Wenlock

Today was supposed to be a good day for doing my rewrites, but that didn't seem to happen. I started the day haring around Cheltenham to get a vital part to fix my motorbike (large silver BMW two-cylinder thing - think of it as a pair of matched greys) not to mention securing a copy of the latest Harry Potter DVD in exchange for a chunk of the Wenlock heir's accumulated allowance.

But the main distraction was sorting out something to wear to a book launch next Friday. The invitation says "sparkly", but my wardrobe doesn't do sparkly, not even a little bit. Clearly it was time to break out the inner Martha Stewart, and create a sparkly T-shirt that was, at least vaguely, me.

I started with Ingres' sketch of Lord Grantham, which is as good an illustration of Lord Alexander Harrow as I can find. With a little messing about on the computer and a great deal more playing around with tracing paper, drafting pens, craft knives and acetate sheets I turned the head and shoulders into a simpler and more striking illustration, in stencil form.

The other design element that I needed was a suitable font for a caption. I went with the Jane Austen font that the nice people at Austenblog alerted me to a while back.

Putting it all together with some glittery fabric paint and a heavy-duty long-sleeved black T-shirt, I came up with this, which, although I say it myself, isn't too bad a result.

As Mrs Wenlock pointed out, if I can't make the novel-writing pay, I could always set up a stall at Camden Market selling glittery T-shirts to Goths with Regency tastes.