Carol Barton, author of the The Pocket Paper Engineer Volume 1 and Volume 2, has designed a pop-up card to celebrate the current (seemingly interminable) US political season… You can download and print a PDF that lets you choose your candidate and pop him right into the White House.
When I came home all excited about my laser cut pop-up book, my husband Harold wanted to know what else I could cut. He’s done a fair amount of woodworking, so I thought I’d cut letters or symbols out of some exotic woods and make pendants and then necklaces with suede or leather cord. Should be easy — right?
Of course nothing goes quite as planned! Harold cut the wood down and had a friend plane it to 3/16″ thick but then some of it (zebrawood) wouldn’t cut (it just burned up). Then I had to figure out how to make pendants — I haven’t made jewelry before with its new vocabulary (why are the little metal rings and bails and such called “findings”?). I found some tiny screw-in bails on-line and waited anxiously for them to arrive. Harold obligingly used his drill press to put teeny-tiny 1mm holes in the tops of the pendants. But the bails only came in silver which didn’t look right with the dark leather cord I had. Spray painting the bails black wouldn’t work, because the paint would just rub off right away. I inquired at the Tech Shop, where I’d used the laser cutter, if they had a powder coating set up (an electrostatic process that adheres power or dry paint to metal). They did, but there wasn’t a class scheduled, so in the meantime Harold found a heat-sensitive paint that fisherman use to paint patterns on their lures. I ordered the paint (and waited again for it to arrive).
To apply this paint, you heat the object with a propane torch then spray on the paint. In great anticipation I strung a few bails on a thin metal wire, heated them and sprayed. Oh no! The metal wire also got hot, and the paint adhered to the bail and the wire, fusing them together! Back to the computer to find heat-resistant (maybe Teflon?) wire. As I typed away at Google, Harold suggested I try using silver plated chain instead of leather and work on my chain-making skills (regardless of whether I used leather or silver chain, I was still going to have to attach a clasp). Certainly not rocket science, but would require some practice.
So that’s what I’ve done, used silver chain, leaving the powder coating lessons for another day. Below are pictures of the finished pendants. You can see more pictures by clicking on the image.
I’ve been asked several times about making flip books from a video. This tutorial gives templates for making your own using AfterEffects to turn the video into a series of jpegs that can be printed. He also talks about binding the pages and, in an ironic twist, made some movies to demonstrate his made-from-movies-then-printed flipbooks in action.
 I’ve got a table in the “AltCraft” section of the American Craft Show in San Francisco next weekend (August 15-17). It’s by far the biggest fair I’ve participated in, and for the past several weeks my days have been full of bookmaking and printing and getting my table props ready. I really don’t know what to expect — my books and prints aren’t the usual wares at this show, but it’s juried, the “AltCraft” tables weren’t too expensive, and I applied because it looked like a good opportunity to introduce my things to another audience. Now I figure if I don’t sell much, I won’t have to make anything else for the upcoming holiday season!To the right is my latest wood type broadside, printed especially for this show, and just finished yesterday. It’s called “Talking in Circles.”If you happen to go to the show, please do stop by and say hello!
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… or the OED in Limerick Form strives to have “least one limerick for each and every meaning of each and every word in the English language.” They have over 46,000 now, and are only up to Cz. Here’s a random one that was submitted for crabby (adj.)
The Abbot was crabby and cross;
He would soon show these monks who was boss.
“This manuscript’s hazy
And crabby—you’re lazy;
And blots mean half rations: your loss.”
Take a look (or even submit one) here.