A minor detour

My lady is a part of the Ohio Renaissance Festival family, specifically, she portrays one of the Fiendish Sisters, Fizz Fiendish. As one of three Official Witches of Willy Nilly, she and her “sisters” are responsible for the making of Whiskey in the village. Then they offer a tasting at the Festival and do a show, and accept tips for their efforts. In the age of COVID, they are accepting digital tips (yeah, I know that’s not very 1572, but it is what it is!) and she asked me to prepare a sign for them.

I originally thought I would use wood, but I wasn’t chuffed about going out to *buy* wood, and also, I wanted it to be lightweight. So I thought and dug around a bit, and then I found this faux wood technique on YouTube.

So I got some old fabric bolt spools and cut them up and went to town.

Next was the design of the lettering. There was some back and forth on this. I really wanted some more accurate period typefaces, but My Lady was certain (and I must defer to her expertise) that after six shots of whiskey in under an hour, they were not readable. So I did a little research and found that Jenson Roman was designed for the printing press about a hundred years before the period portrayed in Willy Nilly. I selected an Adobe version of Jenson and created this:

All around, I’m fairly pleased with it. I think if I were to do it again, though, I might try to work with Gator board for longevity.