From This Valley

After many, many months I finally got around to finishing this wedding gift for my friends Emily & David.  After being pronounced husband and wife, they walked up the aisle to "From This Valley" by the Civil Wars.  Since it's also just an awesome song in general, I wanted to write the chorus for them to hang in their new home.  Since Emily is, how do I describe her...not a very fancy or frilly person (their wedding theme was "Books and Rust") I wanted to use a writing style that was a little more down to earth.  I hope they like it!

Beloved

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".

New Creation Home Ministries Annual Fundraiser

The husband and I had the pleasure of attending the annual fundraiser for New Creation Home Ministries.  It was really fun and a little surreal to walk around the event and see my calligraphy all over the place.  The "Let there be Light" that I wrote for the invitation was on a big screen, on the front of the programs, and made into little buttons that people wore.

Also, my art piece of 2 Corinthians 5:17 was up for auction (which someone bought!).

I did some spot calligraphy for candle labels that were for sale (more on this in another post).

And I wrote numbers for tables!

It was a truly fun evening hearing the stories of transformation and support that teen mothers receive as a result of NCHM.  I am so grateful to be able to support an organization that does such important work!

2 Corinthians 5:17

I completed my first "art" piece!  (And look how nice it photographed in the light box!) I was asked to donate something for a silent auction fundraiser benefitting New Creation Home Ministries, a non-profit in East Palo Alto that serves teen mothers.  I decided to write 2 Corinthians 5:17 because that is the verse that inspired their name.  The process was really fun because I got to make it whatever I wanted, and was finally a chance to use the Artograph LightPad that my husband gave me for my birthday.  

I hope someone at the auction bids on it!

Poem

A friend of mine asked if I could write a poem in calligraphy for her.  There is this little poem that the women in her family like to recite, and she thought it would be a fun gift to give to her grandmother.  Since I didn't have any calligraphy projects coming up I was happy to help her out.  And it was kind of fun to imagine that I was being an artist being commissioned for a piece of work by some fancy benefactor, ha.

My concern about the poem was that it was the longest piece of text I have written, meaning if I wrote the whole thing beautifully but messed up on the last sentence, then I'd have to do the whole thing over again.  Since I didn't want to have to write it over and over, I made sure I planned and practiced exactly how I wanted to format the thing before starting on real calligraphy paper.  In the end I only had to go through 3 pieces of paper, and I thankfully kept messing up near the beginning so it's not like I had to scrap out a whole one.  I think the final version ended ended up looking pretty good!  I hope my friend's grandmother likes it!

Paper: Borden & Riley Boris Layout Paper
Ink: Higgins Eternal
Nib: Gillott 404