Love Letters

Birthday card for a lovely gal

This is a card I made last night for a darling young lady, who just happens to be my son's significant other... I really hope she becomes my daughter-in-law someday (shhhh... no pressure there, Tim, just thinking out loud!).  Caitlyn's first name is done in gold and black ink... I kind of let them run together and trusted that when the ink dried, it would turn out well.  The scan doesn't show the metallic well at all, but you get the idea.  I'm pleased with how the colors in the card play off the Jazz stamp.

 

Happy Birthday, Cait!  We love you!!!

 

Check out these new Shakespeare Stamps!

London's graphic arts design house, hat trick design, has come up with a couple really beautiful stamp designs and the theme is Shakespeare.  I especially like the hand-lettered typography by Marion Deuchars.

I found the mention about these terrific stamps at Fast Co.'s website, which is loaded with interesting finds and articles.  In fact, Fast Company is one of the few magazines I read faithfully, cover to cover.   

 

Professional designers learn early to work within constraints: time, budget, materials, price. But the team at the London graphic arts firm hat-trick design has a special knack for a particularly daunting creative challenge: delivering big design on a tiny canvas.  I'm pretty sure they hit a home run on this one!

 

Wedding calligraphy, addendum...

This post is a natural follow up to my previous post about the world's smallest place cards, and I hope you enjoy it... you know how you stumble upon someone's blog or website through another and you're SO glad you did?!?  Well, I want to introduce you to a couple people, who, if you have not met them already, will blow your socks off... 

These are the kind of calligraphers who's talent inspires me to be a better calligrapher, and their kindness and generosity inspires me to just plain be better... know what I mean?!?  

First off, I like to visit Jane Farr's blog, A Place to Flourish quite frequently.  Jane's Copperplate and especially her flourishes, leave me wanting more, more, more! And even if Jane hasn't posted something new, I can scroll down the side of her blog and find new postings from others (I'd love to figure out how to do that on my blog!).  Most often, these are blog posts from other calligraphers, and it never fails, I end up on a terrifically interesting journey.

Jane's banner... heavenly!

Last night, I took a stroll over at Jane's place and found a new friend, someone who's work blew me away the further I went into her posts.  I want you to meet the incredibly talented and kind Dana Cochran, the owner and proprietress of The Ginger Parasol blog and A Fine Line Studio website and actual brick and mortar fine stationery shop in Asheville, N.C.

Dana's blog header... look at that Copperplate!  I'm swooning!

I hope you'll take a few minutes to visit both lady's blogs and leave a nice comment... this is the sort of work that is rare and special and precious. And I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I did!

 

Now...

 

 
 

Wedding calligraphy

I was recently asked by a bride to do the lettering on her place cards, and I readily agreed... I mean, how hard can that be, right?!?  Even if she had 200 of them for me to do, and a really tight schedule, I could pull it off... anyone could.  Then I saw the place cards.  I've never seen a smaller card to write on in my life.  Thankfully the bride took the time to type the names out for me, so there was no question about spellings of names, but I never guessed I'd have to wear one of those magnifying headpieces in order to do the work!  (And no old person jokes, please!  I'm not that old!!!)

 

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Originally I'd planned to write out the names in Copperplate, the sort of "standard" wedding fare, but there was no way I could do any lettering on these cards with typical tools... besides being less than two inches long and only about three quarters of an inch tall, the finish on them was really slippery, which didn't help at all.  But they are done, they are correct, and given the tools I had to work with, I am trying to be satisfied with the results.

 Let's hope the bride is happy with them!  

Flickr Photomontage

If you haven't seen this fun site, you've got to check it out!  It's called Big Huge Labs and that's where I made this:

How fun is that?!?  I've made a similar grid of images in Photoshop, but this was really quick and easy, and not everyone works in Photoshop... so be sure to visit the site, it's free, but they welcome donations, too.  And thanks to Hanna for information on how she made her grid, which you can view at her wonderful site, iHanna. Have a happy weekend, NOW GO MAKE SOMETHING!