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Simple Project
Diary This project will alter a thrift-store find and scrap materials my Lord has discarded into an SCA Ambiance decorated box. [Day 1] [Days 2-5] [Days 6-7] Day 8-10 All that would be left at this point would be writing up the documentation. This last bit is one reason why you do your research first. It also helps if you keep notes about your work as you go along. If you do both these things, writing it all up into a cohesive, short paper shouldn't be too hard. Of course, my experience in writing documentation for SCA projects was largely formed by the Middle Kingdom's A&S Faire system, where rumor has it that you can get a first place score on a pile of sawdust if your documentation is good enough. As someone who did a lot of judging in the Middle Kingdom, let me assure you that this rumor is false. That said, documentation done well always improves the cache of your item. Eventually, I got a hold of a format which works pretty well; I don't think anyone ever scored me at less than 3 on docs once I started using this format. The format is not a guarantee, of course: if your research consisted of looking things up in the encyclopedia and printing out a couple of "how-to" web articles that you didn't evaluate, you are not going to score a 3. What following the format will do is force you to think about the sorts of things that someone looking over your project will be interested in learning. When I did Middle Kingdom A&S Faires, I would always provide a boatload of documentation in addition to the paper, because there was always a judge who wanted to know some esoteric point that I did not include in the paper. However, the truth of the matter is that too much documentation can be as unhelpful as not enough. One of my personal downfalls in documentation was that I'd get so caught up in proving that my materials were period and/or good modern equivalents and that my artistic choices were based on period form that I'd forget to emphasize what I did that was new and different. So my goals for my documentation this time was to keep it reasonable and not get too caught up in talking about the tools.
Here, then, is the set with documentation in the display. Notice that the documentation consists of only one 3-ring binder. The first page summary is slipped into the front pocket, so that passers-by get at least the gist of the documentation without having to open the book. Inside the book, the remainder of the paper, several printouts of intarsia examples, and the project diary for days 1-7. That's all, baby. Lady Sarra Romney helped me to assemble the document book. Note: in the Picture you can also see Lady Sarra's beautifully embroidered favor, Lady Enika's painted hanging, and just a touch of Baroness Alice's heraldic quilt. To get a better look at the entries I was able to photograph, click here. The documentation summary, paper, and bibliography is here. The documentation format is here: {Word} {HTML} {PDF}
So, a brief comparison: we went from this
to the two pretty items seen above, plus the teaching tools: a documentation paper and a project diary. I'd say it's a pretty good haul.
Thanks so much for going along with me!
Questions, comments, suggestions, thoughts? I welcome correspondence at merouda (at) hotmail (dot) com. Use your back button, or {Elyse Boucher} {Arts and Sciences Top} {A&S Heraldry} {Poopie the Pirate} {Help Support This Site} (old link bar, some still active): {Elise Boucher} {Sept Pendray} {Merouda Pendray}
This document created 16 December 2005 |
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