Gilding!

I helped run Mimir's Well this last weekend, and it went really well, for a first time. One of my duties was to recruit teachers, and I begged and pleaded well enough that **4** Scribal Arts teachers came from Aethelmearc to share their wisdom with us, and one of them taught GILDING!!!!

Long-time readers may know that trying gilding with real gold has been one of my Challenge goals from the very beginning, and now I have done it! The real loose leaf wasn't all that different from using the fake loose leaf stuff, but the patent gold is on a paper backing which is just WAY easier to work with, although thinner, so you need to put more layers. Gee shucks. ;) (I loved that part!)

The part that I thought was the absolute NEATEST was trying different period sizes or glues, to get the first layer of gold to stick to the paper/vellum/etc - I tried period gesso, fish glue and garlic juice glue (which stank the most). It was AWESOME, and THL Mea the Bold of Aethelmearc, actually included recipes for all of them in her little booklet that she gave us! She even sent us home with our gold scraps to make shell gold with (mix real gold scraps with gum arabic)!

I learned a bucket, and can tick off another big item off my Challenge wishlist. Hurray!!!! No one came to the A&S 50 meeting, but I had so much to do, I was ok with it. Folks know where to find me anyway...

I also put embroidery, spinning, my first lampworking, and a whole bunch of illumination doodles in the exhibition (which I ran, and which went great!)

Now we're gearing up for next year, and the same teacher says she'll come back and teach how to make both period pigments and period gesso! (She even gifted our local scribes, in the form of me, with a box full of vials of period pigments! OOOOOHHH!!! I can't WAIT to try those out with the crew!!!! Mea - you ROCK!!!)