WOYWW 145

How is it Wednesday again already?!  Bet I’m not the only one thinking this, eh...!

Welcome once more to my writer’s workdesk – and I’d like to say thank you to all of you who stopped by my Pen Pot last week, especially those who took the time to comment, and to say sorry to those of you whose desks I didn’t get time to visit.  This week I’m going to make an effort to visit those blogs I haven’t yet been introduced to.

So, my WOYWW this week owes thanks to all of you – you inspired me to do something crafty with different papers, a couple of photographs, a teabag and some glue! 

Sometime last autumn, a colleague cleared out her old scrapbook-making stuff, brought it into work and donated it to whoever wanted it – I made sure I was first in line to have a gander, after being inspired by my good friend Zoe’s work (see her blog at http://craftygasheadzo.blogspot.com/ ).  Picking a clutch of different papers, I also grabbed a guillotine (essential as I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, much less cut one!) and a book of backing card.  From the excitement that came with my new toys (!), I found a paper design I loved, backed it onto card with ripped edges for a distressed effect, and then backed that onto a deeper-hued card.

But it looked a little empty in the middle...and I started to look out for an image which would fit.

Then came mine and Zoe’s Paris trip last November, and my photos of the reading rooms upstairs in the Shakespeare Company bookshop; one cubbyhole is that of a writer’s den with a typewriter on a desk, Post-Its and a stack of books.  Typewriters are a huge symbol to me of the writing process, encompassing the psychological and physical toil (no pounding of keys on our laptops or touch-screen phones now, is there?!) of writing, as well as influential aspect (just think Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote and Stephen King and all those other authors banging away on their typewriters!).  I loved this little writer’s nook and, looking at my recently developed photos (I know, took me some time, didn’t it?!), I just knew what was going to fill that empty space.

My plan was to place the two photos on an angle, and make borders for them using quotes I’d found about typewriters – but today I discovered that the best-laid plans don’t always work!

Before I found this out, though, I printed out the pages with the quotations I wanted to feature (in a typewriter font, of course – well, it had to be, didn’t it, to express it properly!), brewed a nice cup of tea and used the tea bag to ‘age’ the paper.  Letting them dry, I started to play around with the photos...and found that two was too much, as you can see:

So I chose one image, cut it down to size, and placed it on the paper.  Then I got a little guillotine-happy and sliced my quotations up without using a ruler or thinking about the length vs. width I’d need to make a border...oops!  I’m not at all about numbers, you see.  While I was trying to decide where in the line of text to cut, I realised that making a border out of the quotation would actually be too heavy for the overall effect, and so came the idea of just using one alongside the ‘prompt’ words about the process of writing I’d also been planning to use.  I placed them onto the page first...

...then when I was happy, stuck them down.  The irony that I’ve chosen a Hemingway saying makes me chuckle, seeing as I’ve recently read and disliked his The Old Man and The Sea (see my post entitled ‘Heming-No-Way’ if you want to know what I really thought!), but what he says here – “There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed” – resonates with me and my views on writing.  Though I was a bit disappointed with the text being chopped up, it seemed a happy accident that the word ‘bleed’ is separated from the rest, as if it’s a form of punctuation...well, that’s my excuse, anyway!   

At the same time, it dawned on me that I had a duplicate of the original paper-design, and could therefore make another picture – creating a pair – to include the discarded photo!  O-kay, I hear you cry...but it excited me, ’cause this is my first proper papercraft project and there I was, getting a lightning strike of an idea from a bodge!  Anyhoo, I didn’t have quite the same tone in the first backing paper and had to use one slightly lighter, but I think it works to balance out the overall effect, as the second photo is darker (being that it’s a close-up of the typewriter).

Once I’d placed the photograph, all that was left to do was chop up another quote (though I did try to be more calculated with it this time!), and as I was laying it out, I thought it resembled a sheet of paper coming out of the top of the typewriter...  But I couldn’t fit all of the saying at the top of the page (perhaps I shouldn’t have stuck the photo down first, then I could’ve moved it down to the bottom and really worked that ‘typed page’ effect...but, hey, doing is all about learning, right?!), and had to space it out more.

And so there you have it, my first attempt at proper papercraft...and it didn’t take me as long as I’d thought it would, nor was it as tricky!  Plus I ended up with 2 pics when I’d only intended to make 1...

...so now all I’ve got to do is (pat myself on the back first! then) put them up on my scriptorium wall.  That’s after I’ve visited your fabulous desks, of course, courtesy of Julia over at http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ . 

Thanks again for popping by my Pen Pot, and I’ll see you soon.