This or that or the other?

 At the start of the year I made myself a promise that this would be the year I did some new things. One of them was to  'stick my neck out' and contribute to something, so I signed up to take part in Bookmarks XIII organised by U.W.E. There are some great images of previous years to see here.

I thought the discipline of producing 100 bookmarks would be a good one and the fact that I'd get my own set of bookmarks with one of everyone else's by return seemed like win : win to me. Naturally, knowing me, I've had a hundred ideas of what to do and have yet to settle on one. With the June deadline probably closer than I'd like I have to knuckle down and commit to something. The fact that these things are going to go around the world with my name on them makes me so want to get it right.

I've prepared collagraph plates, printed them  and discounted them. I've cut up the lino and thought about relief printing...... all the time torn between what would look good and what would be the least labour intensive in order to make doing the 100 bookmarks a pleasure and not an albatross around my neck!

 I am teaching a workshop tomorrow in making the full case bound multi sectioned book that we all know and love. As part of making the case I'm going to demonstrate embossed and debossed covers and while I was making some samples I had an idea about doing the same with the bookmarks so the top picture is plain thick cartridge embossed through the printing press over a selection of cardboard letters. I quite liked it but then my eyes went to that cyanotype box again and I have swayed towards that for the bookmarks now.

I took an acetate sheet, covered it in letters and have done one sample page today. I like it. I need to sleep on it and decide if I want to pursue the type face idea or design another acetate with some other imagery. Whatever the decision I am going down the cyanotype route. I've worked out that I can print 4 at a time on an A4 sheet of watercolour paper.

So, I only need to do it 25 times in total... so not at all labour intensive !!!! It sounds simple.... after all,  I only need the sun and we've had loads of that this week.... what could go wrong? Perhaps tomorrow's forecast of rain and some unpredictable days ahead might be what could go wrong! I care not. I'm going down this route... but will I stick to the letters? It has to be decision time. The clock is ticking!