An Unconventional Typewriter Day

Unconventional, because I had the day off! I spent little of the actual day typing as we're entertaining company, and with all due respect to Mr. Sholes, I didn't want to spend it all in front of the keys. I'm looking forward to catching up on everyone's creative endeavors.

As for me, I delved back into colorcasting, this time using crayons on some erasable onionskin that I picked up, thinking that the thinner paper and the special coating (?) might make a more carbon-paper-like surface. In the end, I prepared four sheets with alternating stripes of colors, and then used each to type something "conventional": a few lines of the exploits of the Quick Brown Fox, a thank-you note to Mr. Sholes, a shout out to World Typewriter Day, and the reminder to all Good Men that Now Is The Time.

Scanned and placed inside the letterforms of Richard Polt's Sholes & Glidden font, itself a scanned piece made from the handiwork of a far more famous and literary Clemens...




Only too late did I realize how well the lighter wax would work on darker paper: maybe next year!

Using the thinner paper as a base layer for the wax worked well, and I turned the touch control on the typewriter all the way down to the lightest touch. Lots of punch-outs on the closed letters, as you would expect, so another colorcasting lesson was learned: always use an open-bottom typewriter! My table was covered in colorful, waxy confetti when all was done.