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bluejayblueskies · 3 years

Note

oh if you did a little something for jonmartin and "hiding their face in the other’s neck" i would be so 🥺💕

touches prompt list

a little post-circus kidnapping hurt/comfort! cw for wounds/injury, mild blood, mentions of non-consensual touching, and mentions of kidnapping

There is a stranger’s elbow digging into Jon’s side.

He shifts from one foot to the other, trying to relieve some of the pressure on his side while surreptitiously giving the stranger a glare that he hopes adequately conveys his dislike of the current situation. The tube is packed, as it always is at this time of day, and there are… so many strange hands. An elbow, at least, is better than the hand that had pressed to his back as the individual it belonged to had instinctively tried to maintain their balance.

After all, Nikola didn’t touch him with her elbows.

Jon doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about any of it. He wants to lie down in a soft bed and get his first good night’s sleep in a month and finally have the space to process. Alone.

Instead, Martin stands next to him on the train. His hand rests just beneath Jon’s where it grips one of the metal poles, and Martin takes care not to brush against him despite how crowded the car is. Jon considered telling Martin, when they first got on the tube, that it was okay—that his touch would be… well, it wouldn’t be bad. But he’d stayed silent, allowing Martin to cultivate a careful space between them. They’ve been silent for the past twenty minutes as they’ve passed by station after station on their way to Martin’s flat in Brixton.

“I have a flat,” Jon had said uncomprehendingly when Martin had suggested (or rather, gently begged) that Jon come back to his flat with him. “It’s, um. It’s nice. Spacious. S-sturdy locks.”

“You… you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Martin had said, sounding and looking very much like he wished Jon would anyway.

“I’m fine.” Jon was not fine. But he could be fine until he got back to his flat. It was always good to have a short-term goal.

Martin gave him a look that clearly said that he thought Jon was full of shit. Jon was, but it was still unnecessary. He was just trying to keep it together. What did Martin want—him sobbing and crumpling to the floor right here in the Archives? No, that wouldn’t do at all.

“You were kidnapped. Twice now. I really don’t want it to happen a third time. Besides, I…” Martin trailed off and fluttered his hands at his sides. “I—I should take a look at your hand. And your, um. Wrists.”

Jon looked down at his arms. They were, indeed, quite red and raw and scabbed over and likely to scar. Nikola had been irritated when she’d seen that he’d been tied up so tightly, but she’d decided there was nothing to be done about it. She would just ‘make do with what she had.’ And, well. She had never stopped Breekon and Hope when they’d cinched the ropes just a little bit tighter each time.

“I have first aid supplies in my flat,” Jon lied. He was fairly certain that he had a backpack of What the Ghost merchandise and a single mattress to his name at the moment. “I can take care of it.”

“So can I.” Martin took a deep breath. “I just… I don’t want to see you hurt, Jon.” His cheeks were flushed a rosy pink, and he looked over Jon’s shoulder at the wall behind him. “J-just for tonight, at least? I want…” Martin swallowed. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”

And then Martin had turned those lovely blue eyes to his, and, well. Here they are.

Jon adds 24 hours onto his mental countdown of the time he has left until he’s allowed to break down and tells himself that he can manage. It’s… important to have long-term goals as well. He splits this one into steps.

Step one: get to Martin’s flat without crying. He achieves this easily enough. He finally escapes the cloying presence of strangers as Martin’s door shuts behind them, and then it’s blissfully quiet. Martin flips on a light, illuminating the space in pale yellow. It’s a little bit messy but otherwise spartan. The walls are painted a dull eggshell white, the floor made of cheap lino. Martin sits Jon down on the couch and disappears into the bathroom. Jon stares at the wall and focuses on breathing evenly and thinking about anything other than how smooth his skin feels when he slowly rubs his fingers together.

Step two: let Martin bandage his wounds without crying. This is… more challenging, if only because it hurts. Martin apologizes profusely as he wets a cotton ball with isopropyl alcohol and gently cleans the inflamed areas. Jon sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down, focusing on anything other than the stinging, burning sensation in his wrists and hands. Funny—he’d thought that at this point, he would be used to the pain, but he’s not. All he knows now is what to expect.

Martin carefully wraps his hand and wrists in bandages. For a moment after he’s done, he delicately holds Jon’s hands in his like they’re porcelain. His hands are warm and soft, and Jon imagines how lovely they would feel against his cheeks. He thinks briefly that Martin is going to raise his unbandaged hand to his lips and lay a kiss across the back of it, but Martin doesn’t. Instead, he sets Jon’s hands back in his lap and stands, mumbling that he’s going to go make some tea.

Jon scrubs his uninjured hand across his eyes, just once.

Step three: sit on the couch with Martin and drink tea without crying. Martin presses a mug of steaming chamomile into his good hand and lays a plate of biscuits between them. “Th-they’re your favorite,” Martin says with a small, nervous laugh, like Jon’s not already staring at the plate with something choked sitting in the back of his throat. “I—I figured you probably haven’t really eaten today, and… I don’t really know what you’ve eaten lately. So, um. Yeah.”

Jon thinks of the things that Nikola had called food, then chooses not to think of them at all. He tucks the memory into a box next to cold hands and exposed skin and burning ropes and slams the lid before it can all come spilling back out again. “Thank you,” he says earnestly. He gingerly takes a biscuit in his stiff, aching hand that hasn’t had the time to heal properly and probably won’t get the chance to do so in the future and pops it into his mouth whole so he doesn’t get crumbs on Martin’s couch.

Step four: eat a biscuit that tastes like the best biscuit you’ve ever had and is the first palatable food you’ve had in weeks without crying.

“Jon?”

Jon blinks and comes back to himself. He’s staring blankly at Martin’s face, at eyebrows folded in concern and mouth curled into a small frown. Martin’s freckles are smudged into smears of tan, and the lines of his jaw waver like a mirage in front of Jon’s eyes. That’s odd, Jon thinks. Then, he feels something wet hit the top of his cheek.

Oh, no.

Quickly, Jon reaches up and scrubs the tears away from his eyes. As soon as he lowers his hand, more spring up in their place. He curses and sets his mug of tea down heavily on the table, taking one more look at Martin—whose eyes are now wide with worry—before turning away and attempting to pull himself together.

Step five: stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying.

(Stop crying, his grandmother says as he stands in the living room, hands and knees dirty and hair a mess. He’s managing to say words between his sobs, words like book and stole and spider. She’s frowning at him, but her voice is still patient and calm when she says, You’re not making any sense, Jonathan. Stop crying, please, and speak clearly. You had a nightmare?)

“Jon, what’s—” Martin catches himself, which Jon is thankful for. He thinks that if Martin had finished that question—asked him what’s wrong—Jon wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from saying, what isn’t? “What can I do to help?” he says instead, a hand hovering carefully in the air between them like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch Jon or not.

“Don’t look,” Jon manages to say. He immediately feels ridiculous and follows with a quick: “S-sorry, it’s—I don’t k-know how to—I’m not—I’m n-not good at—”

“I’m not looking,” Martin says softly.

Jon cuts off, takes a breath, and turns his head back toward Martin. True to his word, Martin has his eyes closed, though his hand remains in the air between them. Jon presses his good hand to his mouth for a moment to hide how the sight rips a new, more ragged sob out of him. Then, tentatively, he reaches forward and takes Martin’s hand.

Martin inhales sharply. Jon almost lets go, but Martin curls his fingers around Jon’s hand and squeezes. He holds Jon’s hand tightly yet so achingly softly, and Jon could weep. (Or rather, is weeping.)

“Can I hug you?” Martin says abruptly, like he’d been fighting an internal battle about whether or not to say it and had just lost. His cheeks darken, but he doesn’t say anything else or take it back. His jaw shifts as he pinches his lips together and worries them back and forth.

Jon is… not the kind of person who initiates or seeks out hugs. He always makes them too stiff, or he holds on just a bit too long and makes them awkward, or he doesn’t know what to do with his hands and ends up just dangling them uselessly in the air. He’s also never really seen the point of them if he’s being honest. As a form of greeting, surely handshakes or waves or head nods get the point across just fine. Right now, though, there is truly nothing in the world that Jon thinks would make him feel safer than having Martin’s arms around him.

Jon nods, then remembers that Martin can’t see him and whispers, in as composed a voice as he can muster: “Please.”

Step six: hug Martin Blackwood without falling apart completely.

Martin’s arms are soft and warm around him. His chest is flush with Jon’s, and he’s holding him so close that Jon is practically on Martin’s lap. All Jon can think is that it’s been so long since he’s been held by something not made of sawdust or plastic. He grips the back of Martin’s jumper with lotion-soft hands and cries tears that have been collecting for a month into the fabric as he buries his face in Martin’s neck. Martin’s hands rub large circles across Jon’s back, and he’s whispering gentle words into Jon’s ear. Things about safe and okay and time and here.

By the time Jon feels thoroughly wrung dry, his cheeks are sticky and his head is throbbing and he’s desperately in need of a glass of water. He takes a few deep breaths, then carefully extracts himself from Martin’s arms. Martin lets him go easily, though his hands remain resting lightly on Jon’s elbows as if he can’t bear to let him go completely.

Jon thinks he knows the feeling.

Martin’s eyes are still closed, and Jon is hit with such a swell of affection he can hardly breathe around it. “Y-you can open your eyes,” he says, a bit sheepishly. Martin does, and if he’s affected by the state of Jon’s face, he doesn’t show any indication of it. “Sorry,” Jon mumbles, twisting his ring—now on his left middle finger instead of his right—around and around mindlessly. “I just…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Jon.” Martin squeezes Jon’s elbows gently. “I understand. Any time you need me to look away, I will. Okay? I just…” He takes a breath. “I’ll always be here. F-for you when you need me.”

If Jon weren’t thoroughly out of tears, that would make his eyes water. Instead, he nods and offers a small, weak smile. “I know. Thank you, Martin. It… just. Thank you.”

Step seven: fall asleep safe against Martin’s side in the bed that he insists is big enough for two, face pressed into Martin’s neck once again and hands curled loosely in Martin’s sleep shirt.

He’s so drained by the time they’re there, so wrung-out and empty and relaxed, that he manages to do so almost immediately. He thinks he hears Martin murmur, “Sleep well, love,” as he drifts off. But it disappears into the fuzzy border between sleep and wakefulness, slipping from Jon’s mind entirely as he fades to black.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #willoftitanium #my fic #my writing

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aconitewolfsbane · 4 years

Text

Well, I hate my brother...

My brother, well, one of them, is an arsehole. Okay, honestly, both of them are, but this is about the oldest one.

He’s being getting absolutely fucking terrible these last few years. Seriously, it’s pretty much elder abuse, so tw:abuse if you need it.

I mean, wow. Here’s just a short list of his arseholery. Putting under the cut because damn, there’s a lot. Stuff in bold means it’s an ongoing issue that we’ve been dealing with for years:

-- I’ve caught him with his hands in mum’s purse when she was in the shower. He immediately denies it, despite me seeing his hand literally in her purse. -- When she was diagnosed with cataracts (which she’s since had the surgery for, and is okay now), he told her that he had cleaned when he clearly didn’t, because he knew she couldn’t tell the difference. -- He picks random fights with mum, then denies that he started it. Even after being told to go to his room to cool down, he waits until I’m gone before coming back out to start on her again. He has driven her to tears on multiple occasions like this. -- Despite knowing that she’s a diabetic, he steals her limited food supplies. He always claims “Oh, I didn’t know...” yet doesn’t hesitate to do it again. -- Even though she’s on a pension, and he gets one of his own, every single one of her paydays, he jabs his hand out demanding money. Throws a goddamn fit if she tries to tell him that she can’t spare it. Continues being an arse until she either gives him her taxi money for next week, or he manages to steal it from her bag. -- When she had cataracts, she had to walk slower and more carefully to make she that she didn’t fall over anything. He decided that she was too slow, and instead of going around the other side of the house and coming in the unlocked back door, he pushed her out of his way. Thankfully, I was nearby and managed to catch her. -- Because of her cataracts, he started waling around the house in one of three things. His underwear; his adult diapers (he drinks too much coke, and it’s wrecked his guts); his damned birthday suit. Yes, he walks around naked sometimes in the house where he lives with his mother, and his sister. -- When we reminded him that he lives with his mother and sister, and we don’t want to see him at all, he called me a bitch for not wanting to see one of my brothers naked. -- Opens her mail without her permission. This is because when she had the cataracts, she let him open and read out some stuff because she couldn’t do it herself, and he seemed to have taken that as an open invitation. -- If she’s on the phone, regardless of if it’s outgoing or incoming, he tries to listen in. If he can’t, usually because I’m there and he knows I’ll yell at him for it, then he’ll wait until I’m gone and harass mum until she tells him who she was talking to. We started just saying “santa clause. he said you aint getting shit this year", and he started to back off. -- Has THREE showers per day. Denies it. And yet, there’s only three people in this house. Someone is having a shower at 4-5am, again around 8am, and then again at night around 8. It’s not me, and it’s not mum. I sarcastically suggest someone is breaking into the house early every morning to have a shower, and he leaps at the idea, claiming that’s exactly what happens. And if I suggested that the cats are having showers at 4am, he’d try to convince us that’s true too... -- Has her fearful of being hit. He’s about 6 foot tall, and she’s barely 5′5, so... -- Has almost hit me multiple times, because I was trying to tell him to stop being such an arsehole to mum. He responds by calling me a bitch. -- Walks up and down the hallway in heavy boots. He’s destroyed the lino. We have both told him not to do it; as it’s annoying, and keeps us both awake; he yells like we’ve told him that he has to give all of his comics to charity. -- Complains whenever mum asks him to do even the simplest job. -- When she had cataracts, he was being a shit about sweeping the kitchen floor for mum. I told him. “Geez, it’s not like she’s asking you to donate a bloody kidney.” His response? “Yes it is!” He compared helping his legally blind elderly mother with a small bit of housework to be the same as undergoing major transplant surgery. -- Throws tantrums, because he has the reasoning skills of a 3-year-old. “I want this!” “Sorry, but no.” “I WANT!” “No. How about this instead?” “No! I don't want that!” “Well, I can’t get the other thing.” “I WANT IT!!” -- He also tells us he’s going to the shops. If we want him to get us something and start getting out the money, he throws a tantrum. He decide that he doesn’t want to go to the shop anymore, and storms into his room. Half and hour later, he slips out and goes to the shop. We don’t get the thing that we needed. However, if we gave him the money to get food for everyone including him, like hot chips, he’ll rush out the door.

The following stuff are things that I actually have dates for. (I only decided to start writing all his behaviour down last year...) I won’t write the dates though. Each entry is from one single day.

-- I made burgers for mum and I, because he’d already eaten something from the shops. He threw a fit because he’s a bottomless pit who buys a weeks worth of tv dinners, eats them all in three meals, then complains about not having any food. -- Demanded $10 from mum so he could go buy milk. She only had the money she needed to get into town the next day. He threw a tantrum. Tried to bully her travel money from her. She had to threaten not to give him any money when she got her pension to make him back down. He later went and got the milk with his own money. -- In the course of ONE DAY, he argued with mum at least FIVE TIMES about: the mess in the laundry that he didn’t clean up when he was told; the fact that he refuses to deal with the rubbish properly, including separating the recycling; and the fact that he wasn’t getting money because he was acting like a shithead. -- Walked around naked again. Mum tried to tell him why he shouldn’t do that. He called her a stupid bitch, threatened not to give her his share of the rent money anymore. I reminded him that if we can’t make rent because of him and get kicked out, he’ll be kicked out too, and we’ll fucking burn his precious comics to stay warm. He backed down. -- Stole mum’s food again. Called me a bitch when I tried to explain that taking other people’s things without permission is called stealing. Threw an old phone book at me. When mum and I tried to quietly discuss what to do about his behaviour, he suddenly decided to start mopping the bathroom floor, just so he could eavesdrop. Then he started thumping repeatedly up and down the hallway outside my bedroom door, knowing that I was trying to rest because the stress gave me a headache. He then started up with mum again, because he thinks he has the right to take whatever food he wants. This was after I brought each of us a 30pack of eggs on Sunday. By Tuesday, he had only 6 left. This shitstorm happened on Friday, when he’d decided that mum not scoffing all her food by then meant that she didn’t want it anymore, and he helped himself. -- He change the batteries on mum’s pay TV remote, but somehow, he managed to pull the case apart, damaging it. (The bottom edge was lifted up, and there was a noticeable crack in the casing.) He of course, denied ever being near it, despite the fact that he’s always randomly changing the batteries despite there being no noticeable issue with the current ones. He threatened to take his freshly boiled cup of tea and throw it at my legs to scald me. Reached for his mug whilst glaring at me. I had to thump him to make him realise that I’m not scared of that pissy little baby. Then, once I had gone back to my room, he came back out and started yelling at mum, blaming her for the fact that I saw the remote and realised it was damaged. He threatened to give me serious burns over a TV remote control.

That section above? Happened last year, between April and November. This year, he’s:

-- Threw a tantrum because I informed him, well in advance, that I wouldn’t be able to buy pizza for dinner on his birthday this year. (We’ve planning on moving soon, and I needed the money to start stocking up on supplies, and saving for the usual expenses.) Mum offered to buy him a frozen pizza when she went shopping on the Tuesday before his birthday. He started on her because he apparently wants an expensive pizza that someone else pays for and he doesn’t need to cook. He got into the shower, and we could still hear him complaining.

And this morning: He left no hot water for mum. It’s winter here in Australia. She’s 69 years old, with diabetes, a bad leg, a heart condition and finally, PTSD from her time in the Homes. (Church/state run orphanages, loaded with sexual abuse and mistreatment. She was part of the Stolen Generation, and has been granted a settlement through the recent Redress Scheme for victims of systematic abuse. A small settlement, nowhere nearly enough for the abuse and trauma she lives with, but we didn’t expect the church to even admit that they’d fucked up anyway. Getting anything was a surprise, TBH.) All this, and she had to have a cold shower in winter. She simply asked him not to take so much hot water. He threw a tantrum, denied having more than one shower a day, screamed at her as she stood there shivering in a towel. I stepped out of my room to get him to back off. He started on me. I got so fucking pissed off that I grabbed the broom handle and belted the piece of shit a few times.

Violence is literally the only thing he understands. Every time he starts to get shitty, he will continue until I threaten violence. Then he realises that he’s gone too far and sent me over the edge, and he backs down. But he’ll still grumble and call me a bitch for trying to get him to stop bullying our mother. He’ll also try to slip out and keep arguing with her the moment I’m back in my room. Which he did as I was writing all this. And yet, he still expects her to give him money every single time he puts his hand out. She only does it because it’s not worth the tantrum he’ll kick off if she doesn’t.

And just in case you think I’m talking about a dirtbag teenaged brother, or a moody toddler?

He’s 41 years old.

As for calling the police... Tch, they’re useless around here. They were called to our street because of a massive brawl where our fence got damaged, and started point blank they they probably wouldn’t be able to find anybody who was involved. They’d just suggest family counselling. (Mum got counselling in the Homes. That person also molested her.) So we’re very against any sort of counselling. It’s already destroyed this family more than once.

Plus, we live in government housing, which means there’s rules we can’t fight against or appeal, because the government does whatever it wants.

If the police come to the address too often, we’ll be kicked out. If my brother is arrested and jailed, we’ll be kicked out. (There’s some rule that there has to be at least as many people living in the house as the number of bedrooms. Three bedrooms, so three people. If he goes, we’re on the streets, or will be shoved into cramped flats to slowly die.)

We’re also barely making ends meet. Without him paying part of the rent, we’re screwed.

Anyway, I just mostly needed to rant.

#awful brother #tw:abuse #tw::elder abuse #OPaconitewolfsbane #rant #I HATE MY STUPID-ASS BROTHERS #ISTG

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violetsmoak · 5 years

Text

Tabula Rasa [3/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183281/chapters/47879533

Blanket Disclaimer:

Summary: Tim and Jason have known they are soulmates for years, though neither has said anything about it. Tim thinks Jason doesn’t know, and is just trying to live with it. Jason thinks Tim knows but doesn’t care, which is fine with him, he thinks the soulmate thing is a crock anyway. But one night, a minor mishap forces them to confront the issue head-on, leading to a series of events no one could have predicted.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: #danger #enemies to lovers #i’ll protect you #soulmark tattoo #soulmate aversion

First Chapter

Author's Note(s): Low and behold, plot, and not just Tim whump. (Although there's definitely a big hit of that, too)

________________________________________________________________

Jason maintains that he doesn’t run. He just makes a well-timed exit.

Out of Gotham.

He meets up with Roy and Kori who are in Key West of all places and convinces them to do something on the other side of the planet. Somewhere dusty and without reliable communication technology, where he hopes they’ll end up being abducted by aliens again.

It has nothing to do with wanting to ignore the whole soulmate thing, or the nagging flickers of guilt he experiences for having been an epic douchebag to Tim, who he now knows gives a shit about being soulmates.

Which isn’t Jason’s fault.

It’s not on either of them that Tim got stuck with Jason or that Jason had to make clear where he stood on the issue. There’s nothing worse than giving someone like Tim false hope.

“Not even breaking his heart?” Kori asks, cross-legged on the couch in her trailer, hair flickering above her like a crackling fire. She ended up getting the story out of him within a day because she’s Kori and lying to her feels like slapping a kitten or something.

“First, I didn’t break his heart. Second, if I did, he’ll get over it,” Jason insists. “And it’s better it happens now than let him mope about it for the rest of his life. At least this way he can put an effort into findin’ someone who actually cares.” Kori tilts her head to one side and presses her lips together. “I mean, it’s not like I want the kid dead anymore, but I’m not lookin’ to make friends or family or whatever with him. And at the end of the day, he’s a decent person and I’m not, so there’s that, too.”

Jason ruins everything he touches—case point, the soulmate he’s already tried (and temporarily succeeded) to kill.

“It sounds as if you already care more about the mate of your soul than you wish to admit,” Kori remarks.

“He’s not my mate.”

“No, not with that attitude.”

“You think I have an attitude? Because I don’t want anything controllin’ my actions or my destiny? The idea isn’t supposed to bother me?”

“I did not say that. But you are looking at the whole thing from just the one angle.”

“You’re tellin’ me it doesn’t bother you?”

“It does not. But I am not you, and matters of the soul are a subjective issue,” she says and leans forward. “You always have a choice, Jason. There are many who have been linked by fate yet choose not to be together. You have seen me and Richard.” Jason’s eyes flick to the creeping pattern of blues and greens that wrap around Kori’s wrist. “Xhal may have decreed we be together, but we decided it was best not to. We have different values, different understandings of the world and relationship—and we both have deep commitments outside of ourselves. That is why I believe the universe ensured he also has Barbara.” She smiles, gentle but sad. “We choose to be mates of the soul from a distance. And I am content with this. It gives me…freedom, in a way. But that decision was made after a long bit of thought and much discussion. Not because we disliked the notion of fate.”

“That doesn’t mean I need to do the same,” Jason points out, a little stiffly.

“No. It does not. But whatever you feel, you and Timothy have a bond. And you are knowingly cutting it off without giving it a chance, something which no doubt does him harm.”

“Not as much as it would if I were around him.”

“You do not know that.”

“Uh, yeah, I do.”

“Very well.” Kori’s brow furrows. “I will not argue with someone that has set their mind to something. I have given you my views on the matter, or rather concerning your mate and your own self-worth. Do with them what you will.”

And she strides out of the trailer; Jason sees a burst of flame outside suggesting she’s flown off.

“And what’s your take on this?” he grumbles, glancing at where Roy’s been sitting the whole time, fiddling with what might have been a DVD player once but now more closely resembles a miniature drone.

“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” Roy grunts around a screwdriver in his mouth.

Jason rolls his eyes.

“Although,” his best friend continues, putting down his tools, “don’t you think by avoiding Gotham, you’re pretty much letting the whole soulmate thing decide how you’re living your life? How’s that different from fate or destiny or the Giant Spaghetti Monster?”

Which Jason can’t summon an argument against.

He hates it when Roy makes sense.

It’s another day of procrastinating before he throws up his hands and says, “You both suck and I’m never comin’ to you for anything ever again.”

“Just call ahead next time,” Kori hums. “Stella is teaching me to make carne asada and I will require another test subject.”

“We’ve only needed to get the fire extinguisher twice,” Roy adds, and Kori nods proudly.

“You two disgust me with your domestic bliss,” Jason informs them before he leaves, although seeing them has made him feel somewhat better.

His friends are an excellent example of a successful relationship despite not being soulmates. Kori’s embodiment of joy was the perfect balm to Roy’s garbage pile of a life. Rejected by his soulmate, his addiction, losing Lian…

Actually, now that he thinks about it, Roy’s life only really started on its downward spiral after Jade ghosted him.

There’s something worrying about that knowledge, but Jason doesn’t examine it too closely.

He heads back to Gotham, a little chastised and a little wary, but determined to keep giving fate or Xhal or whoever the finger. If anyone asks (and no one does), he’s not back to the city because of Tim, but because he still hasn’t figured out who put the contract out on Johnny Lino.

It’s nagging at him more than the death of one of his informants usually does. The trail went cold almost immediately, nothing beyond the traces of a sniper in the opposite building. He’s calling it a coincidence for now, although he’s mentally earmarked it for potential problems in the future if anything else like this happens.

Maybe Johnny just got too big for his britches and pissed off the wrong mobster. One with access to the quality hitmen he couldn’t afford.

Two nights later, when he stops into a club that’s the front to a high stakes illegal poker game, he decides it’s no longer a potential problem, but an imminent right-the-fuck-now problem.

He’s there to collect his percentage from a few of the guys around the table, but once the door closes behind him, he’s suddenly getting ambushed by a table for people with knives and no qualms about dying.

Jason has never liked killing people; it’s something that occasionally has to be done, in the same way a cop sometimes has to pull his service weapon. Certain people in particular—serial rapists and pedophiles and the Joker—are part of that ‘it needs to be done’ category. Thugs like this are just small-time losers with bad judgment, so he’s not really aiming to kill any of them.

Immobilizing shots and the like.

Which is why he’s a bit concerned when he goes to interrogate the bastards about what’s going on, and the guy he reaches for suddenly starts foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling back in his head.

“What the fuck?” Jason jerks backward, glancing at all the rest and finding that they, too, are now convulsing and twitching as the life leaves their bodies.

Cyanide, he realizes when he leans close to his guy’s mouth and detects the smell of almonds. Again, I say, ‘what the fuck’?

It’s the second time a visit to an underling has resulted in death.

Something’s going on in his house, and he doesn’t like it. Maybe the trip to Florida wasn’t a good idea just now; he needs information, and he needs it now.

Except, when he canvasses the streets between Park Row and Byron, he discovers quickly that his people aren’t talking. The girls that are usually so chatty cross quickly to the other side of the streets, the hustlers on the corners are suddenly all on breaks, and the bodega clerks simply beg him to leave their shops, they have kids, you know?

The only one that will talk to him is Rhonda, one of the prostitutes that has been there longer than the rest. She’s a raw-boned woman with leathery skin and bleached, teased blond curls; once, a john tried to act out a rape-murder fantasy on her and she tasered him in the nuts until they burned off.

He’s not sure how much of that’s true, but if anyone could pull that off, it’s Rhonda.

“Someone put a price on your head, baby,” she informs him when he tracks her down, taking a long drag of a menthol cigarette. “Someone scarier than you.”

“Not possible,” he replies, trying to inject some of his usual cockiness into the words.

“There’s always someone scarier,” she informs him gravely. “Lotsa girls and runners gone to the new player. They says he’s gonna protect us better than Red Hood ever did, offer us a bigger take. More of our money in our pockets. Even gonna keep the kids safe better than you could.”

“Which you don’t believe, or you’d be jumping that bandwagon.”

“I believe what I sees, and I ain’t seen this guy,” she replies. “But he did send those Pike bastards outta here, runnin’ with their tails between their legs. Last I heard, they got picked up by one of the Bats before they set much on fire.”

“Which Bat?”

“Red Robin, I think.”

I guess I owe him for taking care of that particular headache.

“He’s pretty decent for a mask,” she adds. “Always comes down here when you ain’t been seen for a few days. He a bit softer—never leaves anyone crippled—but the alley stays safe when he comes by.”

Jason scowls inside his helmet. He didn’t come here to talk about his replacement.

“What do you know about this new guy, then?” he asks, redirecting the conversation back to his current problem. “The one trying to move in on my turf, not the wannabe Bat.”

“Oh, no, honey, that’s all I’m givin’ you. Anyone hears I told you even that and I’m in trouble. But I hear you ain’t the only one having troubles with him. Penguin’s stepped up his muscle a lot lately.”

“I guess that means I’m going clubbin’,” Jason says, and hands over a few hundreds. It’s more than the information she gave him is worth, but she’s got a kid to feed. “Take a night or two off, Rhonda. Could be a hard few days.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” she replies and pockets the money, slinking into the shadows.

The next stop on his list that night is the Iceberg Lounge. As usual, Penguin doesn’t intend to be helpful in the beginning.

“I assure you I have heard nothing of this newest player,” he croaks after Jason goes through the obligatory routine of threats and a show of violence. “But then, a good portion of my clientele has absconded to the Hungry Ghost these past weeks.”

“The what?”

“A new club—little more than the front for a brothel. But rife with rumors and scandal.” He smiles his oily little smile, the one that Jason’s broken more than once since he was thirteen and has to fight down the urge to do again now.

“It’s not like you to be so calm about this. You’re usually more of a control freak over the information game.”

“The wheel never stops turning, Hood. There’s a reason I’ve been around longer than anyone else in this business. It’s knowing the proper time to stand and fight…and the proper time to move out of the line of fire. I will still be here when the dust settles.” The man grins wide, showing yellowed teeth. “But from what I hear, you might not be.”

“That a threat?” Jason growls, hand moving to his holster.

“An observation. And don’t look like that, do you really think I’d dirty my hands on someone like you?” Penguin sniffs. “I am remaining Switzerland on this issue.”

“Switzerland, huh? So armed neutrality?”

“Indeed.”

His cold eyes following Jason as he takes his leave—and knocks out a few bodyguards that try to make a move on him as he goes.

“What the fuck?” he asks for the third time in as many days, absently rubbing the back of his left wrist. “How does Penguin not even know what’s going on?”

“Since he’s trying to stay alive,” a voice replies, and Jason almost—almost—jumps when he notices the shadow leaning over a nearby fire-escape. Red Robin materializes fully into the light but remains a conspicuous distance away from Jason. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”

Tim’s tone is careful.

“I didn’t exactly put it on MySpace.”

“MySpace hasn’t been around since 2009.”

“Yeah, well, I was dead that year, so sue me for not knowin’ that.”

He expects a reprimand or a bit of tooth-grinding like he always gets when he makes oblique jokes about his death. But Tim just shrugs. Which seems…off, somehow.

“A week ago, all the major players were sent packages,” Tim informs him, going back to the subject at hand. “Heads, hands, and hearts of their top lieutenants, and a warning to wait for orders from the new boss in Gotham.”

“So basically, someone took my schtick and went the extra mile,” Jason suggests.

And is trying to edge me out of my own business.

“B is monitoring the situation. It hasn’t spilled into the civilian sphere yet, so he hasn’t deemed it an immediate threat.”

“Of fuckin’ course not, it’s not his head the new guy wants on a pike!” Jason growls, somewhat irritated by this, but also a bit surprised. Bruce wouldn’t be leaving the matter alone if he thought Jason was in any actual danger; maybe, for once, he understands Jason can handle it.

Doesn’t explain why the kid’s here tonight, though.

“So what are you doing here?”

There’s a slight squeak of leather as Tim shrugs. “Protection detail. We’ve all been assigned to keep an eye out if whoever this is makes a move on one of the bigger names. I’m on Penguin tonight.”

“Capes guardin’ criminals,” Jason snorts. “The irony of that never gets old.

Tim doesn’t answer. No witty rejoinder, no impassioned defense of Batman’s credo.

“Still, at least you’re doing something,” Jason allows, somewhat grudging. “And you’ve been busy with the Pikes, from what I hear. I was savin’ them for a rainy day, but I guess it’s a headache I don’t have to worry about now.”

He expects Tim to display some kind of reaction to that, even if it is dark sarcasm.

“It’s my job,” he says instead, in a way that makes Jason frown. But not as much as he does when Tim shoots a grapple line and takes off without another word.

Well, that was weird. But…okay? I guess?

Tim didn’t mention anything about their soulmarks; didn’t even bother bringing it up. Clearly, he took Jason’s message to heart and is trying to be professional. Which is also good. Not a lot of people can handle rejection with any sense of maturity.

A little cold, but it’s Tim. He’s not as emotive as Dick is, anyway.

Jason puts it out of his mind, ignores that tiny flash of wrong that crops of when he thinks about the younger man’s behavior. Which doesn’t happen all that often, since he’s too busy running down his list of contacts trying to find out who exactly the new player is in Gotham.

In theory, he could go to the other Bats for information—could go to Oracle, if he butters her up a bit. She still has a thing for cinnamon buns from that place on 4th, it wouldn’t even be out of his way…

But he’s not really keen on talking to any of them right now, and not to put too fine a point on it, this is his business. It’s bad enough they’re even on the periphery of the case already.

⁂

Two days later, tracking a snitch that’s been avoiding him causes him to stumble upon a weapons deal going down in Tricorner. No local colors, but from the gear Jason calls mercenaries.

Red Robin’s in the middle of it, outnumbered by a lot and outgunned by more, and Jason throws himself into the fight without thinking too much about it. It’s what anyone in the Family does, after all, no need to ascribe any meaning to it.

Red grunts an acknowledgment—that he sees Jason and won’t accidentally break his jaw with his bō—and they settle into their usual fight pattern. Jason’s always found this all too easy—there’s something about fighting back to back with another Bat that’s just instinctive, whether it’s Dick or Damian or even Bruce.

But with Tim, it’s always been more than that. They work together like gears in a clock.

He always shied away from attributing that to their soul bond, because that would mean having to acknowledge it. Better to think it was because Tim obsessively stalked Jason when he was Robin and that Jason learned everything he could about his replacement’s style when he and Talia were planning his big return to Gotham.

But it’s out there now, isn’t it? They both know, it’s not a secret.

Just like Jason knows after several minutes that there’s something still off about Red.

Half his attention on his own fight with his own portion of the goons, Jason can still observe the other vigilante’s movements. Red is telegraphing his moves more. Nothing these brainless thugs would notice, but someone with Bat and League training could spot from a mile away. There’s a languidness in his movements like he’s not entirely present in the moment, and a lack of care in his attacks.

Jason watches as Tim takes a running jump, kneeing one thug in the chest and knocking him to the floor, then using him as a steppingstone—steps down harder than usual, dislocates the shoulder—twists and grabs the next nearest thug by the arm. Holding him, he hobbles him in the knee, then follows up with a kick to the head.

As the bullets fly, Tim tucks and rolls between two more assailants, sweeping the feet out from beneath the third, who stumbles, allowing Tim to weave beneath his outstretched arm and the gun he has pointed at him. Bowing his back into him, Tim tries to go for an elbow to the solar plexus, but the guy is shooting now even as he struggles with Tim.

Usually, he’d be attempting to ensure those shots remain nonlethal, but this time he doesn’t seem concerned with it. It’s by sheer chance that several of the slugs only hit the fourth guy in the shoulders, at points that Jason dimly recognizes as close to fatal.

Tim’s assailant is still shooting, they’re still struggling, and even as Tim twists and tries to get it out of his hands, bullets nearly hit Jason as he’s in the process of clotheslining his own opponent.

“The hell, Replacement?” he snaps as he ducks the wild spray of gunfire.

Tim ignores him but has apparently lost patience. He digs a birdarang out of his bandolier, slamming it into the meaty part of his opponent’s leg. There’s a shriek of pain and the guy crumples around the wound, then Tim whirls around and brings him down hard on the floor. As the fifth man comes at him, Tim breaks his nose and shoves him toward the sixth man, who he kicks in the chest, then backhands the last guy, using him as leverage to snap a kick at his buddy.

The guy goes flying backward, and Tim throws the final thug down on the floor, smacking him face-first against the hard pavement with enough force that blood pools around his head.

It’s quick, efficient, and merciless, and if it were anyone else the sheer beauty of the takedown would impress Jason.

Except, this is not the way Red Robin fights. Tim is always efficient, yes, but there’s a certain amount of force he always holds back. No matter how quick and brutal the fight, he takes the extra effort to avoid critical injuries.

That wasn’t there tonight; hell, he almost got Jason shot.

“What’s with you?” Jason demands when they are surrounded by feebly twitching bodies and Tim is calling in the GCPD to deal with the remaining contraband.

“Nothing you need to care about,” is the mild reply.

“I fuckin’ care if it gets me killed!”

“Then maybe you’re not as good as you think you are.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The tone isn’t the dry, snarky confidence Red Robin usually uses to deliver a line like that. It’s robotic and toneless and weary. Jason only remembers him sounding like that after Batman’s supposed death, when no one believed him about Bruce still being alive.

Wait. Did something happen while I was away?

“Christ, kid, who died while I was gone?” he demands.

“If we’re done here, I have a report to write,” Tim replies without answering the question, and is already walking away.

“Yeah, fine! You do that!” Jason shouts after him. It’s not like he actually cares for the answer.

And yet…

The whole thing bothers him.

Kid’s going to get himself killed, and it’s not even something I can blame Bruce for.

Mostly because he’s almost certain he has something to do with Tim’s mood. He might have overestimated Tim’s ability to handle rejection by his soulmate.

Which is disappointing, because of all the teenaged clichés he expected the younger man to fall prey to, giving up on himself the first time he faces rejection?

Typical rich boy. Got everything handed to him, so when someone tells him ‘no’, he has an existential crisis. Well, whatever. Screw him. It’s none of my business.

Though that assertion is easier said than stood by.

⁂

The next morning, Jason is still feeling uneasy about the whole thing. He didn’t sleep well, just tossed and turned for four hours before he gave up and went a few rounds with his punching bag. He decides to calm himself down another way and heads for the café he sometimes frequents that does tea almost as well as Alfred’s.

The place looks like a bar, but instead of alcoholic beverages, there are exotic teas and fancy cold drinks on display. It’s early enough in the day there aren’t more than two or three other patrons. Usually he comes in later when it’s packed and bustling and easy to disappear into the crowd; today, he appreciates the silence.

In the back corner, a television is on, broadcasting the morning news. The screen switches to a conference and, of course, it’s Tim fucking Drake front and center. Talking up something to do with his Neon Knights thing.

And it looks like Vicki’s up to her shit again.

The intrepid thorn in the collective side of the Family is needling Tim about his personal life. He’s deflects everything with his usual smile until Vale brings up Tam Fox.

Tim’s face is always so composed when speaking to the press, his smile rivaling Brucie or maybe the Mona Lisa for secretiveness. But as Vale’s questions veer toward the subject of soulmates—and Tim’s apparent lack thereof—it’s as if a thundercloud has taken residence on the teen’s face.

When Vale ignores Tim’s third polite side-step of her questioning, he jerks as if a physical snap takes place inside him.

“The last time I checked, this conference is about increasing funding for underprivileged students, not about my personal life,” he says, tone frigid. “And in case your many years of reporting haven’t drilled it into your head, no comment means no comment. If that continues to confuse you, maybe I should replace it with ‘fuck off’.”

The TV censors bleep it out, but you don’t have to be a lipreader to know it’s what he said. As the press clamor, Tim then stalks out of frame, which—

Shit.

Jason is both impressed—because even he never managed to do that when he had to deal with the press as a kid—and disquieted. Because Tim Drake doesn’t lose control like that, not least of all where the public might see it.

What the hell.

Jason heads back to his current safe house, wondering if maybe this might be something he should tell someone about. He doesn’t have to get touchy-feely about it, but he might drop a hint or two to Dick, or to Alfie, or someone who gives a shit about Tim.

They can have, I dunno, some kind of intervention or whatever white hats like they do in situations like this.

All thoughts of that vanish, however, when he turns the corner and notices a crowd gathered outside the building where he’s been staying. Large plumes of smoke are billowing above it, and there are a firetruck and two police squad cars parked out front.

What the…?

Jason hurries over and stares up, dumbstruck, to see a chunk of the edifice missing.

The spot where his bolthole used to be.

Someone firebombed the place.

Murmurs rise up all around him.

“I heard the guy living there was cooking meth, and it blew up.”

“Nah, there was a terrorist holed up in there. Probably didn’t set the timer on his bomb properly.”

“This fucking neighborhood.”

“I know, right?”

But Jason barely synthesizes the information, so fixated on one thing.

Someone knows.

Maybe they don’t know about him—he’s never come out of here without either a mask on or a hoodie or hat—but someone must have seen Red Hood come to this place. He’s swept for bugs and cameras, so there’s no way they’ve got a visual on him, but somehow they knew that was his apartment.

It’s too precise.

Which means his other places might be compromised, too.

Jason turns and walks away from the building, thoughts racing.

He wonders furiously about who it could be, who knows about his boltholes. Roy and Kori, obviously; he told them in case anything ever happens to him or if he doesn’t contact them for a while. He’s got a list of Roy’s in Star City and the tropical hideaways Kori’s come to enjoy over the years. They all call it insurance, but it’s a way of checking up on each other.

He could see the Joker figuring it out, but the gradually escalating attacks on Red Hood are too subtle for that maniac. Jason doubts they’ve seen the end of him since he made his last disappearing act, but this isn’t him. The clown likes an audience, likes to be noticed. These attacks are being done from the shadows and required a lot of planning.

Could be Talia, since he’s sure she’s been keeping tabs on him even long after they parted ways. She’d see it as leverage, as protecting an investment even if it didn’t give her the returns she expected.

And the Bats, of course, but none of them is the type to send a message with explosives, even when they’re all at odds.

It looks like Jason will have to lie low for a bit, watch his territory from the shadows. Deep surveillance.

He heads for his apartment in Crime Alley, which should be safe enough; he never goes anywhere near it when in uniform. Jason can regroup from there, remote-access surveillance from the moment before the safe house was bombed, check on the other boltholes from afar and—

And run straight into Tim Drake.

The kid’s bundled into a winter coat, but it hangs open, revealing the clothes he was wearing during his news conference meltdown. He’s missing the suit jacket, and his tie is loose under the collar of his shirt, carrying a plastic bag from the bodega down the street. Jason can see what looks like a week’s worth of ramen and TV dinners through the flimsy plastic.

All of which only serves to magnify that expression of absolute defeat on his face. That shifts into careful blankness when he recognizes Jason heading toward him.

The sight of him is the cherry on the top of Jason’s already shitty day.

“No,” he snaps, stalking forward and shoving a finger at Tim. “Fuck you. I’ve got enough of my own shit going on, I don’t have time to deal with your…all of this.” He gestures at the remains of Tim’s billionaire playboy costume. “What the hell are you even doin’ here, anyway?”

Tim sighs, weary. “I live here. Like…a block away.”

And it’s a measure of how messed up this new player in town has Jason that he actually forgot that tidbit. It makes him angrier to have it pointed out to him.

“Of fucking’ course you do! You’re everywhere else, why not my neck of the woods now, too?”

“I’ve lived here for a year and you never said anything,” Tim points out.

“Yeah, well, I never ran into you before, did I?”

He doesn’t add that that was before their whole soulmates thing got yanked out in the open.

“Being off-planet helps with that, I always figured,” Tim says blandly, and shoulders past Jason with all the strength of a sleepwalker.

Which just rubs Jason the wrong way.

He feels like he’s being dismissed, feels guilt that he doesn’t want to be feeling, and is still raring for a fight. Jason snaps his hand out and roughly pulls the other man around to face him; he expects a fist to block him, or for Tim to shove him off. Instead, he simply sways a bit on his feet like he’s trying to find balance.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

“What the hell is your problem, Drake? Don’t tell me you’re sulkin’ about the soulmate thing? Is this the reason for the lame-ass robot impression you’ve been doin’ lately?”

Tim’s expression doesn’t change. “I honestly haven’t had the time to think about it. There’s a lot of work to keep me busy.”

“Right, forgot, you’ve got to be the perfect clone of B to get him to notice you. Guess that tanked today, huh? Newsflash, kid, you weren’t the first to be replaced, and I’m bettin’ you won’t be the last. Go get a life.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Tim replies vaguely. “It would be easier to do if you stayed away, though.”

“Yeah, well, my life would have been a lot easier if you didn’t exist!”

There’s a breath of heavy silence in the wake of that sentence.

Jason’s fury fizzles out like a candle doused in water the minute the syllables pass his lips. Right away, he wants to take it back, because of the way Tim nods, his expression slamming into a wall of resignation that gives Jason an uneasy feeling at the back of his neck and a pit in his gut.

He backtracks. “Look, that’s not what I—”

Whatever convoluted explanation he was going to dredge up is lost, because at that moment two things happen near simultaneously: a gunshot rips through the ambient noise of the night, and Tim jerks forward, suddenly in Jason’s space, shoving him to one side.

Blood sprays across Jason’s face, and there’s a searing hot pain on the side of his neck, that experience tells him is a bullet.

Just like experience tells him the kid now slumped in his arms, eyes wide and still trapped in that awful blank stare took the brunt of the shot—to his head.

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

This blog isn’t my primary, so my reblogs don’t show up very well. As such, please reblog the fic, otherwise not a lot of people are going to see it :)

<3 Violet

#jaytimweek2019 #jaytimweek #jaytim #jaytimbingo2019 #fanfic #jaytim fic #batfic #prompt: soulmate #jason todd #tim drake #oswald cobblepot #danger #enemies to lovers #i'll protect you #soulmark tattoo #soulmate aversion #angst #drama #whump

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georgiamayesd · 3 years

Text

Lino Cutting & Relief Printing- Lockdown addition

Seeing as I was planning on doing my last workshop which was relief printing during our catch up lesson last Thursday, I’ve had to take a bit of a detour. Lucky for me however, I purchased some lino and lino cutters from Gordon Harris before lockdown happened.

Prepping the Lino

Printed design on regular paper. ^

Cutting away the excess to I can match up the design to my lino ^

Graphite pencil over the back of the page which will then be transferred onto the lino ^

Design taped to lino to secure in place ^

Not easy to see, but this was after I traced over the image with pencil ^

Image now transferred onto lino after tracing over image and transferring pencil to lino.

Because I don’t have the right kind of printer or paper at home that I could have used to transfer my image onto lino, I had to use a manual method to do so.

After sizing up my image to my lino, I cut away the excess paper and then using a 4B pencil, I scribbled all over the page of the paper, covering it completely in to create a transferable ‘ink’ which can be transferred onto the lino with some pressure.

Once my image was tape in place to stop it from sliding around, I went in again with a pencil and this time traced the outlines of my image which results in the graphite on the back of the paper to be pushes and transferred onto the lino. This was very effective, as you can see the whole design came out clear and prominent on the lino.

Cutting Lino

Lino cutters purchased from Gordon Harris ^

Smallest lino cutter used because of the finer lines and details and the condensed image makes it harder to get into the smaller, detailed parts. ^

Because this was my very first time ever using or cutting lino, I did come across a few issues which I then realized how to fix only after the damage was done. For example, for a few of flames of the sun on the bottom, I went from outside in which ended in me going a bit to far into the image at times and also left some of my flame arms rounded at the ends when I wanted them sharper. But after realising this I starting going from the inside out.

I knew from the beginning that unless I carved out chunks of this image, it will just be an inverted outline and I was okay with that as this was my first try. Other than being careful of speed and pressure, the whole process was pretty straight forward.

I don’t have any Indian ink on hand and the only ink I do have is this green fountain pen ink. I also didn’t have the correct, solid roller but instead had a sponge roller. I understand the issue here as the sponge does soak up all the ink and doesn’t give the lino a fresh and solid coat but I didn’t have any other tools on hand.

For some reason, I didn’t think about the lino rejecting the ink due to it being a solid object incapable of soaking up ink. But I still tried to print with it anyway.

Yeah..nah. Didn’t work as I was hoping. Because the lino rejected the ink, that resulting in the ink pooling in spots on the lino and when the paper was applied, it soak up ALL the ink, resulting in bed ink patches throughout.

My next and only other option was to use black acrylic paint.

When prepping my roller, I noticed that the paint had a very similar texture and consistency to the ink used at uni and also made that same sticking, raspy sounds when rolled over.

I rolled the paint throughout the container to completely coat the sponge as well has get out any clumps of paint that could cover or over “ink” my image. If too much paint is placed over the cut out lines, theres a chance that they’re covered when printing.

The paint took really really well to the lino, it wasn’t as solid as ink would be and the sponge wasn’t as clean as a solid roller would be which resulted in that sponge print on the lino, but after applying a few coats fast enough, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

More coats ^

For my first attempt, I used standard photocopy paper to make my first print. I rubbed the paper over the lino for a bit, making sure to get all parts on the design and the ink onto the page.

Did I mention that the photocopy paper was very cheap?

Thankfully, the paint and paper washes off instantly.

I bought this visual diary for this minor before I decided to just make a tumblr account instead so i was able to use this 110gsm paper instead.

A fresh coat of paint was rolled over the lino before transferring.

I did the same again when printing the image. I pressed and rubbed the page down firmly with my hand as I didn’t have a cap that Struan suggested on the YouTube tutorial, but I made sure to me as efficient as possible when doing this.

It worked! I was so pleased to see that even though I didn’t have the correct ink to do this, the paint took perfectly to the page. You can still see the sponge print throughout it and the cut out itself is rough as but minor issues aside, I think I can call this one a success.

Another photo ^

After doing this print, I wanted to have a go and now blocking out areas to give the design some dimension. I had purchased a blocked bit on lino as well, which is a lot harder than the lino i used for the first print.

After repeating the same image transfer method again, I traced over the lines for a clearer outline.

I also marked the areas that I wanted to carve out. As you can see theres a lot and this was a challenge and a half.

Mistakes were made.

My first lino cutout is a work of art compared to this one. It was very hard to carve around the details in the face and after doing it on a march harder piece of lino, I would definitely have preferred to do this version on the softer lino as it would have probably been a lot cleaner and easier.

I cut out the larger flames so when it came to printing, they were not covered in the paint and the smaller flames around the edges were just outlines so they came out fully black. Its a similar process to a negative and positive image. The parts you want “nothing” on are the parts that take more detail.

Rolled on paint once again (same process)

Not brilliant but not the worst! I definitely prefer the first attempt. If I had more lino I would have swapped the design with the linos. I think they harder lino works best with simple line work designs.

#linocutting #reliefprinting

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jess-222 · 3 years

Text

EVALUATION

Flipside: Verdant / Barren.

I was drawn to these flipside words as I knew I could interpret them in an entirely different way to how a person might visualise them. When people think of the word barren, they may picture a wasteland or deserted area, when people think of verdant they may think of luscious grass. To combat this, I went for a completely unpredictable perspective on the two terms and moulded them into what suited me. Pieces of research that have influenced mywork most heavily have been various magazines and clothing brands - Fruits magazine has evidently been my biggest influence, impacting my usage and thoughts on colour combination, outfit combinations for my magazine and just project overall as I’m seen to reference Fruits across my entire blogwork. Reason being that I’m completely enamored by the photographs and general style of the magazine, in fact I have a whole wall of photographs from it in my bedroom that I get to just look at every day. I think it was a wise choice to have Fruits central to my project, as it’s made it feel more personal to me and I think due to my admiration I’ve been able to incorporate what I take away from the magazine into my work. I’ve asked for opinions from friends and I’ve been told that I captured my inspirations well. Other than Fruits, another well-renowned publication Delias has influenced me when it comes to considering layouts. As I’d taken the majority of my images for my digital magazine in the same location, I wasn’t able to recreate how Fruits mag is laid out as the majority of the images are outside, near brick walls/graffiti - on the street, as the name ‘street snaps’ suggests. This is where Delias comes in, as Delias has simplistic, cut-out-like layouts where whatever background that an image had originally is removed and the pages look somewhat like digital collages unlike Fruits. The influence delias had shines through in multiple spreads in my magazine, particularly when clothing pieces have a key. Another key inspiration for me has to have been the brand Unif, as they advocate sustainability which I’m a big fan of, all while showcasing awesome fashion. In terms of wider world research, taking images of my surroundings and books I stumble across has proven really useful and although often times (due to the randomness of some things) I’m unable to expand on the subject matter much, but am still visually inspired - such as, the primary colours and block-like layout in the Japanese toys book and the fridge magnets that then went onto inspire my front and back cover lettering. My concept essentially is the distinction between black, monochromatic fashion and the bright, overflowing and joyous. This can be seen often in Fruits magazine, as the publication combined individuals of all fashions. In Harajuku (epicenter of new looks in 1990) many styles come into play - a simple google search of ‘harajuku fashion’ will reveal this. In my art across the project I wanted to showcase the importance of colour, how it influences what you think of a subject, and how that ties in with fashion also. Fashion is a key part of self expression: how you choose to dress affects the way you’re perceived, similarly to how a drawing is done affects the way a person thinks of it - mark making can reveal a lot about a piece and the thoughts behind it. And although this can be useful in some cases, like how poisonous frogs are bright as a warning, in others like Kusama’s artwork you can get the wrong impression. Kusama’s art may seem outwardly warm, welcoming and lighthearted, and deep down tells her tragic story. Unlike Kusama I’ve kept the journey of my FMP artwork relatively lighthearted, merely referencing dark themes occasionally and this is because I wanted to keep my work up to interpretation similar to the way people may interpret how another person may act, think and feel according to how they present themselves. Not only that but an outlet like a magazine exists to showcase groovy outfits, not moving tales. It exists to channel my inspirations from various sources. The piece of artwork, or series, that was most impactful to my project I believe was the A6 postcards. As that’s when the cogs started really turning, and I felt sparks of inspiration. I really enjoyed myself creating art in a way that I can’t say I’d felt in a while, and was really chuffed with how they turned out. During the FMP I’ve experimented with woodcutting, collage, mixed media and more. I’ve found love for some mediums and hatred for others - I hope to never woodcut again because it took a lot of strength to cut through the wood and even then the results of the prints didn’t look to a standard I was happy with, lino was much more effective and smoother to cut. Despite my eagerness to use it, I was not and am not a photoshop pro. In high school, I would get asked for help a lot during class as I know the basics - other than that, I’m fairly clueless. Thankfully, it’s been quite self explanatory and google exists. My magazine has taken over 3 weeks to complete and I’ve dedicated almost every day to creating it, re-doing pages, experimentation and so on and so forth, sacrificing days off to come into college just to work on it. This has partly been because I’m unable to access photoshop at home, and that’d mean not working on my crucial final outcomes for any more than 3 days a week and I just couldn’t have that. Despite so much time spent, I wish I could’ve spent longer and I would’ve loved to add more type and text as I really enjoyed doing typography In Charlotte’s digital lesson on adobe illustrator, recreating my inspirations in a way I found to be effective. Seeing as my magazine’s taken so long I was unable to explore other avenues such as sculpture and textile, I wanted to bring my sewing machine into college to be taught how to thread it properly however the idea of carrying in something so heavy makes me nervous but I can save that worry for another time. From my outcomes I’ve learned photoshop skills and compositional techniques that will be useful for years to come. It’s been a labour of love and although there are parts I’d want to do different, I am proud of it.

10 Words To Describe My Final Outcome: Retro Stylistic Bizzare Developed Time-Consuming Contemporary Nostalgic Playful Quirky Trendy

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tillyvis-com · 4 years

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Editorial Spreads Evaluation:

WHAT CHANGES AND DEVELOPMENTS HAS MY PROJECT GONE THROUGH?

My project has gone through quite a few changes. At the beginning I really wanted to try and use photography for my imagery - as I did digital illustrations for making my book in term 1. So, I wanted to do something completely different. But, there were only so many images I could get, as the TED Talk I chose was about fish/ocean animals that I wouldn’t be able to get photos of - yellowfins fish tuna. I went to the Oceanarium and tried to take photos of anything I thought may be useful but, there were no animals that were mentioned in the talk - the images I did get were all blurry because of the moving fish and bad quality because of the darkness.This is when I decided to move away from photography - at first I though, collage would be good as I could use the photos I had and tear them up but I found that it wasn't really the aesthetic I wanted - I wanted clean cut and professional, not ripped edges and multiple sourced images. Eventually, after more research, I found Richard Juniper, who creates Lino prints - this turned out to be my final imagery method.

WHAT INFORMED AND MOTIVATED MY DESIGN DECISIONS?

While researching into existing editorial layouts, I found a lot on ‘Behance’ that ended up influences my design decisions. ‘Ego’ magazine was my main inspiration as I loved the blue colour scheme and use of staggered ness to the information - it also used blocks of colours and lines to help draw your attention to certain aspects. I really liked this idea of boxes of colours and lines with a simple look as I thought I could make my spreads rather dynamic while still being informational and smart looking. Furthermore, ‘hound’ and ‘surf’ magazine influences my decision to overlay my imagery over the blocks of colour - this meant that the boxes had little/no harsh lines and broke up the staggered-ness a bit so the spreads flowed better. Finally, Richard Juniper inspired my use of imagery - I saw his Lino prints and thought that I could use that method to as it can look really authentic yet, still has a professional look to it- you are able to make it as detail/simple as you want it to!

DID I MANAGE MY TIME WELL THROUGH THE UNIT?

For the most part I. think I managed my time that well for this project but, it was a very short project which I sometimes forgot about and therefore wasn't producing work at the rate I should’ve been. I was also ill the first week of this project so I did have to catch up a bit in the beginning but once I overcame my issues of imagery (figured out I anted to do Lino cutting), I eventually started to get into this project and started generating work quite quickly. But, I did struggle a bit once we were in lockdown as I had to get to grips with working at home with many distractions but I worked around it in the end - having online deadlines/tutorials really got me back into working consistently.

HOW DID I RESPOND TO FEEDBACK?

I think I responded to feedback quite well - I took what they said and evaluated what I should do next. For example, in a tutorial, when I showed my latest developments to my spreads, Laura suggested thinking about changing the title font so it was less condensed - I looked into it and ended up choosing completely differently (from League Gothic to Kepler Std) - from a condensed sans serif to a more traditional serif - I think this change really helped the readability and allowed for me to find a font for the pull out quotes that went well with the rest of the spread (which I was struggling with before with the condensed font!).

ARE THERE AREAS OF MY DESIGN PROCESS THAT NEED MORE PRACTICE?

I definitely need to manage my time more and I think I should make time to do more experiments - I sort of just stuck to Lino printing once I tried it once - I should’ve experimented within that - maybe with layering the Lino? But in general, as this was a short brief, I think I did okay with experimentation. But, its clear that I really need to be consistent with my research - not just do some at the beginning and then stop - I should constantly be finding things and refining them in my work!

WHAT HAVE I LEARNT FROM THIS UNIT OF STUDY?

I think this unit was less about learning new things and more about putting the skills we’ve learnt this whole year, so far, into practice - we’ve done spreads before in our term 1 book, so we knew InDesign, typographic hierarchy etc. already! But, this was defiantly still a very useful project - we actually knew what we were doing this time, compared to term one, and I think this project allowed us to see our improvements over the past few months.

But one thing I did learn was how much I rely on last minute work - I leave my work till the last minute but as this was a short brief, it really got me thinking about how I should be consistently doing my work, not just before the deadline!

REFLECT - ARE THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS THAT I WOULD MAKE TO MY FINAL OUTCOME?

There are definitely improvements I would make to my final spreads. I would've liked to have more imagery so I could’ve played around with it more (due to the corona virus I was limited with the resources I needed at uni/time I had left there). And within the imagery, I wish I thought more about layering and maybe adding other colours? I did experiment digitally with this but I think it would’ve been a better outcome if done physically because thats what a Lino print is all about. I also had a lot of colour issues so, I would’ve loved to fully sort them out so my spreads looked exactly how they did when I was working on them (PDF’s looked different to when in InDesign) but that's a technical issues so I'm not too fussed about that!

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whatsanalec · 5 years

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Journal - Week of 23/09/19

Monday

- Start of Print workshop

Began by doing some etching which wasn’t a very pleasant experience - I’m not a fan of the scratching feeling or sound, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. I don’t have a photo of my outcome because when I went back to look for it, it’d disappeared. Here’s a rough sketch I made on MS Paint:

I wanted to keep the black misty effect because I thought it’d be a bit boring just lines.

I got started cutting a woodblock print which I’d finish the next day.

Tuesday

- Print workshop

I’ve done lino printing before, so making a wood print was fairly straightforward. I like how it feels while cutting, quite satisfying. I also like how when printing, the wood can leave marks on the print, adding texture and aiding aesthetic. One of my turnouts:

It says “twilight,” in a dialect shown in my second favourite movie of all time, Your Name. Second only to Moana.

Anyway, it took a while to get the hang of, as you can see. I think the fourth character came out best because its thickness is what I was going for and is consistent. Basically, it’s the neatest of the lot. But yeah. I like woodblock printing.

I also started a litho print, don’t have a photo of it (I know, I’m sorry) but I got up to the silicon application stage and left it to dry over the week.

Wednesdsy

- Tutorial

Found it fairly helpful. Mark gave a good few suggestions on what to do, most of which I intend to give a go (apart from making my own font, not too keen on that. Might give it a shot eventually). Notes:

make thumbnails for ideas

Make frames/canvas limitations within the sketchbook learn

illustrator for symbols etc

Check out Oyvid Fahlstromm

Try out typography - printing, masks (like my 7 sins thing from last year), create own font?

Embossing

Get familiar with the workshop and make lab

Get stuck innnnn

- Tracey McKenna’s talk

I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t get any notes. I heard her say “environment” a couple times but that’s it. If you talk quietly use a mic please.

- Illustrator tryout

Had my first look at Adobe Illustrator as per Mark’s suggestion. I’ve used Photoshop a lot so some of that carried across but I’m going to put a lot more time into it. My plan is to watch YouTube tutorials because that’s how I got to know Photoshop.

Thursday

Did a couple things:

Went and bought mount spray for this^ one. Realised right after using it that I could have used my damn glue stick and got the sae outcome. I’m not a fan of myself.

so yeah, just playing about with paint and lowkey collage. Nothing astounding.

Friday

- Contextual studies lecture

It was basically a lot of analysing images so didn’t feel much need to take many notes.

modern art

Began ~1850

Edouard Manet - first painter of modern life

Reliable sources

Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy

Internet encyclopaedia of philosophy

Encyclopaedia of britannica

University of Chicago theories of media

- something

Painted a quick thing with acrylic by dragging a piece of cardboard across my page. I really like this method and thinknit has a lot of potential.

#journal

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han-made-bookbinding · 7 years

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“Knights” Binding

Sorry for the blog silence, I've just moved house (no mean feat with two under twos!) and I am now living in Bristol. This is a stop gap on our way into Somerset and country life, we have downsized and therefore my studio is temporarily residing in a storage unit down the road.

I am taking an enforced break from the physical act of bookbinding in order to take care of Ivy and Winnie (however it is impossible to switch my creative thoughts off during this time!) and I hope to take this opportunity to also catch up with the digital side of my life. For months I have been meaning to sort out my computer as have about a million baby photos to sort through, files duplicated numerous times and/or in the wrong order, photo editing to do for my website as well as numerous other onerous tasks.

I am also due to take on a new role come September, I will be the Project and Events Manager (PEM) for Designer Bookbinders so want my files to be in order before then. The PEM is the switchboard for information coming in from DB members and going out to the public. I therefore need to be completely up-to-date with all DB and other select bookbinding-related activities including dates for meetings, workshops, fairs and competitions. I will be responsible for publicising the above whilst trying to gain a stronger international presence for the society - watch this space for further updates on the role once I get started!

Before moving I managed to complete two bindings, it was great to draw a line under these before packing up my workshop. These were two books that unfortunately got delayed by my two pregnancies and although were started many (many) months ago laid dormant for quite a while. I am very thankful to my clients for being so patient and understanding during this time and was pleased to be able to hand over both in person before leaving London. The final task with regards both of these bindings is to write a blog post about each starting as follows...

The first of these bindings was an 1956 Allen Press publication of, “The Noble Knight Paris and Fair Vienne”. The book is a romance of thirteenth-century France which was regarded as the most popular story of medieval times.

Inserted into the original book was a promotional leaflet about the publication from 1956, with details about the text block as follows:

_______________________________________________________________________

ANNOUNCING A NEW BOOK

The Noble Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne, Translated out of French by William Caxton

This edition, limited to 130 copies, has been produced by hand and is being published by the Allen Press, the private press of Lewis and Dorothy Allen, Kentfield, California.

The text of Paris and Vienne is a romance of thirteenth-century France, and was regarded as the most popular story of the middle ages. Although often copied in manuscript, and frequently printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there are few romances so rare as this one. From the original Catalane language, it was translated into Latin, French, Flemish, Italian and English. A noted seventeenth-century critic stated that “it would be impossible to find a work more fitted to imbue the mind with correct taste and elegance of style, or to influence character by the wisdom of its reflections, or to forearm hearts against those assaults of fiery passion which blindly precipitate one into the abysses of misery. The work is truly admirable. The situations are so interesting and the dénoument is so happy, that their conception would reflect honor on the best writers of the most renowned ages.”

The only known copy of Caxton's printing (1485) is in the British Museum; the present edition is based on that copy.

The Allen Press is pleased to offer this important and delightful romance in a hand-made book of the finest materials and craftsmanship. The book was set by hand in the handsome Romanée types designed by Van Krimpen for the Enschedé foundry in Holland. The paper (printed damp) we believe to be the most distinguished sheet produced in modern times. It is named Val de Laga, and is from the Richard de Bas mill in France; this mill has provided hand-made paper continuously since 1326. When we wrote to the manager in Paris to question the high price, the reply was this, “Unfortunately, you have correctly heard the price of our fine paper. I do not know how expressing myself, but our old mill is not a 'commercial affair,' it is a 'thing of beauty' as said Keats, and our paper costs to us much than we sell it (we make only three hundred sheets a day!). That mill was founded in 1326 and we have no changed the process of fabrication. Every sheet costs much time: that is why it is dear and beautiful as not other one.”

The book was printed on Acorn-Smith handpress which was made in Philadelphia about 1830. On every page there are wood engravings by Mallette Dean; each (122 per book) has been hand-coloured by Dorothy Allen. There are approximately one hundred pages, 11 by 8 inches. The binding consists of an Invicta parchment spine, and sides of French paper decorated with wood engravings. The books are enclosed in slip-cases covered in the paper of the binding,

The publication date is May 15, 1956. On advance, PREPAID orders, a special price of $18.50 has been set. After May 15, the price will be $20.00. Because there are only 130 copies, we respectfully suggest that orders be mailed promptly.

The Allen Press 516 Woodland Road Kentfield California

_______________________________________________________________________

The book is a love story and I was taken by the idea of Paris the Knight jousting against his rivals for the admiration of Vienne. I thought that this would create a strong design and I could place the characters so that they would mirror well across the cover; Paris appearing on the front cover and his rival on the back with the jousting poles crossing the spine.

Quoted from the text, "Alle other knightes there were knowen by their armes, but the two white knights were unknowen...Said Vienne, yonder two white knightes that bear no armes on their sheldes are more to my fantasie".

Paris bore no arms on his shield therefore I decided to depict him with a plain white shield - in the story he goes on to win a crystal shield and a gold garland of flowers, presented to him by Vienne. On the cover design I drew her on the spine section - the same image as that taken from the wood block print in the text block. I placed her standing in the doorway to her castle, the castle being a much larger version of the wood block print that also features in the text block. The outline of this castle I planned to carbon or blind tool, with Vienne embroidered in colour.

When it came to choosing the colour palette, the wood block prints in the text block were hand-coloured in pastel tones so I wanted this to follow through into the cover design. I had a lovely pink/purple Pergamena skin in my leather drawer that I chose to cover the book in and selected the leather onlays to go with this.

The woodblock prints were also my inspiration for the endpapers and doublures. I used the leaf and floral elements from the illustrated vines to carve some lino stamps, much larger than the originals.

I didn’t originally have a vision about the pattern I was going to print these in so did some tests using an ink pad and some paper. It turned out that using all of the stamps together appeared too fussy so in the end I used just one to create a gridded repeat pattern. I felt that this worked better with the cover design, as the fabrics of the horses were repeat patterns too.

I used an oil-based ink, Intaglio Printmaker Black Litho/Relief Ink, for the printing. These inks are recommended for block printing but are slow drying so I had to do this a few days ahead of the forwarding.

Given the leaflet that was included with the text block detailed the quality of paper used for the original binding I felt it important to get something as close as possible to that for the endpapers and doublures. I took one of the sections into Shepherds in London and found a very suitable match, both in weight and colour:

Ruscombe Mill 1840's Wove - 110gsm (RM184W11)

“This range was conceived to match European papers. These papers are available in 65 & 110 gsm and are made in both laid and wove versions. The papers are manufactured from cotton and flax, have four deckle edges and conform to archival standards.”

Once the ink was dry I punched out the centres of each of the flowers with my Japanese hole punch and stuck a circle of coloured paper, slightly larger in size, to the reverse of the hole with some PVA.

I also chose one flower on both the front and back doublures to back with gold leaf. Firstly I carefully pierced around the outline of the flower and then backed the hole with Moon Gold leaf that I had adhered to Japanese tissue in advance. This really caught the light and added a satisfying visual change in comparison to all the other black flowers.

Once the endpapers were made up and sewn to the text block the book could be rounded and backed with a backing hammer. The spine was then lined with linen, leather and a hollow. The text block had deckled edges on the foredge and bottom of the pages which I kept but I sanded the top edge flat.

Once the book had been rounded and backed I sewed the endbands with colours to match the cover design and then laced on the boards. At this point it was possible to mark out the exact size of the book and cut the leather (yes, that is a newborn baby in the sling asleep whilst I work!).

As with all of my bindings I make a sample board ahead of working on the book leather to test out colours and stitches (this board comes in at number 50!). On a photocopy of the cover design I spent a while working out a colour chart for my onlays. Unless they really are too tiny to do anything with I rarely throw any of my leather scraps away so I have boxes of odds and ends to work with - perfect for a job such as this.

I first set about sticking onlays down onto the sample board leather. This included some alum-tawed leather for the white of the shield and fleur-de-lis on the cloak of the horse.

I also used some of the Moon Gold leaf I had stuck to Japanese paper for the head pieces of the knight and horse.

Once these were stuck down and the onlays back-pared I was able to start on the embroidery. I used a combination of different stitches to build up the design, pricking through the leather with a bodkin into some foam so I then knew where to place the stitches.

The embroidery stage of the binding is the bit I enjoy the most, in fact I find it quite therapeutic. It was also quite possible to achieve whilst sitting with a sleeping baby on my lap!

The white alum-tawed leather of the shield was given some texture with cross-hatched stitches in a thread of the same colour. I also built up the fur of the horse using small stitches in a variety of colours.

Once the embroidery was complete it was then time to stick it to the sample board. I always find it interesting to observe and capture the back of the piece before it goes onto the board/book as it will never be seen again!

It was then time to work on the leather for the actual book starting with glueing down the onlays. To ensure I get these in the correct place I work through a tracing paper template that I stick in place on top of the leather so it can be lifted up and down whilst adhering down the small leather pieces.

I worked on the larger block pieces first, building up the onlays layer by layer as I go trying to ensure there is not too much of an overlap between each piece.

Once the larger pieces were down it was time to cut out and stick down the smaller onlays to make up the pattern of the outfit material of the horses and the knights.

Lots and lots of tiny onlays later.....

...the glueing was done and they were stuck down in place. I cut out three different sizes with the smallest glued at the top and the largest at the bottom.

And finally the onlays for Vienne were added to the spine.

The leather could then be pared. Firstly the edges were first run through a Brockman down to 0.4mm and then the “step” was taken off using a French paring knife. The main body of the leather was then back-pared using the knife, ensuring I vacuumed away the leather dust at regular intervals so as not to get any trapped under the leather leading to thinner patches being pared in the wrong places.

The joints of the leather where the boards were to hinge were sanded over a rounded edge to remove some of the thickness. It was then further pared in these areas when flat with my French paring knife to graduate the thickness.

I find it quite satisfying when you start to see a sort of “halo” image from the front coming through on the reverse of the leather in amongst all of the leather dust - this was the final result!

Along with my little “helper”, Winnie, the embroidery of the leather then commenced. I try and work on the outlines first and then build up the detail second, working through colour by colour. In order to access the part of the leather that I am embroidering I coil up the leather and fix it into a tube with bulldog clips at each end. The leather is too thick to use an embroidery hoop with but I find this works well and makes it more manageable.

Further to how I did the shield on the sample board I added French knots to the cross-hatching on the book cover to add a bit more textural detail. One of the main reasons I do a sample board is to help to visualise what the book is going to look like and I often embellish the actual book leather further than than of the board.

French knots and linear stitches were also added to the diamonds on horse number one.

Yet again, the back shows the random nature of the stitches in comparison to the front - how the thread passed its way around in order to create the cover detail. This will be forever concealed once the leather is on the binding...

It is always a satisfying feeling to have finished the embroidery but then a slight feeling of trepidation steps in having to get it onto the binding!

The completed embroidery on the front:

The completed embroidery on the back:

The book was then covered with the leather - definitely a stage of the process when I made sure the baby was elsewhere so as not to be disturbed during this crucial time! I dampened the front of the leather using a water spray before pasting out the back three times with paste. After covering I waited for it to dry for a good 24 hours before putting the leather joints down.

I then moved onto the tooling of the binding. The castle outline was first blind-tooled with pallets before filling in the lines with carbon. I used hand-made finishing tools to blind tool some texture beneath the horses and knights. These hand-tools often make an appearance in my bindings and have been a very useful little set to have made.

I was very pleased with how this tooling worked out, adding a visual difference to the bottom half of the leather, as shown in detail below.

A small amount of Moon Gold was also tooled onto the fleur-de-lis of the Noble Knight Paris’ horse.

And then the book was held in a finishing press in order to tool the spine.

I had visions of the box of this binding ahead of working on it. A number of years ago I bought some planks of ebony, I think they were actually being sold for instrument making. I thought that the rich, dark colour of the ebony would work really well as the container of this binding so dug it out. The planks I had weren’t quite wide enough to make a solid lid so the panels were “book-matched”:

“Bookmatching is the practice of matching two (or more) wood or stone surfaces, so that two adjoining surfaces mirror each other, giving the impression of an opened book. As applied to wood, bookmatching is usually done with veneer (produced in one of several ways), but can also be done with solid wood”. Wikipedia

I wanted to carry over the fleur-de-lis pattern from the cover design onto the box and decided a good way of doing this would be to get a series of these laser-cut. I know a wonderful jeweller called Emily Kidson who uses Formica laminate in her work. She gave me some pieces a while back to try out and this seemed a perfect opportunity to have a go with it. I also had some wood veneers in my drawers so had some cut in this too.

I was really pleased with how the laminate fleur-de-lis looked when I got them back and set about working on how to place them on the box lid.

I also wanted to include one gold-plated fleur-de-lis so pierced the same shape from brass sheet. I then soldered some posts to the back of it so it could be physically fixed into the box lid.

As well as the fleur-de-lis I want the jousting poles of the knights to be made from metal. I rounded the ends of some brass rod with a file, then removed the file marks with wet-and-dry paper before cutting the rod down. I then soldered these ends onto some posts - the smaller of the three circles was for the sample board.

I then had all these metal pieces polished and plated with 2 microns of gold.

The ebony was finished with Danish Oil and then a layer of bees wax. Under where each of the fleur-de-lis were to be placed on the lid I drilled some holes and pushed through brass pins.

The heads of which were wound with a length of thread to add some detail with the ends of the threads being glued in place inside the lid.

Because the box had been oiled and waxed, I needed to abrade behind where they were due to be stuck down in order for the glue to have something to bind to. I cut out a paper template of the fleur-de-lis and used this through which to score the wood with the end of a scalpel blade.

The laminate fleur-de-lis could then be stuck down with PVA, a few at a time, and a weight placed on top of the whilst the glue dried.

As a change from shop-bought catches, for this particular box I wanted to add an additional element in the form of a jousting stick to act as a clasp. I first covered some thin brass tube with Japanese paper using Lascaux Acrylic Adhesive. This glue is extremely elastic with the dry film remaining permanently tacky. It is great for adhering paper to non-porous surfaces such as metal so was perfect for the job.

Once there was a layer of Japanese paper adhered to the brass I had a suitable surface upon which to stick a leather layer to it. I first wound a strip of turquoise leather along the length with PVA and then stuck a thinner strip of purple leather on top of this around the join along the whole length.

I stuck a bead on the tail end and had the “handle” end machined to my dimensions. Each of these two ends had a pin attached to it that was glued inside the brass rod. The jousting stick then had to have an tubular attachment made to be fixed to the box for it to feed through and close the container.

This was made by soldering some flat sheet to some brass tube, the inner diameter of which fitted the end of the turned brass jousting pole handle. This was then cut in two and one half of each drilled and pinned into a chiselled groove on the top/bottom of the box. When the lid was closed they married up and the jousting pole could be slid through it therefore holding the box closed. A second tube of the same specification was added a bit further down for the beaded end of the pole to sit in. These pieces were also covered in thin leather.

The box was hinged and then lined with felt, mainly to protect the book, but also to conceal the pins and thread that were visible inside the lid of the box.

I have now made it common practice to order each of my bindings and accompanying wooden boxes a conservation grade box to be housed in. I order these from the Bodliean Library and label them so they can be identified on a book shelf. The letters for this outer box were cut from the title panel for the ebony box, therefore the offcuts weren’t wasted.

And so comes to an end the making of this binding! But not to the work surrounding it as I had to photograph and catalogue the book for my website.

I have a new website in the making at present by my husband George therefore this will be one of the last to appear on my existing site. With that however comes a lot of work as I assess what from my old site makes the cut to the new one.

I will also be amalgamating this blog onto it so I no longer have so many different platforms to publish things on! I will however have a bit of a cross over where my posts will appear simultaneously on both for a while until the change happens for good.

I will leave you with a few select photos of the final piece in all it’s glory, for more please visit my website.

FRONT COVER:

ENDPAPERS AND DOUBLURES

SPINE DETAIL OF VIENNE:

COVER DETAIL:

BOOK IN BOX:

On an end note, if you are interested in making your own “sample board” I am due to teach a class for the DB/SoB joint workshops in February next year in the beautiful Bradford-on-Avon, details can be found on both the DB and SoB websites over the coming weeks.

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georgiabread · 7 years

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confused

summary: dan loves girls. right?

- a little story about learning to accept yourself.

word count: 2.9k

trigger warnings: a few homophobic slurs and some mild anxiety

a/n: i feel like there's a bit of gender stereotyping in here, but i couldn't really avoid it idk

Dan loves girls.

He loves the way their hair tumbles over their shoulders like silky waterfalls. He loves the way their dainty fingers fit tightly in his own. He loves it when they laugh, tinkle-y and soft as wisps of cloud. He loves how tight-fitting jeans accentuate their thighs, and low cut shirts expose their collarbones and cleavage. He loves the lipstick stains that pepper his neck. He loves the finely manicured nails scraping gently over his skin.

He loves girls.

When his girlfriend presses him against the lockers in between classes and her breasts crowd his own chest, his lust and yearning spiral out of control. When his parents are out and she grinds into his quickly-forming bulge that night, he bites down eagerly on her bottom lip and lets out a soft moan.

Girls are gorgeous. Mascara makes their eyes pop, his heart flutters when they grin with their teeth, their own strength makes them as admirable as ever. Dan can still remember his first crush – a freckled, mousy-haired girl by the name of Liddy. Even though they were both eight at the time, her hazel eyes intrigued him and his stomach hopped on a rollercoaster whenever she spoke to him. Sitting opposite each other in class in Year 3, a friendship was quickly formed through a shared tin of colouring pencils and a common adoration for one specific picture book. Liddy wanted to swing on the swing sets with him, talk about her annoying older siblings and have play-dates with him every weekend.

Dan just wanted to hold her hand. The only times she let him occurred when the class had to walk in two straight lines, “holding your partner’s hand very, very tightly!” as Miss Blair would say.

Every other time, Liddy would tell him with an endearing laugh, “I don’t want boy germs! That’s gross.” She never meant it, but she also never failed to sink Dan’s naïve little heart.

Liddy moved away in Year 5. On the first day when she wasn’t sitting across from him like she usually did, or begging him to play tag once they’d finished morning tea, Dan got home and cried into his mother’s shoulder.

Dan loves girls. He’s loved them since he knew how to love them. So he’s confused when, 17 years old and sitting quietly at his friends’ table during lunch, he finds he can’t tear his eyes away from the lips of his best friend Asher.

Asher. A boy.

He doesn’t know what Asher’s talking about. All he knows is that staring at the boy’s lips makes a spark burst within his heart – a spark normally reserved for girls only. And it terrifies him.

Dan has a girlfriend. Dan loves his girlfriend. Dan loves kissing his girlfriend.

So why does he want to kiss Asher? Asher, with the painful dad jokes and the obsession with vomit-inducing country music and the blonde fringe that flops messily over his face, the fringe Dan would love to brush away so he can see his pretty blue eyes better – shit.

He doesn’t know what’s happening to him.

Dan knows about gay people. He knows one or two personally. His uncle is currently seeing another man. But Dan’s not gay. He can’t be gay. Not when he loves staring at his girlfriend's boobs and texting her heart emoticons until 1 am.

Dan decides that he’s fucked up. He’s broken. Something’s wrong with him. And he doesn’t tell anyone about it.

Months rattle by, filled to the brim with exams and friendship dramas and any other difficulties you can think of. And Dan never stops thinking about boys – in that way. He suppresses it. God, he tries so hard to suppress it. He even yanks open his grandmother’s Bible at one point to see what the supposed gay-hater has to say about all this. He doesn’t find anything useful.

But it isn't just Asher he stares at. His gaze lingers on the features of other boys – dark gentle eyes, wavy hair, other kissable lips – and he doesn’t know what do with himself and his hormones when he’s stood in a locker room surrounded by muscular, bare-chested boys. And it overwhelms him.

During one of his familiar 3 am Wikipedia odysseys, Dan is reminded of his identity crisis and worries for a moment before clicking off the page about the Battle of Sedan in 1870. He opens up the search bar on his phone.

I like girls and boys, he types with quivering thumbs.

Multiple websites and forums slide onto his screen. Dan considers them, before tapping one. Nearly an hour later and he’s managed to find satisfaction in the information he’s gathered. So far, his feelings suggest he’s bisexual – attracted to males and females. Or he could be pansexual, but he doesn’t really understand that one, so he discards it for the moment.

“Bisexual.” Dan whispers it into the pitch black shadows of his bedroom, the only things willing to listen. It sounds…odd on his tongue. He’s never considered himself something other than straight, so he’s not sure how he feels about being something else. He’s not even sure if he is something else.

Dan isn’t willing to accept it. No fucking way. He can’t be anything other than straight because…what if his parents find out? What if his friends find out? What if he gets bullied just for…staring at a guy too long or…being a complete weirdo by taking a guy’s hand or something? Dan’s anxieties suffocate him, and he fumbles to load up YouTube – a popular escape of his when everything becomes too much to handle.

All the vloggers he’s subscribed to – none of them have uploaded anything. Goddammit, where’s the new content? Dan wonders bitterly. Just when I really need you guys, you’re not there.

Okay, he might sound a little overdramatic. But YouTube is his counselling session and the YouTubers are his therapists. He’ll never tell his parents how much he needs a real one. They don’t have the money anyway.

In desperation, Dan clicks the first thing in his recommendations without even looking at the thumbnail. After four excruciating seconds of buffering, a face pops up on the screen. And not just any face. Dan’s stomach does that flippy-over thing again because of it. Shit, he needs to control that.

“Howdy folks, so this week I haven’t been on the internet like hardly at all, because I’ve been outside absorbing radiation into my face,” a pale-skinned, ebony-haired boy explains immediately to the camera.

Dan snorts a little at his words, partly listening and partly lost in his bright cerulean eyes. His eyes wander to his lips, his shoulders as they fill out a yellow-and-black check shirt, the light dusting of chest hair peering out from an open collar. He learns that the guy's name is Phil – or AmazingPhil – he tends to attract weird people/situations, and he’s a genius when it comes to editing. How does he even get those pictures to move across the screen? Dan asks himself incredulously.

When the video ends, Dan can’t help but feel a little disappointed. He tells himself it’s not because he misses looking at AmazingPhil’s face. Then his eyes drop to the subscriber count – over 6000 people watch his videos. Dan shakes his head in disbelief, hits subscribe and enters his channel to find a new video. (Just to see if this guy is really worth his time, Dan tries to convince himself).

Dan loves boys.

He loves staring when shirts cling to their muscular frames. He loves listening to their voices, low and sultry with the occasional endearing voice crack. He loves it when they push back their hair and expose their whole face. He loves the strong curves of their jaw, the broad shoulders, the way their Adam’s apple dances when they swallow. He loves how strong their arms feel beneath his hands. He loves how protected his fingers are when they’re curled in those of another boy.

He loves boys. But he hasn’t entirely accepted it yet.

Concealing his feelings is harder than he expected. Hiding spontaneous erections, losing himself in a boy’s eyes, relentlessly reassuring his girlfriend that he still loves her – those are just some of the difficulties he faces. He joins forums and talks about what he’s going through. He tries imagining himself in a relationship with a boy, just to see if he’d really want it. He does.

Dan's girlfriend is a bit of a challenge. He does love her, but this sexuality crisis chucks a wall between them and Dan is petrified. What if she finds out? What if she thinks he's gay and ditches him? What if she tells the whole school, and the story spreads and people call him faggot and queer and – god forbid – his parents find out?

It isn’t his girlfriend who tells the whole school.

The day after a blurry house party, some guy he’s never spoken to jogs up to him and asks, “Is it true you hooked up with Lucas last night?”

Dan’s stomach plummets. All he remembers from the party is dancing bodies, some kind of fight between two dickheads, and downing an unhealthy amount of alcohol before flirting with a dark-haired guy – oh. Oh.

Lucas. The boy in his biology class he may or may not have fantasised about. Dan blinks and all of a sudden hazy memories flash through his brain. He sees Lucas pressed against a wall, feverishly sticking his tongue down Dan's throat and…Dan loves it. He kisses the boy with a fierce intensity, fingers trailing up his arms and under his shirt and through his hair, and it feels so right. Moments later Lucas takes his hand and fumbles with the door handle of the closest bedroom.

Dan squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t remember anything else after that. Except a feeling of ecstasy. But he knows he didn’t sleep with Lucas – his ass doesn’t hurt and he’s pretty sure an experience like that would be stuck in his mind for all eternity.

So…a blowjob. Or something like that. Fuck.

Everyone’s talking about it. The hushed voices intensify when Dan passes Lucas in the hallway; the boy’s eyes are trained to the old lino tiles and his face is flushed red. Dan wants to apologise. But Lucas avoids him at all costs.

Dan's girlfriend breaks it off as the school days ends. She snarls at him with spite behind her eyes in the hallway and calls him a worthless fag. The words tear Dan's heart to pieces.

That night, tears clouding his vision and thoughts caught up in a hurricane, he opens YouTube again and struggles to find AmazingPhil’s channel. By now he’s been subscribed for a few months, and he just can’t get enough of the dark-haired boy. Not only does he take Dan’s breath away, but his fears and anguish as well. Phil’s channel is a safe haven, and Dan can’t get enough.

After ten videos, he decides to open up Twitter again and loads his hundredth tweet to Phil, clinging to the frail hope that one day the guy will reply. He doesn’t expect to receive one that very night.

haha ^.^ thank you & I think we’d be good friends :) @danhowell

Dan’s heart stutters. Stops. Restarts. He doesn’t even remember what he said first. His jaw hangs slack as he receives the notification and his eyes scan once, twice, a billion times over the small tweet. He favourites it, before rolling over and screaming into his pillow.

AmazingPhil just replied to him. Phil Lester, a god – out of everyone, he noticed him. Dan looks back at his phone, and now his hands are trembling and he wants to cry for a different reason.

For the first time in a long time, Dan falls asleep happy.

Dan loves girls and boys.

He loves the way they laugh, giggling, snorting or letting out obnoxious guffaws. He loves the shape of their faces and how they look when they smile. He loves the feeling of their lips pressed to his skin, whether gentle or rough. He loves noticing details about them – the crinkles behind their eyes, the freckles on their nose, the bitten nails, the curve of their hips. He loves holding their hand or running his fingers through their hair or tying their shoes for them.

He loves girls and boys. And he’s almost comfortable with that.

But Dan loves one boy specifically. He currently has his head resting on this boy’s chest, his curly hair brushing against this boy’s neck as he lays between his legs. The boy’s arms are encircling his waist and playing with his fingers. A movie is running on the old TV, but Dan can barely pay attention to it.

He loves Phil. It’s an unalterable fact. He’s loved Phil since he discovered his videos. But meeting him for the first time, sinking into his arms at the train station, clinging to his hand, spending the day with him in Manchester…Dan has fallen in love with him.

He doesn’t know if Phil loves him back.

Dan’s eyes flutter closed for a moment, and he allows himself to focus on Phil’s chest as it rises and falls beneath him, Phil’s fingertips dipping and swirling over his hands, Phil’s cheek resting partially atop his head. He is surrounded by Phil. And he loves it.

But Phil…Phil won’t want to be with him. Dan is a disaster of a human being, he’s worthless and immature and his body is just disgusting and…he doesn’t even know if Phil likes boys. And besides, why would Phil – who’s four years older than him and has experienced so much more – ever love him in that way?

Dan hasn’t kissed a boy since the Lucas incident. He’s not entirely sure he’ll be very good at kissing Phil.

The movie comes to an end, sooner than expected, and Dan and Phil are still cuddled on the green and blue duvet, watching the credits roll by. They lie there in peaceful silence for a few moments before Phil breaks it.

“I don’t want you to go home,” he mumbles shyly into Dan’s hair.

Dan isn’t expecting those words, and his stomach somersaults when he hears them. Warmth quickly blooms on his cheeks, and yet his heart breaks at the sorrow weighing upon Phil’s voice. Phil shouldn’t be sad. Phil doesn’t deserve to be sad.

Nerves coursing through his veins, Dan turns in Phil’s lap and stares up at him, placing one hand on his chest to remain steady. He waits until Phil's electric blue eyes meet his dark ones and draws a small breath. "You are my home," he tells him sincerely.

And then Phil does the last thing he expects. There’s fingers on his cheek and a warm look in Phil’s eyes, and they’re kissing.

Dan takes a second to register what’s happening – Phil’s lips are soft like cushions pressing gently against his own, almost afraid that Dan will break. And then Dan kisses back, deepening it, a passionate affirmation that he wants this, god he wants this so bad. Phil tastes like winter, dew-drops and the galaxy, and he smells like safety and scented candles as his fingers tangle in Dan’s hair. They’re close, so close, and Phil is tugging Dan forward, swiping his tongue over his bottom lip and Dan almost opens his mouth to allow entrance when he realises –

He’s kissing a boy for the second time in his life. He loves it. He’s hooked on Phil, but it’s overwhelming him.

Dan accidentally lets out a muffled grunt and pulls away, winding his arms around Phil’s neck as he pauses. His eyes fall shut. He desperately fills his lungs, breathless after the kiss. He can feel Phil’s concerned gaze without even looking at him.

“Dan…” Phil murmurs anxiously. “Are you alright? Did you…not want this?”

Immediately shaking his head, Dan lifts his head and meets Phil’s fearful eyes. “No, no, I do…I do want this,” he says quietly, reassuring him with a gentle peck on the lips. “It’s just…it’s been a while since I kissed a boy, and I’m still…adjusting to my sexuality, I guess. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Phil sighs softly and brushes his fringe out of his eyes, before pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. “You don’t need to apologise for anything. I’m sorry, for rushing you and pressuring you,” he tells him.

“But…but wouldn’t you want someone who actually knows their own identity? I’m so fucked up, Phil, I can’t even kiss you properly,” Dan says, averting his eyes to his lap.

“Hey.” There’s pressure on his jaw as Phil gently lifts his head up. Dan struggles not to look at him until Phil brushes his thumb over the corner of his lip. “I’ll wait for you – for as long as you need,” Phil says. “And for the record, that’s one of the best kisses I’ve ever had.”

Red spreads across Dan’s cheeks and he leans forward, hiding his smile in Phil’s shoulder. “I think I’m in love with you,” he blurts into the boy’s t-shirt, the words making it past his lips before he can even register them.

But Phil doesn’t reject him. Instead, he seems to sigh in relief and plants a lingering kiss on the top of Dan’s head. “Thank god. I was thinking the same thing.”

Dan loves girls and boys. And that’s okay.

phanfics

#phan #phanfiction #dan and phil #phan fluff #phan angst #sexuality crisis #homophobic slurs #anxiety #this is lowkey me expressing my emotions #i love this tho i'm proud of it

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jaclynbross1 · 7 years

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{DIY} Fitting a Karndean Loose Lay Floor

'Karndean'; the word I've heard a lot around the internet lately - everyone's talking about it. I'd heard of Karndean before I even knew what the hell it was (flooring!), what it looked like, or what it felt like. So when I was offered the chance to give a test, well obviously I was like YES, I need to see what the hell all this fuss is about and what makes it so special.

What is Karndean?

Karndean is a type of floor covering. It's basically a vinyl floor - but no, not the tacky peel-and-stick kind you might find in PoundStretcher. It's a luxury vinyl floor - a kind of mid-way product, almost in-between Laminate and Lino. It's flexible, but comes in a 'plank' form, it's sound reducing, unlike the hardness of solid floors and it's also warmer underfoot. It's a great imitation product to both wood and stone and has its own additional benefits that can also make it a more favourable and smarter choice to the real stuff - Easy to clean, waterproof and maintenance-free, just to name a few!

How 'Loose Lay' Works

Karndean have a few different types of flooring, but the one I'm trying out is their loose lay floor. And loose lay - is exactly as the name suggests. You lay it loose. No need for glue, no nails, no special adhesive, no ugly trim around the perimeter of the room, nope - you just lay it on the floor and it stays there. By the power of friction and gravity! There's not even any interlocking connections between the boards. It means you spend less on materials, it takes less time to fit and you don't even need to removing skirting boards. AND, even better - you don't have to take up the whole floor just to get one plank out, if boards ever get damaged (although you do need a window sucker to actually get the board OUT). The idea is pretty genius and all made possible by its super friction anti-slip backing (shown below). It really has zero movement and it's fuss-fee easy installation is one of the reasons it's a much loved product.

How to Fit

So I'm going to write a quick little tutorial on how we've fitted our new Karndean floor, DIY style. The idea, is that in order for Karndean to work, you need a nice tight fit throughout every edge of the perimeter of the room. You don't need to remove skirting boards and if you do, you'll actually create more work for yourself as you'll have to ensure a tight fit against uneven plaster/bricks. Being able to get a tight fit means you need to be able to scribe cuts pretty well. Scribing a floor is one of the easiest types of scribing, so even if you've never done it before - it's a pretty good place to start!

For an EXCELLENT video tutorial on laying Loose Lay Karndean, as well as scribing, I thoroughly recommend watching this one from SkillBuilder on YouTube.

Things You Will Need:

Sharp Stanley Knife (Multiple blades help!)

Long Ruler/Something with a Straight Edge

Tape Measure, possibly

Yep, that's IT.

So here's a couple of photos of the area in which we'll be using Karndean - a strange little inner porch/hallway area. We've done nothing to this part of the house since moving in 3+ years ago and that lino is... well, disgusting. As are the orange walls!

Step 1 - Base Preparation

So Karndean Loose Lay flooring only works if the base beneath it is completely level and flat. That means no protruding nails, no dodgy patched concrete, no lumps, bumps, floorboard ridges, dust, dirt - you're getting the picture? If you have a solid floor (concrete, tiles etc) and it's not very even, you'll want to lay some self-levelling compound over the top. If like us, you have floorboards you'll probably want to lay a sheet of hardboard over the top. We very luckily already had hardboard in the area where we're laying, but we made sure to properly check all the nails had been sunken into the board and we also added some cloth tape over the joins to make it seamless.

We also added a new threshold bar between the inner-porch and rest of the hallway. This will give the Karndean floor something to butt up to where the floor coverings change and it will also allow for a nice floor transition between the rooms too. This is just a slither of wood (same thickness of the Karndean floor) which we've cut to size and nailed into place. Oh and don't worry - that carpet is set for the bin one day!!

Step 2 - Laying Karndean

As shown by the 'tools required' - there really isn't that much involved when it comes to laying Karndean flooring. For the most part, you just lay the planks butted up against once another by hand, no tools, no major bashing or hammering involved to get the boards together (staring at you, laminate!) - just lay one, lay another, lay another - you can get 95% of the room done in literally minutes! The only thing you need just to make sure of, is that each plank is properly butted up against the next. This creates the watertight seal and also ensures the boards aren't going to move.

The trickiest part of fitting Karndean, is where you meet the skirting board and need to scribe the cuts to get a nice tight fit. As I said, Karndean actually works best when it's butted up against the skirting board rather than underneath it - as this is what helps prevent movement. So unlike laminate or wood floors, where you can be a bit sloppy around the edges because they'll be hidden - you do need to take your time here. However, the time you save in wrestling skirting boards off the wall, as well as patching said wall - makes it pretty beneficial.

In order to scribe a cut, you need to translate the angles of the wall onto the board you need to cut. The best way to do this is to lay a board on-top of the closest board to the skirting and then push a second board up against the skirting. Using that as a guide you can then mark-up that cut onto the first board, which will be the board you'll cut. I feel like this is suuuuper awkward to explain, so again I recommend this video to see it in action.

Step 3 - Cutting Karndean

Karndean is cut with just a knife, however you don't slice all the way through the board in one cut, the process is very similar to how you would cut plasterboard. The idea is that you score a nice crisp line along the top of the board and then you snap the board along the scored line - just like you would with plasterboard - and then you finish the cut off by cutting the rest along the back of the board.

It's super easy to do, although you do need to have fairly good knife skills to give an evenly scored line. When cutting our boards, we also made sure to cut up to the line, rather than taking the line off. The snugger the fit, the better!

Tricky Bits

So the one tricky bit we have to deal with, was cutting around the door frame/architrave. This is obviously a very intricate area and trying to cut a curved sharp and well scribed cut into a material that was quite leathery was just not working for us. We really wanted it to look perfect and not sloppy, so we ended up cutting a little bit of the architrave out with the worx so we could slot the karndean underneath instead. Corner cuts were generally fine - just any odd shapes are a little iffy, so we took the short cut.

For large rooms, Karndean do suggest using a tackifier around the perimeter and every so-many cm into the room as well - this just adds a bit of extra stickiness, but it doesn't permanently hold the planks in place. You can read their official installation guide here.

Final Look

So this is the final result and what our little inner hallway porch now looks like. You can see I've given the room a VERY quick coat of white paint over that grotty wallpaper. But don't worry - we will be giving it a proper makeover eventually! I think the new Karndean floor is absolutely fab - and needless to say, so so much better than what was here before. It's completely waterproof, so great for use in a mucky hallway and will be MUCH easier to clean over wood. And despite it not being real wood, it does looks and feel really very realistic too. I should also mention this is the 'Providence' Style (LLP108) floor, which is based on North American White Oak - fancy!

General Thoughts

Grant actually laid this whole floor himself (yes, I'm the blogger but y'know, small spaces and that 😉) but he was super impressed with how easy it was to do. Other than re-doing the cuts around the architrave, the floor took no more than a few hours to lay. And that involved the prep-work and a few tea breaks as well! So it was super quick to fit; no sawdust, mess, no noise(!) and as a product to DIY yourselves, it definitely gets the thumbs up from us! It's literally just a no-nonsense product.

As an actual floor covering, we also really like it too. We never wanted to have floorboards in this little space as keeping them clean in a high traffic (dirty shoes!) area is a definite losing battle! Karndean is much more practical, being fully waterproof and maintenance free. It also doesn't have any creaking sound, which is fab for us considering we both work nightshifts and often creep into the house at weird times in the night! And it's also far more durable - definitely need this one when we're still renovating!

Where to Buy & Costs

We received this Karndean from AA flooring, who stock all types and styles of Karndean and they're also the cheapest online stockist for Karndean as well. In terms of price, I definitely wouldn't be putting Karndean into the category of 'cheap' - it is, after all a luxury floor covering. However comparative to real wood, it is a little cheaper and it has many more benefits that often make it a more favourable choice. There are many different flooring designs for Karndean, but you can expect to pay between £28-£42 per m2, dependant on style.

If we were looking to buy this product, it would probably be out of our budgets for a large sized room - however if you do have the budget to buy, then I would definitely recommend checking Karndean out as a worthwhile contender!

I'd love to know what you think to our new floor. Have you given Karndean a try? Are you looking to DIY-install?

*I received Karndean for the purpose of this review. All words, thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands who support this blog!

from Tips For Basements http://www.kezzabeth.co.uk/2017/10/diy-fitting-karndean-loose-lay-floor.html

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ellenartpaige · 7 years

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On Tuesday the 7th of February I attended a lecture presented by James entitled ‘Washing with the Gods’ that is based on exploring the magic involved with anointing statues, watering idols, and bathing with Magic Soap.

The three key words/statements I have come away with from the lecture is:

The soaps presented a rich and colourful story.

Witchcraft.

Washing to appease the gods.

Favourite three key things I learnt from the lecture:

People believe in the advertising (What it says it can do for you).

How the soap is a standard soap inside the box.

The vast amount of ideas that stem from what people think people want.

James brought in his own Magic Soap collection that he has discovered and purchased on his various journeys in search for inspiration for his passion for Magical Objects.

I beleive this one is to keep away bad spiritual entities.

I believe this one has something to do with nature or perhaps helps you find a bird in otherwords woman.

This one is my favourite one for its pastel aesthetic and context of the idea of how the soap will magically bring you money, a great car and a great house.

This soap is a humerous one that suggests that it will magically get your husband to pull his weight around the house with helping with housework.

This one is lovely with the picture of the doll that represents something like the God of plenty which suggests that it will bring you plentiful objects of your wishing.

The activity for the day was to then work on my own design for a Magic Soap box to cast a power of my choosing on its user. I really felt excited about this project as it was my first real chance to work on something as commercial as a soap box.

These are the designs that I came up with. These ideas are based on what I feel would really help people with depression.

I chose to focus on this design to work with after obtaining some useful responses from my surrounding classmates.

This soap casts the power to connect the user to nature and to draw them closer to it to result in encouraging them to get out and feel the effects that spending time surrounded by nature can have on you.

To carve into a standard cheap soap that I purchased from a local TESCO. I used tools such as a mechanical pencil and lino cutting tools. I used the lino cutting tool to dig out the bigger areas and the pencil to engrave the narrow detailed elements. The carving of the soap was a delightful new experience, the soap itself has a greasy texture to it was only slightly unpleasant and the process created quite the mess. Overall it was a lovely soft and easy material to engrave my design onto and I would use it again.

The next idea I had was to use screen printing as a method for producing my image for my soap box to give a solid and professional approach. Screen printing is something that I am growingly interested in. Engrained in my memory I remember seeing this excellent quality work made from a printing process that I believe maybe screen print or lino created by an illustration student named Thomas Rolfe from the university quite some time ago at the big final year exhibition. His work stood out to me the most. I just think the potential to tell a story in this way has been produced here to such an exceptional standard that really captivates me in this particularly graphic result.

I will be enquiring about this previous student soon to see what more I can find out about his process and I also have his contact information from his website that I can try.

Thomas Rolfe (Illustrator and Printmaker) – Cardiff Met Student. Source: http://www.tomrolfe.com/

I took up the chance Wednesday the 8th of February to refresh my memory on the process of creating a screen print led by Tom Martin. I knew already from my previous experience with learning how to screen print just how fun and rewarding it is so I was keen to take up this opportunity once more and using my design to work with.

Here are some development photos that I captured throughout various stages of the screen printing process that I carried out on the 8th and 15th of February.

I tested some colour ideas beside the piece to get a sense of direction as to what colour I wanted to use for the next layer of my design.

The paint solutions I found best to mix on a piece of scrap cardboard instead of the plastic cups provided that I found quite restrictive. The paint that I intend to use is mixed with 50% of the white solution that looks like PVA that is right next to the paint area in the workshop.

This is an example of the handy transparent film I used to show me exactly what location on the page the print would appear so that I was easily able to position it exactly to where I wanted it to print.

This image shows my drawing on the slightly matt side of the transfer film that I drew on facing up against the direct surface of my screen. I made sure to give them quite a bit of room from eachother and also from the edge of the screen border to avoid any paint getting in places where it shouldn’t. This is all laid on the expolsure unit wiith the wire available to be rested inside the frame of the screen.

This work was exposed for one minute then jet washed on a medium setting to remove the parts of the emulsion that is weakened from the exposure. It then needed drying off either placed against the radiator or put on the BOTTOM shelf of the drying cabinet. Once dry after about 20 minutes it is ready for a further minute in the exposure unit and then it is ready to be used for screen printing.

Here are my final results presenting my ideas through experimentations with different colours and thickness of the layer of paint:

Here they all are individually:

What happened with this one is that the clamp holding my screen in place unknowingly became loose and therefore it printed my image in the wrong location. I have learnt that it is always good to run a test print first before it goes onto the final destination.

The colour choice that I have gone with for these prints are pastel colours so that they are light and produce a positive aura. The colours are specifically inspired by nature include the colours from water, grass, trees and flowers to empower the message of a desire for nature through a dreamy image to draw the audience in. My favourite part of the printing process has to be using the jet wash to reveal the exposed image and also the printing part when I run that squeegee down my screen to create the print on the paper. I only find the preparation of the screen printing process quite a demanding one but the print I know can definitely pay off at the end of it. The things that I have learnt from screen printing is that it is always great to print duplicates of the work in case things go wrong and also to allow more room for experimentation. Usually there is paint left over quite often when I screen print so I think it’s a good idea to use it up on just making duplicates of the work to have more to play with. I have also learnt from a mistake that its good print it first onto a scrap piece of paper before it goes onto the final piece just in case of any issues with the screens position that may have been moved by accident. This is mainly a problem that I would come across on the basic clamp press table in the small print workshop unlike the very secure holding quadruple clamps on the presses in the bigger print workshop.

Later that day on the 15th of February I selected my best print screen to be used on my magic soap box using the feedback I had received from my parents who I visited that night.

The selected image to use for the magic soap box:

My parents believed this was the strongest image that I had out of my collection screen print outcomes.

I decided to go with it and work with my dad to put the scanned print onto Adobe Publisher in the right position of the magic soap box template provided to me by James that I also scanned into the computer.

I started with this arrangement onto the template:

Then when it came to printing my soap box I made sure to remove the template image in the background so that the black lines of the template would not appear on my box.

I then as suggested by my dad held the A4 print out of the image above with the template in front of it to the light to position it correctly with the template. I then carefully used a ruler and a bone folder to create creases into the card that I printed my image out onto for a stronger structure so that I can see where I neet to cut and fold my work further. I found that it needed a second go over with the bone folder for the areas that needed folding after I had removed the template from the image layer.

After carefully gluing the tabs of the box together in the right places I achieved a complete magic soap box.

I had such a good time with revisiting screen printing and I am happy with my outcome. I can still see slight editorial adjustments that I would amend to the illustration itself to give it some more space but overall I feel this turned out pretty close to being professional standard. To improve it further I would also try out a shinier material for the box and image aswell as a tidier result to the carving of the soap. I would have also used a pure white soap instead, I feel this would work better with the white of the box and the effects of pure white as I know can really be mind clearing just like the effects from spending some quality time in nature.

Magic Soap On Tuesday the 7th of February I attended a lecture presented by James entitled 'Washing with the Gods' that is based on exploring the magic involved with anointing statues, watering idols, and bathing with Magic Soap.

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