Christmas Luncheon

On December 11th we all met for our annual Christmas card exchange, luncheon and secret Santa gift giving. A great time was had by all.  Not only do we know how to letter, we also know how to cook! We always eat very well when we have a potluck. The Christmas Luncheon seems to just step that up a few notches!

Lovely roses for our hostess Val.

Val lighting the ice candle centrepiece.  They were great this year with fruit inside the ice!

And while the food was being prepared, everyone had to take a turn in the family room, sorting their cards into the correct mail bags.

Kathleen and Violet in the kitchen.

Kathleen, Val, Louise, Rita and Violet.

A lovely centerpiece.

Pat, Marilyn, Anita, and Win.

Dorothy and Joyce catching up!

A nice photo of Wilma.

Joyce and Kathleen.

Marilyn and Jo.

Muriel, Nan, Wilma and Margot.

Pat and Nan.

Win and Fay having quite the chat!

Wilma, Frank and Jo.

Santa hearing an Oz secret...

Santa getting a big secret from Joyce. She was glad to stay the whole day this year!

Jean giving Santa her secret...while Dorothy looks on!

Monkey business!!

Congratulations to Marilyn!! she's engaged!!

And there you have the first installment of photos from the Christmas party. We came away full and happy, each with a gift from Santa and some amazing Christmas cards from everyone!!!

Thank you to Val for hosting us again this year and to everyone for their great participation in the card exchange. Thank you to Eileen for these photos. There are more to come...

Another great year for Alphabeas!



Now Showing! at White Rock Library

Thank you to Margot and Eileen for hanging the exhibition at the White Rock Library on Thursday!! You can see it for the month of December, 2010.

Looks like the days of hammering nails into the wall to hang pictures has gone and they have a great new system in place! but I hear it still took most of Thursday to hang.  That's dedication!!

photos by Margot - Thank you for sending them!

Jo's Open House!

If you didn't make it out your driveway to get to Jo's Open House, you missed an opportunity! Shopping!! like we have not had this close before!

Yes, the snow played a big part in the day but she's on her way!!

It all started way back before the summer conference when we were stitching autographs books together. They wouldn't have been quite so easy if Jo hadn't volunteered to fold all that paper...  Fay sat in the corner, obviously looking out over the room seeing the future in her mind and suggested to Jo that it would make a great working studio.  And as they say, the rest is history!

A little bit of advertising at the library artists' day......

Hours of making bookbinding kits........cutting paper, book cloth, instructions, paper, glue, needles, thread, etc. all into each bag......

See all the glue bottles in the cupboard? with the expert help of Dorothy, many bottles of glue later........

Stir in some amazing equipment.........paper cutters, photocopier, coil binder.......

Wonderfully sturdy new tables.......

Another view of the very useful equipment.

Thousands of sheets of paper, with the kits hanging on the board behind......

Threads, headbands, needles, bone folders, amazing glue brushes......Jo has it all!

To die for paper drawers.............filled with an amazing selection of gorgeous papers!!!

The lull before the storm? quiet, organized studio, waiting for all of us.

A friend's gift.......cake!!

delicious carrot cake......Jo cutting the bottom layer for us!

Congratulations Jo!! here's to an amazing venture!!

To quote Anita after her visit today.......

I am inspired by a friend who seized an opportunity, despite health and financial uncertainty, to establish her book arts studio/business. What a gift to all those around her!



If you get a chance, visit Jo's Cottage Book Arts Studio and buy yourself something nice for Christmas!! and remember the Secret Santa at our Christmas Luncheon coming up! pretty sure Santa would be pleased if you shopped at Jo's!

November Meeting

Building on what we learned in July, the November meeting was another look at a manuscript.  This time we studied the letters in the Lindisfarne Gospels.   The letters from the Stockholm Codex Aureus were also suggested as letters that would be quite perfect for this program.

We started with a wonderful slide show by Karen Kant from the Seattle area, compiled after the Lindisfarne Legacy tour in 2005.  It gave us a feel of what the area is like today and also what it might have been like when the gospel scribes were in the scriptorium on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

The object of the project is to create two or three lines of the drawn letters with enough space in between the lines for text written in the much smaller Early Roman Uncials we studied in July.  We were given several quotes in Latin with the English translation to choose from in case we needed some words to work with.

This is a first draft..........

and a close up.....

I decided after playing with this quote that the latin words should have each been given their own line. 

 On to plan B!!

Always a good sign in a class is the participants with their heads down! Such concentration!!

it was contagious!

And finally, the November meeting would not be complete without wishing Nan a Happy Birthday! we usually have a meeting on the actual date but this year we were a couple of days late...a grand showing of handmade cards nonetheless!

It will be very interesting to see the pieces that come from these two meeting programs.  Hopefully in January we will see what others have come up with!!

See you in December!

Lorraine Douglas Workshop

October 3 & 4 saw many of our members enjoying two wonderful days with Lorraine Douglas of Sydney by the Sea, on Vancouver Island.

Day one.......

Our first day was spent exploring the lettering of Frank Lloyd Wright.  This is a monoline, upper case alphabet used by Frank on his drawings and blueprints.  I found it very interesting how similar in style his lettering is to that of Charles Rennie MacIntosh, the two working at the same time an ocean apart.

Eileen

We started with the lettering and worked on several projects during the day.  Some of us were more productive than others, Trevor.

heads down, working hard!!

Sandi, Trevor and Kathleen

Margot, Eileen and Carolynn

Jean

Lorraine (standing), Carolynn, Eileen and Margot

We were given several haiku poems to choose from to letter around our artwork on watercolour paper.

It is always fun to see how different people treat the same words.

I've decided to only give you a 'taste' of what we did on Day one.........see the December newsletter for more!

Day two.....

Cards, cards, cards and more cards! After an exhausting day on Sunday, Monday promised to be even more packed full of ideas!

We started by decorating a couple of feet of rice paper (laid on wax paper to prevent sticking to the table top!) We splashed on colour from a variety of palettes, added gel pen, 'smooch' spots, 'smooch' spritzes, coloured pencil - you get the idea, anything goes really! and then we set that aside to dry.

Lorraine demonstrated many card ideas throughout the day and it was our duty to try and keep up! There was barely enough time to take a lunch break!  We cut, we embossed, we folded, we blow-dried, we decorated, we stitched.........so many ideas, so little time!  Each day could easily have been stretched to fit two days.  Our workshop fees included 6 pre-made blank cards and envelopes and 2+ sheets of Canson mi tientes paper. We made a folder to put the cards into using Canson and Lorraine cut some of our third sheet of Canson into smaller workable pieces for two or three projects - saving us some cutting time so we could get more done! We used a variety of embroidery thread, 'junk', beads, etc to decorate cards and projects and one large button on the stationery folder.  A very full day of fun and friendship. It was so nice to see everyone!!

to all who attended the workshops!

some examples of our cards

more cards!

Pat, Cheryl and Barb

Lorraine and Pat showing Pat's decorated rice paper

the beginnings of a pop up card with many steps to add things to

Jean and one of Frank's famous cream puffs!!

Thank you Frank for making trays for both upstairs and downstairs! no calories again, right?

after a couple of tries to capture the perfect group shot..........

we did it!!

Thank you Eileen for sharing your photographs!

Thank you Lorraine for sharing all your ideas and knowledge!! and the demonstration of your kevlar glove!