One Day To Go...

Wow, what a lovely and not at all stressful day. Oh wait I'm thinking of a day that wasn't today.

Laser Cutter:-

Got there just before 8:30 to make the most of my 9-10am slot thinking that I'd be lucky if I even got one of my larger frames cut out. I'd noticed yesturday that the cutter was going round each line more times than it needed to so I checked the settings of the 'mount board' preset and it was actually having 7 passes on each line... Errrrrm, hello unnecessary. I dropped that down to 3 passes and the difference was incredible. Not only did I manage to get my two remaining frames cut out but I also had time to redo the one I had to compromise due to lack of time. WHY DIDN'T I DO THIS EARLIER?!

So, in short, I got my frames cut out.

Business Lecture:-

I'm going to hold my tongue here.

Prep For Exhibition:-

• painted all my frames white to make them an identical match to the box frame.
• bought and attached mirror plates - I definitely think string would have been the choice of a fool.
• bought a plain black frame large enough to house one of my Vogue drawings without me having to cut them down since I haven't decided the exact dimensions of the pages, and cut some black mount board down to size.
• cut my post cards down to size - somebody please appreciate how difficult it is to perfectly centre an image that you CANNOT EVEN SEE. Bloody embossing and it's lack of bloody lines.
• ate lots of food. Pretty sure Paul had a hallucinogenic level of sugar.
• spent quite a while modifying the layout of my 3D frames, it's really hard to stick to my initial plan because you can't visualise it properly when you're working in 2 dimensions. My original layout plan just didn't work when I had the physical frames there in front of me, so I've adapted the fluid diagonal motion of the layout into a movement that starts at the very back and actually works its way out of the box frame.
• constructed the whole thing. Took so long. I had to check and double check everything because I'd spent so much time getting everything ready I really didn't want to go hammering a fucking massive nail in the wrong place and screwing it all up. It was also ridiculously time consuming to try and match the height levels of each layer of screws - since I only had 3 variations of screw height some initiative came into play on my part and I had to build up layers with tiny blocks of foam board glued to screw heads
• try and choose which drawing to put in my collections frame. The 'dash' drawing is so much better in my eyes but I really don't think it has the ability to stand as a single piece - there is no context and it just looks completely random. The 'wonderful' drawing, however, I like comparatively less but because of the hint at the word 'vogue' it will hopefully be much less confusing. I'm still on the fence with this one.. I don't think I'll have a decision until I'm forced to choose at 9:30 tomorrow..
• helped Paul mount some signage for the exhibition tomorrow.

Complete Failure:-

So... yeah the whole embossing of the leather saga.. I visited Vernon St to see if it would actually be possible to leave my cover in the pneumatic press for a prolonged period of time. Turns out it is not. They've never tried it but they can't guarantee the effect the incredible amounts of pressure will have on the press over such a long time and they aren't willing to risk it. Fair enough. But that does leave me in quite a pickle. I can do one of two things:

• stick with the leather covering and leave the current, vaguely embossed image to fully relax out so that the box cover is plain - then emboss a loose sheet of black card to act as a cover sheet inside.
• completely make the whole thing again, scrapping the leather idea and opting for black buckram which we know will hold the embossed image perfectly.

God I hate it when things fail. I got really attached to the idea of a leather bound box, it looks so professional. But with such a large surface area on the cover I literally can't not have anything on there or it will just look amateur as fuck. It really pains me to say this, but buckram it is :(

When I type it out it doesn't sound like a lot but DAMNIT IT WAS GRIM!