a pocket where a set of notecards with original pencil drawings of the rules of conkers are held, and finally the snakes and ladders spread will have the writing etched onto the page to form a 'crack' and the board will be varnished. I have ordered paper to print the book from a company called 'John Purcell Paper' in an off white, which will look much better than the stark white background the images are on now!!

cheltenham illustration awards

Created from work for my latest project for the competition brief, 'tree time tales'- looking at the relationship between humans and trees.