This Christmas I was hoping to design our own Christmas card and have it printed, but time simply did not agree with me. Instead I ordered Christmas cards from Tiny Prints and turned my attention to addressing our envelopes in luscious gold ink. I wish the photos picked up the sparkle in the ink better. Fun and festive!
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)
My family had a pretty rough May, so some dear friends helped us out by bringing us dinners and other kind things. Now that summer vacation has rolled around, I was able to make some thank you cards to properly show some gratitude.
I think the cards turned out okay, but I realized that I'm not really into "design". I just like writing things pretty, so designing thank you cards didn't end up as enjoyable as I thought it would. Writing the envelopes was super fun though and I'm really pleased how they turned out. I hope my friends enjoyed receiving them in the mail!
Cards -
Phew! It has been a crazy busy month. I'm excited to share with you my latest calligraphy project - our family Christmas card! I've been so swamped at work I wasn't sure I would have time to actually complete it before Christmas, but I did it!
The whole catalyst for this was really just because I wanted an excuse to practice writing with white ink and address envelopes. Which led to looking for red envelopes. Which led to making a card to go in the envelopes. For addressing, I wanted to practice two styles.
Here's a more traditional Copperplate style:
This is a more modern, contemporary style:
