January, preparing to celebrate Chinese New Year

At the January meeting, Kathleen provided a delectable "Dim Dum" sampling of the Chinese culture and how Gung Hei Fat Choy is celebrated and how we could all have good fortune for the coming year. Violet demonstrated a style of brush lettering dubbed 'Chopstix' and also Chinese brush painting - bamboo, grasses and orchids. Louise led us in the production of Chinese fortune cookies that were exchanged and read at the end of the session.

Violet demonstrating Chopstix.

Violet, Kathleen and Louise

The basket of fortunes waiting to be exchanged.

Thank you to Violet for supplying information about the meeting as I left before the program to go and help Devon celebrate his 30th birthday!

And Thank you to Eileen for once again taking great photos of the meeting and sharing them!

Letter a week challenge

Did you do a letter last week? Send me a picture of it and I'll post it here!
I did this "P" while in Playa - week before last. Playing with the zentangle cards one evening.

Are you up for a challenge? or do you just need a jumpstart?

I found this on Gemma Black's blog and it sounded like a great idea to me!
http://canberragem.blogspot.com

A LETTER A WEEK FOR 2010

The aim is simple -

• to write a letter a week
• creating 52 letters
• which must form 2 x alphabets
• by the end of 2010

The only real rule is that the letter must be presented on a piece measuring 7 cm X 7 cm.

• We can use any medium, on any surface.
• We can use any hand or representation of a letter.
• The presentation of the final product is up to each of us - we could matte and frame the pieces as a work of art; we could make a stack of cards, we could bind them individually; we could bind them in a book; we could cover a box with them...

We could also use any theme or approach we wish in the project - we may choose to do all our letters in black and white and red; we may choose not to repeat a combination of medium and surface; we may choose to be experimental; we may choose an animal theme; we may choose a letter linked to a poem...

We may start at the beginning of the alphabet, the end of the alphabet, we may make two alphabest simultaneously or we may just decide that today feels like a "D" day and decided to write a "D".

We will also aim to do a monthly sharing - on the first Wednesday of a month, we will share photos of our letters from the prvious month. How's that for prescriptive!

Other than that, I think we just go do what we want to do. Feel free to invite other calligraphers to join and do a letter a week; or other artist types who might want to do a 7cm X 7cm piece a week.

Depending on how we go, and where we are and what our final pieces look like; it might be nice to tray and arrange a showing or mini-exhibition of the pieces once we have finished.

So, by Wednesday, 3 February we will each need to have 4 x letters ready to show, and perhaps some words about our approach / theme or what we are hoping to achieve.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

What do you think? feel free to join Gemma's challenge but I am wondering if some would like to participate on a guild level and then we could include the results in our own exhibitions - something like a study group or a sharing group........ if we decide to do this as a guild project, we could pick a certain day to share on the google group list and / or we could bring our letters to meetings - perhaps not every one but maybe every other one or every third meeting.

what do you think?

Annual Christmas Luncheon and Card Exchange

A crisp day with a few flurries but not enough to keep us from gathering at Val's for our annual Christmas get together! Val had made some very nifty ice stars to hold candles. They are made in a mould and of course, it was cold enough on Saturday that they didn't melt, not even with the candle inside! Here she is lighting the candles before very many of us had arrived.



Our day got off to a bit of a scary start! Joyce and I had just arrived and hung our coats. Joyce had traded her sensible outdoor shoes for her nice heels and was going to put her gift under the tree when down she went! She must not have noticed that there is a step down into the living room. She hit the floor with quite a thud. Nurse Jean swung into action and took charge of the situation until the fire truck arrived. Here is Joyce with the Surrey Fire Dept. waiting for the paramedics and the ambulance to arrive. They all thought it best to err on the side of caution and transport Joyce to the Peace Arch Hospital for x-rays and an examination. She is still in hospital with a crack to her pelvis. Get well cards are welcome!!! just send them to her home address and they will be taken up to her in the hospital. She should be in for at least a week. Poor Joyce!!

After the ambulance left, we tried to get on with the party! but certainly still concerned about how Joyce was faring at the hospital. We kept in touch with her son, Bob, during the afternoon for up-dates on her condition.

Rita and Wilma enjoying the Christmas party.........

Dorothy and Bev doing their best to ignore Eileen the photographer!! Thank you Eileen for sending the photos for the blog!

Eileen, Louise and Bev

Dorothy and Win

Fay, Louise and Bev

Lots of fun and conversation was on the agenda for the day!

Margot, Frank, Win, Nan, Wilma and Muriel in the kitchen.

Jean, Diana and Muriel

Diana and Terry

We all agreed that the hand made cards this year were some of the best we've had! Well done group!! and the gift exchange went well, with some mystery Santa gifts as yet still a mystery as to who gave what....

Trying for a good group photo. I'm sure you know just how difficult this can be! especially if one is setting their camera on the mantel to delay and hoping to make it into the picture when it goes off...............one attempt, missing Eileen, I think she was trying to set it up correctly.

Another attempt...........

And finally, all together, all seated, everyone accounted for, except Joyce. We all hoped she was going to be ok.

Do you have more pictures to add? Love to receive them, you know how much we like looking at photos! Thanks again to Eileen for always remembering her camera, and taking some great shots of our day!

Thank you so much Val for opening your home to all of us and hosting our Christmas party!!

See you in January! when we will be celebrating Chinese New Year by making a paper fortune cookie, complete with a fortune to exchange, looking at an Asian lettering style / font and a Chinese brush demo by Violet.

Wishing everyone reading our blog

a wonderful Holiday Season from all of us at Alphabeas!!

November pictures!

Louise introduced Joyce and asked her to tell us her story.....you have to believe this is a colourful lady!!! lots of fun.


Joyce demonstrating Copperplate for us. Not an easy hand to write on the chalkboard without a "whopperplate" pen. We had her do several small demos so we could easily see how she makes her letters.

Another small group gathers round.

Joyce works on a small light table so she can easily see the guidelines she works with.

Such concentration!!

An idea hatched at the October meeting. Louise was married just after that meeting and of course, with all she has going on in her life wasn't able to attend so we were able to plot and plan.
I thought it was Rita's idea but someone attributed to Eileen. We each were to bring a veil to wear.... I think only Fay's was the original one worn at her wedding 45 years ago.
Louise borrowed one for a picture!
And Frank made one of his extra special cakes just for Louise! Thank you Frank!!

See you all in December at the Christmas luncheon, card exchange and fun afternoon at Val's!

November meeting

We had our regularly scheduled meeting on November 14th. The program was ably led by Joyce Z showing us her copperplate. I apologize for not taking my camera so I have no photos to share. Eileen has some but her sizing skills need tweeking! Joyce had photocopied exemplars, liners sheets and gave each of us one of her favourite nibs, a Brause 66EF. Anita offered to write the day up for the Broad Edge and was busy gathering samples from around the room. Everyone in attendance seemed to really enjoy the day of lettering. Thank you Joyce!

Our next time together will be at Val's for the Christmas luncheon. Your seasonal cards, a small gift for under the tree and something delicious to share for lunch is all you need to bring!

Day two - Martin Jackson workshop

Layout and Design
Building on what we did in Day one, we moved on to looking at ways to make our beautiful letters look good in a design. The day was one of questions. When you have a project in front of you and a nice white, blank sheet of paper, what do you do? What is the project? a poem? a card? a poster? a quote? knowing that will help decide what size of paper to use. Should it be in a horizontal format or a vertical? would it look good done in a circle? a poem - then you can use a flush left format or maybe you prefer the look of a centered poem. Are the words happy? humourous? sad? When you have answered some of these questions, it is time to start working with thumbnails. These are a great tool to help with what your piece will eventually look like. Martin's approach to layout and design is to use onion skin paper which is really quite impossible to find these days, or tracing paper which isn't near as good. Write your words out in lines and then using the onion skin paper, trace over the words in a pleasant layout, your eye decides what pleasant looks like. Once you have a good looking piece on onion skin, it is time to take it to a light table and transfer it on to your good paper. Lots of questions and lots of possibilities to attempt. Anything that you are pleased with.....Margot will accept it for the exhibition!!

Here are a few photos taken before my camera battery died. I am still learning how to use my camera and have decided that I really don't like the feature that tells you that your battery is about to die instead of letting you check periodically to see if you are close.....

Nan working on a layout for an alphabet.



Martin's desk



Wilma working on numbers



Jean's circle writing



Frank writing names



Eileen's work space, and a nice numbers layout



Martin demonstrating writing in a circle



group photo, missing Jean the photographer and Joyce who wasn't able to attend the second day. Day one she had a bit of a tickle in her throat, by day two, she had a frog. Hope she's feeling better now.

Next up will be our November meeting where we explore Copperplate with Joyce leading us. Remember! potluck lunch, bring something to share for lunch and your own plate and cutlery.