I wrapped up 36 Days of Type on Instagram as of April 11th, and was happy to share a post gathering all of the pieces in the series together the next day. They look so good together.
The numbers 5 through 9 are the final five of the series. This has been such a terrific project for me to work on. It’s been invigorating to my art practice in a way that I badly needed, and for that I am grateful.
The letters portion of the series wrapped up at the end of March, and then I began rolling on (on IG) the numbers part of the series. I decided I wanted a new element to use for the numbers, and hand cut a motif of leafy clusters in three colours. I had to create tiny foam core spacers at the back, which was challenging.
These are the last seven letters of the series, but there is still more to come. 36 Days of Type is letters and numbers, so stay tuned for more!
In this next batch of 36 Days of Type letters I have multiple favourites. I guess the series had just gotten better and better as I work on it.
My absolute favourite of the entire series is the letter Q, but I also love the N, P, and R.
For this batch of letters for 36 Days of Type, my favourites are K and M.
I added a new element starting with the M, using hand-cut half-circles with repeating lines.
36 Days of Type continues with the letters E through H. The composition of the H is my favourite in this batch of four. I’ve actually been composing, photographing, and processing these in batches of seven at a time. It takes a couple hours of work to do this but it’s more efficient to work this way than one at a time.
I cut a few new patterns to use starting with the H, and also began incorporating a series of hand-cut half-circles in shades of blue that have been languishing in a drawer for years.
On Monday the latest edition of 36 Days of Type went live for the ninth year, and for the first time I am participating. I had planned way ahead to take part because I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to play and explore new ideas.
I decided early on that I would not hand make everything and definitely not create finished paper-crafted pieces. It’s just too much to take on for a daily project. I decided to use my digital cutter to create many of the pattern layers, and I cut them each in more than one colour. The letter forms are hand-cut because I needed them to be perfect, and the digital cutter is far from perfect. It too often has sudden meltdowns that lead to mis-cut patterns and butchered paper.
I compose each letter design using four or five layers with foam core spacers in between each, take a few photos, and then pull it apart to create the next letter. I’m working with six colours, and cycling through four of those colours as the top letter layers – red, violet, indigo, and bright blue. These are the first four of my upcoming 26 letters and 10 numbers.
In case you are wondering, the inner shapes of the A, B and D are floating there on tiny pieces of foam core.
I was looking for a project to energize, challenge, and inspire me, and this is absolutely doing the job. It’s an incredible amount of work, even without hand-making everything, but so worth it.
It’s Day 28 – the last day of 28 Days of Hearts! I love this final piece in the series, using a satin stitch to create a heart made of thread within the paper heart. I used a gorgeous variegated indigo sashiko thread that has been waiting patiently in my stash of supplies for far too long.
For the final piece of the project, I am going to put together another stop motion video of all 28 hearts. Stay tuned!
I did a re-edit on the first version of my Day 27 heart (which I won’t share), and turned it into a three colour/three layer composition. It works so much better this way. (Trust me on that).
This is based upon my Seed Series body of work from a few years ago. I have two of the pieces available in my online shop.
For this Day 26 design I’d originally drawn a swirl of lines flowing across the entire heart shape. As I started cutting I realized this was too intricate for such a small piece of paper, so I selectively cut what I’d drawn on the back. The remaining uncut shape is sort of weird, but also wonderful.
