It’s our last round, and I’m eagerly awaiting all the books to make it home. The final round led me to work in Connie’s book in the theme of mythology. I was really unsure about what I wanted to do at first, but this is what I came up with.
The first page I wanted to drawn on the link between Norse mythology and the Futhark script. The basis of the design is the Codex Runicus but written in Elder Futhark. The writing itself actually recounts a short history of the Futhark.
I had a lot of fun with this page. The parchment part was made using watercolour paper that had been given a wash of Vandyke Brown, and a layer of auburn watercolour crayons. Once dry, I burnt the edges with a match (then soaked the edges to ensure the edges had actually stopped burning) and layed down the text. The text itself is written using a cheap hooded fountain pen with our new FPN Galileo Manuscript Brown ink from the Fountain Pen Network (there are perks to have a husband who collects and restores founatin pens).
The second page I wanted to bring in a mythological creature but I didn’t want to get to detailed otherwise Connie would never get her book back before Christmas. I decided to streamline the entire thing and only include the dragon’s tail and a breath of fire. The icing on the cake came when we were discussing my husbands lack of (broad) knowledge when it comes to English geography. He said he knew everything he needed to know and drew in the air the outline of Britain and stated ‘England’. Then he scribbled around the island and stated ‘Here be dragons’. It was simply too perfect. :)
I textured the dragon with a bit of free-motion embroidery, added some running stitches to the fire to give it direction, and added the felt letters.
All the fabrics for these pages were made from handdyed/painted muslin (calico) using a combination of tea dyeing, metallic opaque setacolour, setacolour soleil, adirondack colourwash and webbing spray.
Finally, I made a sign-in tag from some of the left over bits because I thought that would tie everything together nicely. :)
I hope you like it Connie! I had fun working in your book.