After playing around with brush lettering recently, I wanted to make something to help some friends decorate their new nursery. I asked them what they wanted and they requested the word "Beloved".
My lettering is being screen printed onto t-shirts and baby onesies for sale at EPAmade just in time for Mother's Day! All proceeds go to supporting young mothers in East Palo Alto.
It was really thrilling to see my writing turned into a silk screen to use for printing. I really wanted to help with the printing but alas, could not manage my schedule properly. I love seeing all of the different colors that they used. It's amazing how a design originally done in black can be transformed into such vibrant color!
I had fun helping out a friend with a fun baby gender reveal party for her family. She wanted to make a balloon dart board with each balloon containing a slip of paper saying "Try Again", "It's a Baby!" or "It's a Boy!" She thought having me write the slips of paper in calligraphy would make it seem extra special and I was happy to help (and have the inside scoop on the big reveal). :) Congrats to my friends Katie & Chris!
Check out my latest collaboration with TLMade for Easter! It's so fun seeing the finished product they create after I hand over my lettering. If you want some of your own, you can purchase them here.
I was asked to write the word "Pursuit" to go on the cover of some prayer journals for an upcoming young adult's retreat at my church. While I was writing it over and over, I thought it would be fun to try to make a short video. Making a video with a phone camera is really tricky if you don't have any free hands. I ended up balancing the phone on a box of tissues and had to try to write while peering over the whole thing...not the easiest. Maybe I'll have to devise a better contraption if I want to make videos in the future.
Here's my first attempt. I didn't realize it was off-center at first. The little shakes are me accidentally hitting the tissue box - oops! :)
Here's the rest of the word after I moved it to the center.
Paper: Recollections Cardstock Paper (black)
Ink: Dr. Ph Martin's Pen White
Nib: Brause 66EF
My friends at TLMade asked me to letter the label for their Valentine's Day candle, now on sale here. I've been learning Spencerian script, so it was fun to incorporate a little bit of that into the style of this design.
Merry Christmas to you! For this year's family Christmas card I tried to digitize for the first time and put it over a family picture we took at Lake Tahoe. Since I didn't have Photoshop or Illustrator, my techie husband suggested I try an open sourced software called GIMP. Since I am by no means a graphic designer, it was pretty tricky for me to figure out - thank goodness for youtube tutorials! It took many tries to get it right; I almost gave up. In the end it worked out pretty well, and I even added some Santa hats!
Also, I couldn't decide on one color for envelopes, so I picked three! I wanted to try mixing and writing with gouache, so I used a dark green on light green envelopes and used our new address stamp. I don't know if it's because I bought cheap gouache, but it was really tricky for me to write with. Now I have to buy some nice gouache to find out the answer. This is why they say you should buy good materials even just for practicing! Oh well, the envelopes still looked nice.
I also decided to use white ink on green and red envelopes. I was really digging the green, but there really is something breathtaking about white on red.
Getting these envelopes addressed took a lot longer than I had planned. Our family kept getting sick and it was hard to find extra time when I just didn't want to zone out or take a nap. Can I share some personal thoughts? Ever since I started this calligraphy thing it's been really tempting to want to start my own business. Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley, or maybe it's just our American capitalistic culture, but it's really common for people to ask why I haven't started my own business yet and make some money off of it. It's also easy to feel that if I don't say yes to every opportunity now, I might lose my chance. Of course I take it as a compliment that people think I'm talented enough, but I also started doing calligraphy for the sheer joy of it. Anyway, trying to get these Christmas cards addressed really confirmed to me that as tempting as it is, I am in no place right now to be starting a business. Maybe someday I will, but right now I am up to my exhausted eyeballs taking care of my kids and family and I don't want to get myself into situations where I'm staying up late to fill calligraphy orders when I barely have enough bandwitdth to begin with. It can be hard to be where you are and not rush things, but I'm trusting God that when the timing is right, opportunity can reappear.
Nib: Brause 66EF
Ink: cheap gouache (you don't wanna know), Dr. Ph Martin's Pen White
Envelopes: Paper Source (mint, clover, red)
Once in awhile, a group of girlfriends and I will get together for "My Favorite Things". The general way it works is this:
- Everyone picks one of their favorite things that costs around $10 - $15 and buys three of them.
- We wrap them up. Since pretty lettering is one of my favorite things, I couldn't resist decorating my gift. (see picture above)
- We pick a night and eat dinner together.
- After dinner everyone's name goes into a bowl 3 times.
- We all draw 3 names out of the bowl. Don't pick your own name, and make sure you don't pick the same name twice.
- We go around the circle and each person gives their favorite thing to the 3 people they picked.
- They unwrap the gift as you explain why you love it so much!
This time we decided to liven things up with stories of first kisses, falling in love with our husbands, and other crazy things I will not mention on this blog. At the end of the night, we all leave with the favorite things of 3 other people and a whole lot of laughs and hilarious stories. Its a fun evening I look forward to every time. Actually, I think "My Favorite Things" is becoming one of my favorite things!
Every so often someone asks me what they should do if they want to start doing calligraphy, so I thought I'd make a post to help guide people in the right direction. (You can thank the teacher in me.) Calligraphy is a wonderful hobby because it has a low start-up cost and you don't need a lot of complicated materials to try it out. The tricky thing about calligraphy is navigating what materials to start out with to have success as a beginner and not get discouraged. I've heard that within the first few hours of trying calligraphy, you will know if it's a good hobby for you. I can tell you that I personally was hooked within the first 5 minutes. There is something I find immensely satisfying about creating something beautiful in a relatively short time.
Let's get started...
Materials
When starting out it's important to get the right materials. The type of nib, ink, and paper you use must all come together in perfect harmony if your calligraphy attempts are going to sing. (Like my metaphor? :)) As you gain more practice you can try to mix it up and branch out, but when starting out you really need the right tools. Here are my suggestions:
Nib: Nikko G. Time and time again I have heard that this is the best and easiest nib to start out with. I would agree. You probably only need one or two to start out.
Penholder: If you are right-handed, you should get an oblique holder. If you are left-handed, you should get a straight holder. I like the black plastic Speedball holders.
Ink: Higgins Eternal or Sumi Ink. I think Sumi Ink is the easiest to use, but sometimes it's a little more expensive or hard to find in small bottles if you're just trying things out. Higgins Eternal is a great starter ink and usually available at most art stores.
Paper: Rhodia paper. Any pad of Rhodia paper will do, you can pick the size. They come in blank, lined, grid, or dot-grid.
Online Vendors
Finding calligraphy materials at a local art store is pretty hit or miss so you'll have to do your own scouting wherever you live. Here are some great online vendors of calligraphy materials:
John Neal Bookseller http://www.johnnealbooks.com
Paper & Ink Arts http://www.paperinkarts.com
Dick Blick http://www.dickblick.com
Calligraphy Starter Kits
There are some professional calligraphers that sell super cute calligraphy starter kits. The benefit of these kits is that everything you need comes in one stylish kit, and it usually contains that calligrapher's alphabet for you to practice copying. The drawback is that all the cute packaging usually makes it more expensive. Here are some calligraphers that sell calligraphy kits. If you don't know which to pick, I would look at each calligrapher's writing style and pick the style you like the best because that's the alphabet exemplar that you will receive.
Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls (click here)
Antiquaria (click here)
Laura Hooper Calligraphy (click here)
Linea Carta (click here)
Everly Calligraphy (click here)
Design Roots (click here)
Classes & Workshops
Many local adult education schools offer calligraphy courses so be sure to check out your local listings. Also, many professional calligraphers teach workshops around the country. I have yet to attend one of these workshops so if you happen to have the time and space to do so, I will try not to be jealous. Here is a list of calligraphers whose workshops I would love to attend, in no particular order:
Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, San Francisco & worldwide (click here)
Kathy Milici, Newton, NJ & nationwide (click here)
Paperfinger, Brooklyn & Portland (click here)
Molly Jacques, Detroit & nationwide (click here)
Antiquaria, Austin (click here)
Meant To Be Calligraphy, Washington D.C. (click here)
Blue Eye Brown Eye, Dallas & nationwide (click here)
Linea Carta, Los Altos, CA (click here)
Design House of Moira, San Diego & Scottsdale, AZ (click here)
K.A.Kalligraphy, Newport Beach (click here)
Online Classes & Tutorials
I Still Love Calligraphy/Melissa Esplin (classes)
Skillshare (classes)
Antiquaria (tutorials)
Flourish Forum (All kinds of resources. You need to be a member, but membership is free.)
Books
There are, obviously, many more books out there but these are two that I have that I really like.
Modern Calligraphy by Molly Suber Thorpe
Okay, I think I've told you just about everything you need to get started and then some. A great place to start is by learning Copperplate or Spencerian scripts, whichever you like better. And lastly, the key to improving your calligraphy is simply just to practice. There is no replacement for practice. Even just a few minutes a day and you'll be amazed how quickly your penmanship can improve! Happy calligraphy-ing!
This year I cooked and hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner! And by "hosted" I mean that I invited my parents over to join us. Since this was my first shot at roasting a turkey we decided to keep it pretty simple, not to mention that having a 4 year old and a baby doesn't leave a lot of time for fancy cooking right now. After seeing all these fancy tables on Instagram, I thought maybe I should at least try to make our table a little special so I wrote up some place cards. I've been trying to practice my flourishes lately, so I added a little flourish. Also, we never got around to carving Lucy's pumpkin at Halloween because well, we ran out of time, so she said she wanted to carve a turkey into it. We also added a little turkey-cup craft she made at church. This is about as fancy I can get our dinner table to look right now. Actually, any day there isn't extra mail or dirty cups left on it, I consider it a big success! :)
In the end we had a lovely, simple Thanksgiving. Maybe when the kids are older we might be able to attempt something bigger and fancier, but for now this was right up our alley and I am thankful that life doesn't have to look perfect to be wonderful.